The Long Dark

The Long Dark

The Long Dark is an unforgiving survival sandbox with a complicated Early Access history that pits the player against the frigid Candadian wilds and extremely aggressive wolves (and moose, and a bear). I’m not entirely sure what I think of it. I bought this game for my partner, who enjoyed the looting/exploring aspects of Fortnite and wanted to play a dedicated survival game, but it has been on my list for some time.

There is a story mode and a survival mode. The Long Dark is not a survival simulator (the game warns us that the techniques used in-game don’t transfer to the real world) but it’s the most realistic survival game I’ve played. Survival mode randomly drops the player in a chosen map, sometimes near shelter, sometimes in the middle of a snow storm, with a random inventory, and its up to you to figure out how to navigate unfamiliar territory and scavenge for items. There is crafting and hunting and limited harvesting (mushrooms and rosehips, for instance, though they do not provide sustenance) and lots of looting and LOTS of hiding, waiting, and wishing you hadn’t wasted that last bit of lantern fuel. It’s a meditative and lonely experience, and at times, there’s a certain futility to it. There is no way to chart and hike your way out of the forest to civilization. One literal misstep and you can suffer sprains or broken limbs, which will hasten your demise. There is no end game, the only goal is to survive as long as possible. A certain type of player will thrive in this environment, but I expect many will find it overbearing.

The developers have a vision for their wolves, and their aggressiveness and persistence is intentional. Every wolf encounter is a potential game over and the player is often at their mercy. As a result, gameplay sometimes devolves in unfun holding patterns, like when wolves trap you in a house or car and you are forced to wait until they go away, squandering precious resources in the process. This especially sucks when you’re “fully rested” and cannot sleep the time away, or if you end up having to squander precious daylight hours. At night, wolves are even more aggressive. In the real world one would often have the benefit of moonlight reflected on snow, but in this game, the night is simply dark, and long, and very, very dangerous.

There is a version of survival mode that removes enemy wildlife, so the player’s only enemies are the environment and their own hunger and thirst. This doesn’t really work for me either. It’s such a bleak, empty world, and surviving the wolves at least provides some sense of purpose. Can I get a mode that’s somewhere in-between? No, because the developers have a vision for their wolves, and this evidently is it.

So there it is, I don’t like or dislike the Long Dark. It’s intriguing in many ways, but the bleakness really starts to get to me after a while. It’s often interesting, but rarely fun. I, a Dedicated Pro Gamer, play games for all kinds of experiences, but I chiefly play to relax and blow off steam and, frankly, have brief respite from the misery of human existence. The Long Dark isn’t an escape for me; in fact, I need to play other games to escape from it. In it’s own way it’s just a little too real, man.