When lock down happened in 2020 things were in a bit of a weird place for me. I'll admit, I was afraid of this new virus sweeping across the world, but I also didn't expect it to be too bad. I began working from home just to be safe, but I wasn't truly ready to shut the door and never step outside again. I had just gone out to Best Buy and bought a brand new Oculus Quest, and I was pretty excited to talk about it with my co-workers at work; however, that very next week things changed, and I was told to stay home indefinitely.
Working from home wasn't that big of a deal for me overall. In fact, I actually got more done at home! I didn't have to answer constant phone calls, or get hundreds of questions, or constantly be asked to do something that wasn't initial a part of my scope of work. I got to sit there and focus on the task at hand, and that made things easier. After work however, I got pretty stir crazy. It's not that I really go that many places in general, but the idea of being told you "can't go to Walmart" or you "can't go out to eat" was a bit much. I was separated from friends and family physically, but thankfully Discord kept us all connected.
Although we couldn't hang out together in real life, the first week of "shelter in place" me and two of my friends jumped into a little game called The Forest. Now Billy, whom I recently played Ultimate Zombie Defense 2 with, had told me about the game previously, but I had never actually played it myself. It sounded cool from how he explained it, but when I saw that it was VR compatible, I knew I had to give it a shot. So that night me, him, and our other friend Ricky jumped into the campaign together for the first time, and man, it was quite the trip.
Surviving:
The game begins with our main character surviving a plane crash, and watching as his son is taken away from him. He crawls out of the wreckage only to find that he is basically the only survivor, and that he is now trapped in the middle of a forest. Of course with three of us playing there were "three survivors," but for the sake of the story, we are out here alone. While finding and rescuing your son is the ultimate goal in the game, it features full on survival mechanics which require you to take care of yourself.
Our first order of business was to search the imitated area, and set up a small camp before night fall. The game gets very dark at night, especially for someone who was playing in VR, so getting a fire going and some shelter was key. It was pretty crazy seeing all of this first hand, but it didn't take long to realize that VR players also have an advantage. While Ricky and Billy were limited by how fast they could swing their axe to cut down a tree, I had no such limit. My limits were my own stamina, so I could swing my axe as fast as possible! This allowed me to cut down trees at a much faster pace, but I was also more prone to jump scares when the very same tree fell on me and crushed me.
Putting that aside, it didn't take too long to get the basics of the game down, and all three of us worked together to ensure everyone had what they needed. We'd hunt for food, bring it back, share with whoever needed it, keep the fire going, and continue working on our mini camp. Of course we couldn't stay in the starting area, as we needed to progress, but it worked well enough for the time being. Eventually we started coming across the multiple caves hidden across the island we were on, and then the true horror began.
Going into the deep dark caves in VR is something I'll never forget. It wasn't as scary since I wasn't alone, but it was still creepy. At first the enemies down there were mostly just islanders that rushed towards us and attacked, but as we got deeper and deeper, things began to change. It especially got bad when we reached the "Baby Cave" and got to experience the horrors that are those.... Baby looking things jumping at us. I'm sure this was a jump scare for Billy and Ricky, but in my case I had these things jumping into my face! I knew they were fake, and that I was playing in VR, but the sight of those things is something I'll never forget...
Building a Home:
After recovering from the Baby Cave, we constructed our first real base. We found a nice lake area that had plenty of resources around, and we began playing with our different construction tools. It was when we realized that you can create elevated structures that we also realized this meant we could do something unique with our camp. So instead of building on the lake edge, we decided to build on the lake itself!
Having a camp built above the lake was a huge advantage to us. At night the enemies from the caves begin exploring, and the further you get into the game, the bigger and badder they become. Of course they target you and try to hunt you down, so having our base above water, where they couldn't reach, meant we could survive these night attacks much easier. We had a single entry point up to our base, and as long as we held them off at the steps we were good. Other times we simply hid inside and waited for them to leave, but funneling them to a single location made taking them out so much easier. Of course if they did destroy the entrance we could simply jump into the water, and swim back to shore to rebuild it, but the enemies themselves weren't that smart.
This is how we went the entire game, with this single base as our main camp.
Moving on from the base and the first caves, the more we got into the game, the more unique and interesting things we discovered we could do. Finding a flashlight was a big game changer for me, because I had full use of my arms, and could shine it anywhere I wanted like in real life. This became especially useful when climbing up walls in caves, or while my friends were climbing, as I could stand below and simply light their way.
This also lead me to one of the most surreal parts of the game, as at one point I was exploring alone in the woods, and I had one of the monsters jump out from behind a tree. Here I was just shining my light around not expecting anything, and the moment I stopped it on this one tree, out the thing came from behind it, paused to look at me, and then dashed off into the darkness. My instincts were to run away as fast as possible, but my brain telling me that it was fake in VR simply saw how cool it was. These were the types of moments I wanted out of VR, and The Forest provided me that in a least expected, non scripted, way.
All good things come to an end:
As we played the game nearly every night, it didn't take us too long to reach the end of the game. Sure, we didn't do everything, but we discovered the final section, and that was something else. Without spoiling it, the game takes a different approach to the final area, and it eventually lead to some pretty crazy cutscenes and boss fights. While my friends got to watch the fixed camera angles and be frozen in place, I got to see the whole thing unfold in front of me, as if it were truly happening only a few feet away. That too is something most VR games don't allow you to do, as typically such scenes are shown on a 2D floating screen; however, here the immersion was never broken. And again, that was pretty terrifying!
By the end of that night we had finished the game, and our time "playing boy scouts" was over. It was a lot of fun while it lasted, and for me it was a nice break from being stuck inside both physically and mentally. Playing the game in VR was an escape for me, and something I am happy to have experienced.
Still to this day The Forest is one of my favorite survival games, and I love to return to it from time to time. Even as I'm writing this I have yet to experience everything the game had to offer, and that gives me even more reason to come back to it. It is a very fun game, especially when playing with friends, and I can't recommend it more than enough. It helped me get through Lock Down, and created memories I'll never forget.
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