The Long Dark Reviews
Deep, brutal, and hauntingly atmospheric, The Long Dark is a survival game done right.
The wilderness is satisfyingly unforgiving. The world is fun to explore, but story mode offers a lackluster narrative
Bugs and a rough story weaken what is, at its core, a great survival game.
With a better, more involving path, this could have been really something. As it is, it's the glorious The Long Dark with a reason for surviving, and that definitely proves enough.
The Long Dark is an onerous experience, but a memorably and powerfully atmospheric one. Its Survival mode stands out as something of a singular achievement on the Switch – and one we'd urge you to try if you don't mind freezing to death more than a few times before you've got a grip on how to last a couple of nights. It's difficult to call it outright fun given its sheer hostility, but it's certainly absorbing and at times downright terrifying game. Just like real life, nature is the real enemy.
Despite some graphical concessions, The Long Dark on Nintendo Switch is an excellent port of a very good survival game
In a genre which is suffocating, The Long Dark stands out among the crowd as perhaps the best. Brutal, unforgiving survival wrapped up in a very plausible scenario where beauty kills.
A good survival experience that could have been even better with a little more polish on its console versions.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The Quiet Apocalypse isn't without problems, but Hinterland's commitment to adding new content, while refining the experience over the years, has positioned The Long Dark at the top of the survival genre's pecking order. The Long Dark is a must-play for anyone who is even remotely intrigued by it.
While the story mode leaves something to be desired, the survival mechanics of The Long Dark's sandbox make it worthwhile. We have three more episodes of Will's journey to weave a wider story throughout the alternately unforgiving and inviting Canadian terrain. In the meantime, I'll be sitting back with my coffee mug, reflecting on my own small stories within The Long Dark.
I really, really, wanted to love The Long Dark, but a myriad of poor design choices and bugs teamed with a complete lack of instruction made it one of the most frustrating games I have ever played. You can pick some objects up, but not others, you can smash a crate to bits for firewood, but not a table, and none of this makes any sense. If you were freezing death, you'd burn the frigging table! Survival mode is by far the best way to experience the game offering some gorgeous views and real sense of achievement when you make things nice and cosy, it's just a shame that Story mode is so poorly thought out.
A pleasingly complex and realistic survival simulator, accompanied by a story mode that so far fails to be anywhere near as compelling.
After nearly three years surviving in alpha, The Long Dark has finally launched its long-awaited story mode, and it's worth playing
If it sounds as if I'm overly frustrated with The Long Dark, it's because I am. The sheer number of times that it hints at being a special game that entirely dominates every single survival-based title that has come before it is staggering. But for every one of those times, there's another time where it's broken, bugged, or just plain poorly thought-out. If the development team patches up those bugs and tweaks things here and there, it's no exaggeration to say that this could be a must buy that reaches the top end of the scoresheet. The fact that it gets the score that it gets stands as testament as to just how enjoyable the game can be and often is in the face of a veritable snowstorm of issues and imperfections.
The Long Dark is a tense and harrowing experience both in Story and Survival modes.
The Long Dark is a shot in the arm for the survival game. The story mode is a decent addition, adding some mystique to the cold wilds, yet it currently doesn't trump the personal stories you create outside of it in survival mode, where joy, hope, dread, terror, and despair come in unpredictable waves. The game's harsh, grounded style will divide opinion, but it truly feels like a fresh perspective that incorporates the risks and rewards of survival and exploration.
A thoroughly thoughtful re-imagining of The Long Dark which tightens everything up deftly, The Long Dark is making grizzly-sized strides in its evolution and is essential for fans of taut, survival adventures.
The Long Dark is a strong survival title, possibly even the strongest of the entire genre. A beautiful, but dangerous Canadian wilderness provides the backdrop to a challenging, but largely satisfying fight for survival. While micromanaging every facet of your well-being while trying to survive might sound tedious in description, it actually ends up being fun, satisfying, and even tense. With three more episodes to come for this title's story mode, there's already tons of content to chow down on. Just watch out for the wolves.
The Long Dark sets a standard for survival games in its core gameplay loop. The tone and feel of the game is top notch and the challenge is brutal in a hostile and frozen world. Unfortunately, there is also another dimension to the game that cheapens the experience. It takes a frustrating amount of trial and error to figure out the mechanics of how you are meant to do something, even when the goal of what you are meant to do is fairly clear. There is also the missed opportunity to utilize the story mode to walk through these mechanics, instead letting the tale try to stand alone. Try to stand as it might, it instead falls rather flat with a progression and narrative that made little sense. There is a very good game in the center of an overall experience that ends up less than the sum of its parts at first glance, but one that if you are willing to put in the struggle and slog through to the other side can reward you with one of the better survival simulations there is.
The Long Dark is a game with very good concepts, which has good gameplay. But he has some shortcomings that make him faint. Mainly in its technical aspect. The performance on Xbox does not end up being as polished as it should be, in addition to having an artistic style that, except in the video scenes, does not stand out too much and is a little scarce. In addition, the BSO does not impress, getting as a whole that in the end, it tastes little.
Review in Spanish | Read full review