Humanity is growing more and more used to the technology that surrounds us every day. This is a good thing of course but this comes at a cost as well. The Long Dark has you survive against mother nature as we once did many generations ago.
Extensive realism
The Long Dark is based around hyper-realistic survival. Making a fire, a crucial thing to every survivalist isn’t as easy as collecting wood and lighting the fire. Depending on the fuel your fire will be easier or harder to light. When you repair clothes you make sure not to be outside because you’ll get frostbite. These and many more things make the game feel realistic and has you logically think about what you should and should not be doing.
The surviving centers around 4 stats. Temperature, fatigue, thirst, and hunger. Every action you will perform has an effect on these stats. For instance when hunting: when you just sprinted it moves the rifle heavily up and down with every deep breath, when cold you will start to shiver and if your fatigue is high you can’t hold your aim for very long. All these effects can be reduced by earning skills along the way.
The game has no tutorial at all, going back to the point that I made earlier. The game puts you in a scenario that you aren’t prepared for. This gives you the same feelings of fear and panic you would get when experiencing this in real life. Because of the learning curve, the game can feel a bit harsh at first but you’ll get the hang of it. This curve gives the game a sense of discovery, a depth that I really enjoyed.
Wintermute, a survival game story
The Long Dark offers a compelling story mode called Wintermute, which is often not present in the survival game genre. The story mode is compiled of 5 episodes with a fully voiced narrative and animated cutscenes. This mode can also be played in 3 difficulties for those up for an extra challenge. The story is about you flying out to help a doctor, your ex, with something explained very vaguely. You fly through a storm which makes the plane uncontrollable. This results in the plane crashing with your ex missing. This plays a big role in the story. The story also has you solving the mystery of what happened to the town. Meet interesting characters and get genuinely scares with the wildlife you encounter along the way on your journey.
From Classic survival to tough challenges
There are a couple of different modes besides the story mode, but these all contain the same game mechanics, so play it your way. If you play the game without the narrative there is the survival mode. This is the exploration and survival experience where the only goal is to survive from day-to-day, for as long as you can, with death being the only ending. There is also a challenge mode. This contains objective-based small survival missions with a clear goal for you to complete. These are things such as surviving from a bear that is after you will getting to your destination and recovering a distress pistol and fire it on top of the lighthouse.
A low poly look isn’t a way out
In terms of graphics, the game goes for a cell-shaded, low texture, low poly look. This is taken to the extreme on switch though which makes the game look a bit rough. The game suffers from pop-in, bad aliasing, and even worse textures. If you thought sword & shield had bad textures, then you’ll be amazed. This is partly due to it being ported to a lesser system. The frame rates keep a solid 30fps so no worries there. When hoping in and out of buildings there are load screens. Since you’ll be doing this a lot, it is quite noticeable.
Conclusion
If you’re a survival game enthusiast and haven’t played it yet, you should. The Long Dark has hyper-realistic survival mechanics that force you to make logical decisions that make you think, what stupid of me, when making a mistake. With the addition of an episodic story mode and challenges for you to complete, this game is a fully fletched survival game at its finest. The Switch version has downgraded visuals compared to the other systems it has been released on. If you don’t mind the graphics, it’s still a solid game to pick-up on the switch, otherwise, stick to the other versions.
