The stomping land is multiplayer, this is not. There is a plane crash but it's not like Lost.
It can occasionally be very scary. The enemy AI is probably the only thing in it right now that's done perfectly and I can't wait to see what else we see with it in the future.
It's also got some impressively subtle stuff. A lot of games ram their message down your throat because video game developers aren't capable of subtlety. No scripted sequences where you burn down an orphanage and then the game wags its finger at you for being evil, here it's all built into the systems waiting for you to come across it on your own. You'll be stalking a lone cannibal across the beach with a logging axe to cut off her head and put it on a stake to mark off your territory and it'll pop into your head, "Son of a bitch, I am the cannibals."
I can totally see why you would feel these ways about it, but I have almost opposite opinions across the board. I think the AI is awful, it's just perfectly broken as to appear to be clever, but when you spend more time with it you will actually see just how broken it is. A foot away from you and they won't see you or respond to you, but then through a dense jungle 50 meters away they will laser in on you and come running as a group. I could list dozens of examples of how it's broken and only give an anecdote or two showing how it worked well to give the illusion of being well programmed.
I also don't find anything about it's design sublte, not that I need it to though. Generally the only standard I hold a dev to is functionality because everything else is open to personal choice and vision and it's pretty silly to decide that someone's personal preference or goal is bad because it's not how I would do it. I may like it or I may not, but as long as @70% of things work as expected I have a positive attitude about their work.
I'm with Retropunch on this one. While I find the first 15 mins of the game fun, I have serious doubts that they know what to do with the game. They keep giving us examples that they are not decided on what sort of game they are going to deliver by offering conflicting updates(focus of them). I'm supporting them because the project is interesting but I think this was one of those projects where they had one pretty good concept and some talent and it was enough to get the ball rolling but now they are lost and they already have a ton of money and no real incentive to deliver a polished, well crafted finished product. It's another prime example of why early access is bad for the consumer and the developer.
*This was my opinion and it is no more valid than yours. In fact, by looking at stuff half through a developer prism and half through a gamer prism, I will never be more than half right
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Topic: The Forest (Read 2785 times)