The Forest is one of the great indies of recent years. Such was its popularity that Endnight Games Ltd decided to bet on a kind of son of that first film: Sons of the forest. One more proof that sometimes delaying releases is not such a bad idea.
Sons of the Forest is available on PC in early access.
There is no doubt that The Forest is one of the great indies of recent years. Its story, its gameplay –and why not, its graphics– made survival lovers fall in love with it immediately. Such was (and continues to be) the success of that acclaimed 2018 title that its development team, Endnight Games Ltd, decided to squeeze that experience a little more.
Personally, I really enjoyed that “first film”, so when a new title was announced I screamed to heaven. A few weeks before the release of sons of the forest something happened that made me wince: the game was going to be released in Early Access.
I have nothing personal against early access games, but the experience I had with several of them (many can be found on this page) made me look at them with some idea. Games full of bugs, completely broken, with absolutely no content and so on.
And what happens in that sense with Sons…?
Unfortunately, the Sons experience…so far has left me with a bittersweet taste in my mouth. With a GTX 3070 motherboard, an i5 11600K processor, and 32GB of RAM, the game crashed dozens of times (no exaggeration). At no time was I able to play more than 5 minutes without it ending up collapsing. On another side, I tested the title on a PC that has an RX 580 series 8GB motherboard, an AMD Rayzen 5 1600 six-core processor and 16GB of RAM (clearly less than the one mentioned above) and the game ran without major problems.
Taking into account the components of the first computer (I clarify, just in case, that I tried to put everything to the minimum), the performance is embarrassing. It is one thing that the title, in its Early stage, lacks a bit of content or has the odd bug, another thing is that it cannot be played directly due to its poor optimization.
Copy and paste
The gameplay itself, so far, is not far from what was offered to us in The Forest. The reality is that the 2018 title is very solid in that sense, so it wouldn’t make sense to put a lot of hand in that part. The base is exactly the same as its predecessor. The setting is too. Such is the tracing that, for many people, the new title may lack a lack of originality.
I understand that they have not wanted to modify an already well established structure, but I also understand the comments regarding the lack of innovation.
After all, why go after this unfinished product if I can repeat almost the same experience, but with solid foundations?
A (nice) face lift
Where sons… If it manages to stand out above its “father”, it is in its graphic section. The leap in quality can be seen at first glance. Although, it is also necessary to take into account -and it is not minor- that The Forest It came out in 2018. It may seem like a short time, but 5 years when it comes to technology is a long time.
Although it is not up to AAA, the reality is that it does not have much to envy them either. Obviously the details aren’t as entrenched, but for an indie title it has a base that is well above average in this regard.
Conclusion
Sons… still has a ways to go. As, unfortunately, often happens with Early Access titles, it is still quite green. We will have to wait until the middle of the year (the date on which they promised for its final release) to see if it manages to be above its predecessor or reinforces the cliché phrase of “second parts are never good”.
