Recent reviews by BumbleCrap

This was not a worthy followup to The Forest. If you liked the first game, just go play that again.

• Beautiful environment. The island itself is at least on par with the first game.
  
• Decent lighting, when not limited by strange design decisions.
  
• Very familiar gameplay loop if you played the first one.
  
  
  Cons
• Base building is pointless. The only structures that would be mildly useful are the drying rack and animal traps. However...
  
• Hunting is unnecessary. You'll scavenge enough food and drink just from exploring that you'll rarely, if ever, need to cook anything on a fire.
  
• Combat seems significantly easier than the first game, especially considering how abundant weapons and ammo are. Cannibal and mutant attacks are more annoying than scary or suspenseful.
  
• Exploring caves is boring. Enter a new cave, advance through it if you have the correct tool, find one or two new tools or weapons, leave cave. That's it. They are no longer interconnected and have far less interesting things in them.
  
• Navigating the overworld is pointlessly drawn out. Nearly every point of interest is marked with a GPS signal and you'll spend the majority of your time running between them, with nothing interesting to see or do on the way.
  
• Crafting is essentially the same as the first game, except it's far easier to find the "good" versions of crafted equipment than the first game. Why combine 7 different items to make a time bomb when there are grenade cases all over? Why pick berries and herbs to make health and energy boosts when there are painkillers and energy drinks everywhere?
  
• No hotbar. This is a step backwards in functionality and I don't understand why Endnight decided to use this system. Instead of being able to press 1-4 on your keyboard to quickly select items, you can assign 2 large weapons/tools, 4 small items, and 2 small weapons/tools, then hold the inventory key to bring up the quick select and click on something to equip it. Not only is this slower than the previous system, you're also limited to only having two of each type of tool/weapon. Having small items in the quick slots is borderline pointless.
  
  
  Nitpicks
• The story cutscenes make no sense and don't explain the story of the game. I'm not sure if this was because the game is still early access, but no characters in any cutscene ever said a word. I finished the game completely confused.
  
• Speaking of story, the lore that can be found made no sense or was completely pointless. Do I really need to pick up an email about missing golf balls? The actual important lore emails were mostly redacted or so brief that they made no sense without context, of which there was none.
  
• Kelvin was a great idea to have in the game, but he is too stupid even for someone with potential brain damage. He'll cut logs for you, but won't stray farther than 100 feet or so to do it. Buddy, you are on an island chock full of trees. They're right over there. Go cut them down.
  
• This is most likely an early access bug, but Kelvin will happily cut down a tree that is currently supporting a treehouse, if you ask him to gather logs.
  
• It's nice that we get an upgrade from the flickery lighter from the first game in the form of an electric arc lighter, but why is it so much brighter than a torch?
  
• Speaking of torches, it would be really nice if the flashlight could run longer than 20 minutes on a fresh set of batteries. I know it's for gameplay balance, but even the crappiest light running on tiny AAA batteries will last for hours.
  
• Why bother building Tech Armor when Creepy Armor is so abundant?
  
• The weapon attachments are nice, but WHY DOES THE LASER SIGHT GO ON THE TOP RAIL? IT COMPLETELY BLOCKS THE IRON SIGHTS AND THE LASER IS NOT ACCURATE WHEN AIMING FROM THE HIP. THIS MAKES ME SO ANGRY.
  
• Going into the cold mountainous area in the first game was a legitimately dangerous activity due to the cold. Now? You'll have half the normal amount of stamina and a frosty ice crystal overlay on your screen. That's it.
  
• Not to harp on the caves, but in the first game they were my favorite places to explore. They've been replaced entirely with Skyrim-style one-way dungeons full of nothing. Caves have one entrance, one exit, and one or two interesting things to see inside. All the dead bodies were alarming and made sense in the first game. Here, they are scattered about with no rhyme or reason, and stop being shocking when you've walked right past the 78th maintenance worker strung up by his feet in some random cave.
  
• This may be another early access bug, but I was not able to disable motion blur, film grain, or chromatic aberration, despite menu options existing to do so, These are all graphics option that make visuals look worse; I don't understand why developers keep adding them to their games, and having them turned on by default.
  
• It really bothers me how pointless it is to build a base. Even small structures require a lot of work, and for what exactly? A place to store extra bones and sticks? The island is littered with them. A bed to sleep in? There are beds all over the island, and even if you aren't near one they are trivial to build. A place to be safe from enemies? As soon as you plop down your first log, a steady stream of enemies will never leave you alone and knock down anything you build just because.
  
  
  Final Thoughts
  I played The Forest when it was in early access, and easily put 40+ hours into it. I wouldn't mind going back and playing it again, especially compared to the colossal disappoint of its sequel. I could potentially see myself coming back to it once it's out of early access, but only if the more egregious design choices are fixed. Namely, there would need to be a reason to build a base, and/or a lot more lore to fill out the story. Otherwise I'd just be trudging through the same boring world, slogging through the same mediocre combat, and being just as confused at the threadbare story.