Green Hell Review (PC)
Summary: Green Hell the survival crafting game. Can you survive in the Jungle? Build a base, survive the night and beware of things that go bump in the night.
4.1
Jungle Survival
After a year in Early Access, Green Hell finally gets its 1.0 Update adding the much asked for CO-OP mode. Can you survive the sweaty South American Jungle or will you lose your Sanity!
Green Hell sets itself up as Man vs The environment, both in its 15-20 hour single player story narrative and in the survival game mode. The player must constantly check their vitals with the help of a handy FitBit style watch, keeping track of proteins and other essentials that most of us in the Real World take for granted; but in this rougher Bear Grylls style game it becomes essential to even be able to collect sticks.
Following in a similar style to The Forest, Green Hell’s crafting is done through the use of a mat and mixing various elements together to craft items, like medical supplies which can be done by collecting the various leaves and local plants. Many recipes you learn whilst exploring abandoned areas like logging sites and caves.
Whilst the crafting is simple and recipes are easy to guess; the way the inventory is laid out is not always the most convenient for the player, multiples times I crafted things by accident due to collisions in the inventory system and the inability to customize the inventory layout.
Also craft-able and a recent addition/update is the bases you can building using mud. You can build anything from a simple hut to a mansion depending upon how much time you would like to put into it and if you can collect enough resources.
One of the main features is the energy and sanity meters.
Sanity – is effected by injuries, consumption of bad food/water or cannibalism. A low sanity meter means you will begin to hallucinate, this can be remedied by resting and re hydrating yourself.
Energy – Effects how much you can do in a day before you have to rest, this leads to the player needing to work out before he starts what his objectives are for the rest of the day, as not to collapse mid activity
Many of the animals in Green Hell are completely passive like the Capybara and wild Boar meaning easy food as long as you can be quiet and hunt successfully. The real danger comes in the form of Snakes and Jaguars. Those can quite literally be the end of your game. Snakes can poison you which add negative effects and you will slowly die unless you can craft the antidote. So all the plant picking you have done will now come in handy. Jaguars like to sit in wait and stalk down the player until they are just in the right moment of relaxation and BAM you get eaten and unless you have crafted a shelter and have been able to save it is unfortunately game over for you
If Dangerous animals and reptiles were not enough, you also have the Tribe of cannibalistic natives that live in the depths of the Jungle. Just like the enemies in the forest they will start off passive and just observe you but as the days wear on and you can find more supplies they will start to raid you and try to take you captive.
Overall the visual and audio presentation of Green Hell is what really impresses me as a journey and exploring the map, everywhere is detailed even down to the smallest streams. This helps the player become more immersed in the world and something I have found a lot of games struggle to capture especially in the Survival Genre.
Having the audio play the different sounds from bird calls to branches moving in the wind again adds to the immersion but at times you really do feel like you are in the South American Jungles.
Of course it is not all perfect and I think that is something the PC Gamer community has come to expect especially with Early Access titles, that being said Creepy Jar have been very active since the release of the game with updating/adding new features and also fixing bugs. This is not to say that there are no bugs. But rest assured all bugs will be fixed eventually.
Overall if you are hankering for some pretend survival whilst we are all doing it for real with COVID 19 I would definitely recommend this game. Even if you just sit and enjoy the atmosphere I feel it is well worth the money.
Also for those of you who play on Consoles, Green Hell has been announced for Xbox One and PS4 so keep your eyes out for that!
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