The Quest 2 VR headset is on a roll and constantly amassing new releases, even though the portable device has long overstayed its welcome in terms of available computing power. Although the Quest's capabilities are severely limited, developers seem to come up with increasingly impressive displays of optimization for the platform.

Green Hell VR for Quest 2 is a showcase of exactly that. Noticeably, it had to cut some corners in the process, but it ends up looking remarkably good in return. Most importantly, Green Hell VR backs up its pretty facade with immersive gameplay and a tense jungle atmosphere that is unmatched on the platform.

In Green Hell VR, players take control of anthropologist Jake Higgins on an expedition to study indigenous tribes deep in the rainforest; joining him is his spouse, a renowned linguist. Sure enough, things quickly go sideways. Before long, we are stuck deep in the green hell of the forest, fending for ourselves and fighting tooth and nail for survival. It's a simple setup, but the story is central to the experience. It's more apparent on the Quest 2 than on other platforms, mostly due to the lack of space in the open world.

The Quest port of Green Hell isn't on par with the original release. In an effort to run the game on the Quest 2, all environments had to be optimized and rearranged. The result is less of an open area and more interconnected levels that give the illusion of an open world, while basically funneling you to the next objective. Thankfully, the story beats are intriguing and introduce some interesting discoveries and gameplay mechanics, making your unwanted expedition a worthwhile and rewarding activity. At the end of the day, the most important objective is to stay alive, and that's no small feat.

If you've played other versions of the game, the VR version will be quite familiar. The overall world has been heavily edited for the Quest version, but the mechanics remain intact. If we want to survive, we must stay healthy. That means gathering food, water, and medicine or building tools, shelter, or fire while progressing deeper into the jungle. Snakes, scorpions, and spiders hide under lush vegetation, while bigger animals like jaguars are on the prowl, waiting for the player to make a wrong step.

As you progress, you find new crafting recipes while you figure out how to reliably feed yourself. Water is only safe when collected in bowls from rain or when it's been extensively boiled. Flora is assumed to be poisonous unless you have sampled its effects. It's this initial confusion about where to go and how to survive that makes Green Hell such a joy to experience. Nothing is straightforward, and everything requires extra steps if you want to stay alive long enough. The first-person VR experience further enhances the dread and stress with the added immersion. For example, when dealing with food poisoning, which causes more nutrients to be expelled from your body than one can possibly consume; it can lead to running headfirst into a deadly animal. Green Hell VR regularly creates scary and unexpected moments like this.

That means you'll eventually make bad decisions when eating unknown objects, but at least you'll know their effects going forward. Some flora may be both detrimental and beneficial, and another may be key to treating attacks from poisonous animals and a staple in your inventory. There is a lot of trial and error involved, and you'll die quickly and a lot. As soon as you do, you must reload the last save, which can often mean being thrown back or repeating the game from scratch if you haven't built a recent shelter. It sounds unforgiving, and it can cause some frustration, especially since the game doesn't always share its mechanics.

After a few failed first attempts, you'll quickly develop your own survival strategy. That progress makes it so satisfying because everything feels stacked against you, from hostile enemies to the lack of safe food sources. You'll also need to deal with temporary setbacks due to surprise jaguar attacks. If you go in blind, you won't notice that the open world from the original release has been dialed back significantly, and you'll have a ton of fun playing through to the end. If you know what you're doing, I can see the challenge being rather limited. Equipped with the ins and outs of the game mechanics, the reduction of open spaces makes it quite easy to go through the game once you know where to go and what to do. Fret not; for those craving the original experience in VR, a full PCVR conversion is slated for release in the coming weeks.

Green Hell VR isn't a direct port and had to reduce content, but most importantly, it still provides the same challenging and unforgiving survival experience in VR. Unlike other ports of its kind, Green Hell VR makes an effort to work well in VR. Basically, everything in the game is handled as a physical interaction. For physical inventory management, you need to be able to pick up the backpack, handle resources in a variety of ways, and use tools with realistic hand motions.

Everything feels as immersive as it can be, so you'll prop up a few sticks and throw some banana leaves over them for shelter. You can crack open coconuts on stones for nutritious coconut water and then use the coconut halves to catch water during the next rainstorm. I've spent an embarrassing amount of time cutting trees and sticks to size or making sparks to light a fire by hitting a piece of flint with a tool. All of these actions feel natural, and the game does a good job of simulating collisions and the weight of elements in the world. Soon enough, you'll have access to hunting tools like a bow and arrow to hunt wild animals and protect yourself from the predators of the jungle.

When it works, it feels tangible and transfers the entire range of actions in the game into motion-controlled inputs. Alas, Green Hell VR has a few bugs, especially when interacting with objects. There were plenty of instances where objects overlapped or obstructed one another, so one of them could no longer be picked up. I've also had issues with seemingly invisible rain and some glitchy animal encounters, but nothing completely derailed my play session. Often enough, a restart would usually fix these issues, so it never became more than an annoyance. There have been patches since release to address a few things, but I cannot say whether they resolved all of the issues.

While its controls do the heavy lifting for immersion, audio and visuals are core pillars of the experience. Green Hell VR looks almost too good on the Quest 2, and I have to qualify that statement. The visuals don't look super realistic; they probably on par with a PS2-era title. What make it so impressive are the image clarity in the display and the amount of flora and fauna rendered at any given time. The jungle in Green Hell VR is lush and thick, full of variety, and visually busy and seemingly impenetrable.

The secret behind its visual prowess is a technique called ASW (asynchronous space warp), which essentially enables the game to render fewer frames with higher visual quality while creating additional frames on the go to reach higher overall frame rates. The downside is that the additional frames cause some artifacts when objects are in motion — like your arms. It's an acceptable compromise, given the beautiful and mostly smooth outcome, and it doesn't run stable 100% of the time, but it does run stably often enough to not hinder the experience. The soundscape doesn't have any caveats whatsoever; it simply works great. At any given moment, you'll hear animals, the weather, and other sound effects around you, padding the player in a blanket of jungle sounds and pushing you further over the edge in some scenarios. There is nothing more terrifying than being in the jungle at night and without a light source, while a ton of unpleasant sounds seeming to smother you.

Green Hell VR on Quest 2 is an audio-visual showcase that sets a high bar for future Quest 2 titles and ports. It does so by making smart adjustments to the original game without compromising its core experience and gameplay. The streamlining of open spaces makes the experience easier, especially for those familiar with the title, but the gameplay is immersive yet unforgiving. It's not entirely smooth sailing, with some annoying bugs and frame rate stutters and some inherently frustrating gameplay moments that can take some wind out of its sails. As far as survival games on the Quest 2 go, Green Hell VR is the most immersive of all, and it's a great pick for survival fans who want to experience some rainforest survival training in virtual reality.

Score: 8.4/10