The survival genre has enjoyed much time in the spotlight over the years. For a while, it seemed like a new one was coming out for early access on PC every other week. Early hits like Rust and Ark set the stage for others like The Forest, The Long Dark, Valheim, and plenty more.
Among all these is Green Hell, a hardcore survival game set in the Amazon Rainforest. The game has been ported from PC to VR and consoles but recently received a free PS5 update. Now that I’ve spent plenty of time chopping wood, eating questionable mushrooms, and diagnosing strange wounds on my arms and legs, it’s time to find out if this should be your next survival game obsession!
An Impressively Detailed Survival Experience
Green Hell places you in the shoes of what seems to be a pretty capable man setting out on an expedition to the Amazon Rainforest with his wife to make contact with an indigenous tribe. The game features a tutorial you can select in the main menu, but it will also start the tutorial at the beginning of a new single-player save file.
This confused me because I did the tutorial first and then had to skip it via the main menu when I started my single-player story file. It’s not a major issue, but it is worth mentioning. The game also features a separate story mode called “Spirits of the Amazonia” that doesn’t have a tutorial, so it’s entirely possible that this is the reasoning behind a standalone option in the menu.
In the tutorial, you’re given everything you need to learn the basics, which the game does a good job of introducing. You’ll immediately notice how detailed the survival mechanics are, too, with something as simple as starting a fire requiring you to gather kindling and craft a firestarter using a stick and some wood.
Nothing in Green Hell comes easy, and that’s clearly by design. Once you finish the tutorial, you’re alone with nothing to your name but a smartwatch and a backpack to store items you find. The story continues to develop as you explore the map, but it’s never intrusive for those who just want to set up a home base and become self-sufficient as quickly as possible.
You’ll get to work building some basic tools like a stone axe and gathering key essentials like sticks (which come in two sizes), wood, and a species of vines that automatically become “rope” in your inventory.
As you do this, you’ll soon see another of Green Hell’s many survival layers. Namely, your basic needs. Most survival games have you track a general hunger meter, a thirst meter, and maybe a sleep meter. Green Hell has all these, and just for good measure, you’ll be tracking protein, carbs, fats, and your thirst on your handy smartwatch.
To some, this may feel like overkill, but I enjoyed planning my meals around those meters, none of which seemed to drain at an alarming rate on the normal difficulty. As you get yourself situated, you’ll notice that Green Hell also drains your maximum stamina until you sleep, which is thankfully possible anywhere but best done in some sort of bed (this is also where you’ll be able to save manually, but you can also save and quit at any time).
The complexity doesn’t stop with your hunger and thirst, however. Green Hell also features a full disease and wound system that can become an issue if certain conditions are left untreated. In addition to your basic needs, you’ll also need to monitor your sanity, which can be drastically reduced by some of the potential conditions you’ll receive in this harsh environment.
Bug and snake bites, leeches, worms, cuts, scrapes, rashes, the list goes on and on. Like the real Amazon Rainforest, there are many ways to meet your end in Green Hell, and it’s not always a swift death (though you’ll encounter those too, especially on the standard difficulty).
It’s important to manage your save file accordingly. As previously mentioned, you can save at will once you build a bed (it’s a separate icon from the sleep one, which took me a second to figure out). If you save at the wrong time, you can easily mess up your file and force yourself to start from scratch.
A perfect example is when I was infected by a worm that required a special tool to extract from beneath my skin. The worm’s effect was a constant drain on my sanity, and I happened to save while my sanity was critically low and without any means to extract the parasite.
Low sanity leads to what the game calls “deadly hallucinations,” and that’s exactly what happened. Given the state of my save file, I was stuck in a death loop with no real way out, so I had to scrape the file and start from scratch. That’s the level of survival realism we’re talking about.
It may not be for everyone, but I must applaud the dedication to realism, even if I know some people will find all the moment-to-moment considerations overwhelming. Between the game’s main story mode and the included “Spirits of the Amazonia” campaign, there’s a lot of content here and plenty of things to discover across the map.
There’s no arguing that you get some good bang for your buck, but given that this game originated on PC and the PS5 upgrade was just released, let’s talk about how this port of Green Hell holds up.
Awkward Controls and a Minimalistic PS5 Upgrade Hurt the Experience
From a story standpoint, Green Hell is interesting, especially for a genre that doesn’t often have a lot of story content. From a mechanics standpoint, the game is incredibly detailed and realistic. Unfortunately, the controls and presentation started to drag down the experience for me.
I’ll start with the good. The PS5 version of Green Hell looks superb, with incredible detail across all the different rainforest trees, plants, and creatures. The sheer visual variety as you trek through the forest is amazing, with plenty of creeks and larger bodies of water to explore.
Unfortunately, the performance left me less impressed. With a PS5 upgrade like this one, I usually expect a solid 30 FPS or the option for a performance mode with 60 FPS, in addition to HDR support. Green Hell doesn’t offer HDR calibration (only brightness), and the frame rate feels fairly wobbly during more intense sequences or sprinting through the forest.
It’s not unplayable by any means, but it is distracting at times. If this was still the PS4 version, I would be less strict, but given that the studio announced and released a brand new PS5 version, I expected more of an upgrade in line with other current generation titles.
The other major negative for me is the control scheme. The game uses a combination of radial menus and a cursor that you have to move with the analog stick. You open your main radial menu with the touchpad and then use the left stick to navigate it. This was tough for me as a left-handed gamer because I instinctively pressed the touchpad with my left thumb and tried to use the right stick every time before I started to learn to switch.
When crafting, you also have to use a slow mouse cursor with the analog stick to select ingredients and place them on the crafting stone. When you need to stop and inspect your body for wounds or parasites, the game also has an incredibly awkward control scheme that has you using the L2/R2 triggers in conjunction with the analog sticks to select and rotate limbs.
None of it feels natural, and while I started to get the hang of it, it was clear from the beginning that this would feel significantly better on the mouse and keyboard. Plenty of games have successfully made the jump from PC with numerous examples of good controller layouts, so I cannot let something like this go unaddressed in 2024.
In the end, though, Green Hell is an impressive survival game with a lot of depth and hardcore mechanics that will raise the eyebrows of any seasoned genre veteran. Multiple difficulties make it easy for anyone to get into it, but those who try it on PS5 should be prepared to wrestle with the controls as much (or more) as they do with the rainforest around them.
Final Score: 7.5/10
Review code provided by the publisher
Article by – Bradley Ramsey
Insert date – 8/20/2024