On the surface, Sons of the Forest takes everything from its predecessor and does it better. It looks better. It feels better. It has more weapons, more locations, a bigger island, more story, more secrets, more more more. But I found it to be a vastly disappointing experience compared to the first game.
More and bigger isn't always better, I guess.
I'll knock out the good first: base building is much better. It's expanded, more intuitive, and the possibilities are thus greatly increased. It also looks gorgeous in terms of sheer graphics. I appreciate the expanded crafting and the animations that come with crafting, eating, drinking, and so on. This lends itself to immersion. The sound design is superb. Traversing twigs and branches, leaves, wading through water, crunching atop snow - it's all wonderful to hear.
The "good" kind of stops there.
You're not a layperson stranded on an island with only the remnants of past Christian missionaries and suitcases of deceased airplane passengers to scavenge from anymore. This time, you're a paramilitary operative with a bunch of high tech gadgets and weapons to collect and use, including a handheld GPS that tells you where you are at all times, and has just about all of the island revealed. There are dozens of other forward operating bases and rendezvous points your fallen comrades set up before your arrival, so you're sure to find whatever you need, whenever you need it. And there are a handful of extensive high tech underground bunkers complete with all the creature comforts of Western civilization for you to plunder, or even to make your own if you feel like it.
This all sounds cool on paper, but in practice, it's a very deflating experience. If you're coming to these games for the thrill of survival in such harsh and unforgiving conditions, you're probably not going to find it here. The focus is more on action. And your suspension of disbelief will be required throughout.
One of the coolest aspects of The Forest is how humbly grounded it felt. It didn't require a huge leap to imagine a vast cave system on this small remote island, and the underground lab, being a single facility built into a mountain system didn't seem too farfetched. Then you get to this second island and there are so many underground facilities with so much luxury and self-sufficiency that the reality of constructing such a system of facilities would be tantamount to the monumental efforts it would have taken to realize BioShock's Rapture. I simply don't buy it.
The 'tacticality' of the inventory and weaponry is a bit of a let down as well. Again, all of that stuff sounds cool on paper, but with a small stockpile of small combat arms and explosives, it's hard to feel scared or like you're ever really threatened. A more interesting implementation might have been having to scavenge parts and craft these weapons in a jury rigged fashion rather than them being found in pristine working order.
There are companions this time around. You never truly feel alone. This is an interesting idea and I didn't always dislike it. It's nice to have Kelvin go take care of collecting sticks while I get our base's stone foundation in place.
Virginia is simply weird, though. I understand that gaining her companionship is supposed to be somewhat like taming a wild animal, but I have multiple problems with this. Firstly, it's very buggy. There's no real clear indicator as to whether or not you're making progress and I'm not convinced that's by design. Secondly, it feels a bit like objectification. Virginia is a conventionally beautiful woman in a white leotard who approaches you in fear, occasionally pausing to dance for you, bolting away at any fast movements from the player and keeping her distance. She is much more like a wild animal than a person. And the idea that we as a male character are supposed to "tame" her rubs me the wrong way.
I wanted to love the island. It's too big. It doesn't have any character. It's very realistic, and that's not always a good thing. People often decry the suffocating blandness of open world games, when in truth, the real open world is quite repetitive and samey for large stretches of area. Developers have gotten very good at making open worlds realistic. But that's not fun, and this island isn't very fun either. The compactness of the first game's island, it's varied elevations and regions compressed into a manageable area, managed to feel engaging and realistic at the same time, deftly realized. This island looks and feels like it was plucked out of Google Earth which makes for a dazzling spectacle but it loses the ominous atmosphere of The Forest.
Which sort of leads me into my largest overall issue with Sons of the Forest: the vibe, the aesthetic, whatever you want to call it. I've ranted and raved in other reviews about how important that aspect of a game is, and how it can be the deciding factor on whether or not a game works. In The Forest, it was the strongest component of that game. Everything worked together to create a phenomenally creepy sense of dread and desperation. The woods felt simultaneously small and sprawling; nighttime felt oppressive and fraught with peril; the caves were organically labyrinthine, disorienting, and difficult. If you had a flashlight, you had to change its batteries often. If you didn't have a flashlight, you used a short-lived torch. If you didn't have that, you only had your trusty gas lighter, its weak yellow flame flickering and playing tricks with the light on the cave walls, even sometimes going out and leaving you in darkness as you eagerly attempt to reignite it. You had to memorize their layouts, as well as that of the island itself. All you had was a poorly drawn map and a compass. There were no creature comforts other than what you made yourself or the abandoned campsites you found sporadically dotted across the island.
In Sons of the Forest, you're on a beautiful forested island complete with scenic views, gorgeous beaches, majestic peaks, and breathtaking valleys. Beautiful, but not particularly foreboding or interesting for gameplay. The caves are relatively linear and tragically uninteresting in every possible way; gone are the claustrophobic passages, the drastic changes in vertical space, the sudden reveals of gaping chasms, the interconnectivity, the doubling back to recall which passage you just turned down, the tunnels that wind like a serpent. You have an electric lighter that gives off a consistent purple glow, providing a reliable light source that does nothing particularly interesting visually. Fully powered bunkers with comfortable mattresses, sound systems, 3D printing, and luxury bathrooms are never far away. And if you want to get lost, too bad - you never will be, thanks to your handheld GPS device that reveals all would-be secrets.
Then there are the enemies. The surface dwelling cannibals look very cool, and the different variations they come in are intimidating and difficult to fight at times. But the cave dwelling enemies, the mutants, are woefully uninspired and feel like they were lifted right out of Stranger Things or A Quiet Place. Rather than some precursor civilization, the story of The Forest's follow-up takes us into the realm of, well, other realms, alternate dimensions, spaceships, aliens. I don't know what to say about this other than I'm not sure if there's a world in which this would have ever worked for me, and it certainly doesn't here.
I wanted to love Sons of the Forest. For what I'm looking for - a thrilling experience of exploration, spelunking, revealing and stumbling upon secrets, all while feeling scared as hell while doing so - this game doesn't provide it. It does a lot of things exceptionally well and I hope the developers continue making games, because Sons of the Forest is not a bad game. It's simply different and I did not like it. And that's okay.
