Recent reviews by dalsgaard

Disclaimer: I've been a huge fan of Valve, and especially the Half-Life series since 1997.

I've played this for 2 hours, and it's incredibly immersive. It's definitely the best graphical experience in any VR game I've played. It feels like you're actually in the world. I haven't really come that far, because I can't stop interacting with the environment. I find myself picking up almost everything in sight, looking under stuff, drawing on windows, using my gravity gloves.... The lighting on objects is fantastic, there are a lot of textures that has been so beautifully crafted that certain parts of the world feels real. Some scenes are so close to reality, that I was caught by surprise.

There is so much attention to detail. In the very first scene, you land on a balcony. If you look over it to the side, theres a cat asleep on a chair, and you can throw stuff at it to scare it away. Everything feels like it has a weight to it, and your hands have a physical presence. At one point I opened a door slowly, pushing at it with my gun. I did this without thinking.

I feel the same sense of awe I felt when I first played half-life. This is definitely a new experience. They've managed to create something that is just miles ahead of any other VR game I've tried. I can't say I'm surprised - noone believed Half-Life 2 would live up to the hype either back in 2004. But it did, and all the mods of previous titles have been absolutely crazy.

Back before Half-Life 2 came out, I bought a new gaming computer, and would compulsively look at the source engine tech demo videos. I did much the same for Half-Life, although the title took me by surprise - as I was busy playing Unreal at the time. The money I spent back then, on great hardware, was well worth it with the thousands of hours I've spent playing mods in both games. Is Half-Life: Alyx worth buying a Valve index for? I doubt it. At least, I couldn't get myself to do it. That is an extremely high-cost entrypoint. But I bought an oculus quest, and a link cable for this title - and I in no way regret it.

The only thing that made Skyrim great, was all the mods. Now that Valve and Bethesda has decided to ♥♥♥♥ modders over, and mods are no longer free, I can't recommend you buy this game.

The game is haunting and great. It's clearly early access, and the coop mode has a lot of bugs and issues yet. But it's getting there. And if you an see through that, then it's definitely worth the money!

The forest suffers from a lot of the issues that early access games do in general. For one: It came out in version 0.01. As of this writing, the current version is 0.11, and it's 7 months later. If this development speed continues, then the game won't be "done" for the next 5 years.

I mean, that's still sooner than Rust and DayZ. And by the looks of it, the developers for The Forest are far more determined to put in the work (They have a countdown in the main menu till the next patch, and they have clear plans for where they want to take the game).

Also, the development team that was originally 3 people, have grown quite a bit. Now they are 11, and the updates that have come out in the latest two months seem a lot more substantive. The graphics are extremely impressive. It's the most immersive game in the horror genre I've ever played, especially because nothing in it so far is scripted. You will see some stuff that will make your skin crawl. But you will also encounter immersion-breaking stuff now and again, so keep that in mind.

Pros:
+ Horrifying enemies
+ Incredible graphics
+ Fantastic AI (- When bugs are disregarded)
+ The mood in this game, I've never seen anything quite like it
+ Crafting is interesting and original
+ Developers work around the clock, and have 2 week deadlines for patches
+ Developers listen. Like the time they added a bow, because community wanted it. Turned out great.

Cons:
- Lots of bugs, some so glaring that you wonder why they haven't been fixed yet
- After you figure out how enemies work, the challenge wears off.
- Not much to do once you have an impenetrable base (+ will easily take you 15 or more hours to get to that point).
- While the island forest is big, it could be bigger (+It will be eventually)
- Slow development (+Does indeed look like it's speeding up)

So that's that. Would I recommend it? Yes, definitely. But only to people who understand that it's early access. I would not recommend it to anyone YET. But I can certainly see that happening in a year or two.