THE LONG DARK: Wonderful, Beautiful, and Dangerous.

(Originally posted Aug 21, 2017)

The Long Dark has come a long way from my initial review, and I am overjoyed that it has maintained the spirit of loving nature and capturing the beauty of the far north throughout its development. The game has become rather balanced and a surprising number of options have been made available in order to survive in the full release of the game. There is something quite satisfying about throwing rocks at rabbits for 5 minutes, finally hitting one, and eating it raw in a last ditch effort to survive.

The introduction of the story mode brings a new element to the game, which is true purpose for your actions. This is something lacking from nearly all survival games and sets it apart in an the over saturated field. The goal of the game moves beyond simply existing for as long as you can, into to truly feeling the necessity to survive. The missions are mostly simple gathering quests. However, when placed in such a harsh environment, a gathering quests is the decision between your character starving or moving on to the next portion of the story. It becomes tempting to try and cheat the system, being lazy and avoiding your needs to complete the quests as quickly as possible. This does show itself to be fruitless, however, as survival and the environment maintain the spotlight.

The actual voice acting is decent, though story itself a bit hammy for my taste. I also was a bit jarred by the cut scenes, as they seemed to be unpolished and a bit below the level quality you can see everywhere else in the game. The conversation system also leaves a bit to be desired, cutting between fully voiced cut scenes and static text conversations with no voice over and little animation. I got over this pretty quick since its apparent that survival game play is the real draw. I think for people who are on the fence about getting the game itself, these small cut corners could be the difference between enjoying the game and deciding to refund it on steam.

Overall, I highly recommend The Long Dark. Its peaceful, difficult, and does an amazing job of taking you out of your home and placing you in the wilderness. There is no other survival game quite like it, and I've played a lot of them!

(Furthermore, no zombies, mutants, or other supernatural beasties is a plus for me. Its all you V mother nature!)