The Forest Cathedral Review.

The Forest Cathedral is a first-person environmental thriller set on a remote island. Playing as scientist Rachel Carson, players will figure out why the island won’t let her leave. The game tells the reimagined story of the attempted silence of Rachel Carson leading up to her discoveries on the harmful pesticide known as DDT.

This game is not your typical game, a story based on 2D and 3D, which follows a scientist stationed on a remote island. Your role is to study how a new chemical DDT works in its new environment.

This new so-called bug spray will pave the way and stop mosquitoes and will be the next best thing on the supermarket shelf.

The gameplay is very quirky and plays in 3D and 2D, the 2D comes into play when you engage a terminal and use the onscreen icon called ‘’little man’’ you will need to use him to help you get an Acton completed to move across a river or save a fish.

This is a slow-paced game and the starting tutorial will bring you in gradually following commands and getting used to your new home and surroundings, you first start of by using your scanner and moving through out the inhouse maze they’ve created to get you into the game mechanic’s, the scanner you activate and look through highlights items so that you are able to follow the path that Infront of you and helps you to get the correct point of the game.

The controls are very basic and isn’t much to get stressed about as its really easy to guide your scientist around the island, little man however while playing him in the 2D side of the game I found really hard to use, I just feel that moving hm around was a tad unresponsive and wasn’t fluid in motion at the best of times.

 The good thing about the 2D side of the game is that you have the option to turn of the spikes, we have all got to a point of a game where we have smashed up your controller or got sick of a certain part of a game or couldn’t progress any further, this option I feel was a good move and really helped me in parts of the game as the controls where just basically shocking.

Looking at the visual side of the game, I would say this isn’t one of your main line titles, however, isn’t too low to feel like it’s not worth playing. I do think that this is what the designers were trying to achieve when they created this game.

The audio I feel falls far too short of the mark. Where was the atmospheric music or necessary in game music? I just felt that this was really overlooked and honestly felt let down because this was missing.

Thinking about the achievements, they really come at you fast and furious and isn’t really anything that makes them challenging. Would I play this game again to play the so-called campaign, possibly not if im completely honest.

The longevity of the game is about 10 to 20 hours to complete and shouldn’t take the avid gamer too long to max out 100% of the achievements.

My initial thoughts on The Forest Cathedral is that this game could have really had more added to it, and the length of completion and the sound in my eyes was a tad sparse. It’s a shame, really, as I really loved the concept of this game. A game within a game really had me intrigued. If you’re looking for easy achievements, look no further.

The forest cathedral was released on the 14 March 2023 and is now available on Xbox Series X/S for the price of £12.49

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