The Long Dark does atmosphere very well. The interior of buildings feel creepy and abandoned, the weather outside is a real obstacle and threat, and as the player you have a haunting sense of destitution as you cling to survival. Ammo and materials are scarce and it's very easy to die if you make a wrong or greedy decision.

But this is a game for very patient people, and there's a good reason it's been labeled a walking simulator. Overall there just isn't that much variety to the gameplay here: you loot some buildings, look for animals to eat and... that's about it. There's really no goals in this game, and there's really not even goals for the player to make themselves, other than just survival. Exploring was very exciting at first, but quickly becomes repetitive as the maps are all premade, and there's not really a great variety in loot. Crafting is fairly limited, and I suppose that's down to the realistic theme Hinterland are going for. Then again, for some reason eating 1kg of venison gives you roughly half the amount of calories it should...Almost like they're willing to backtrack on that philosophy if it creates more difficulty for the player!

So many aspects of this game really tested the limits of my patience. Movement is slow and tedious (as you want to conserve calories), and as most of the game consists of walking from one area to another this can be an exercise in frustration. There's a lot of other really bizzare design choices in this game, like having to tediously wait for your fire to start up, staying indoors for too long literally giving you a cabin fever debuff that can kill you, and a constant chance to get parasites from meat that's cooked. Animals basically kill you on site, I didn't mind this really but I did find it amusing that they remind you that this is for gameplay reasons every time you boot the game.

The story mode was reasonably interesting for me, but again on the whole still pretty simplistic. You're mainly given a few fetch quests which feel a lot like padding just to give you something to do. Hopefully it picks up a bit when the rest of the story episodes are released. Overall there's definitely a certain kind of person who could get a lot of enjoyment out of this game but for me it feels seriously lacking in features.

Summary
+ Great atmosphere
+ Fairly unique concept and take on the survival genre
- Repetitive, tedious gameplay
- Some questionable design choices

The Long Dark does atmosphere very well. The interior of buildings feel creepy and abandoned, the weather outside is a real obstacle and threat, and as the player you have a haunting sense of destitution as you cling to survival. Ammo and materials are scarce and it's very easy to die if you make a wrong or greedy decision. But this is a game for very patient people, and there's a good reason it's been labeled a walking simulator. Overall there just isn't that much variety to the gameplay here: you loot some buildings, look for animals to eat and... that's about it. There's really no goals in this game, and there's really not even goals for the player to make themselves, other than just survival. Exploring was very exciting at first, but quickly becomes repetitive as the maps are all premade, and there's not really a great variety in loot. Crafting is fairly limited, and I suppose that's down to the realistic theme Hinterland are going for. Then again, for some reason eating 1kg of venison gives you roughly half the amount of calories it should...Almost like they're willing to backtrack on that philosophy if it creates more difficulty for the player! So many aspects of this game really tested the limits of my patience. Movement is slow and tedious (as you want to conserve calories), and as most of the game consists of walking from one area to another this can be an exercise in frustration. There's a lot of other really bizzare design choices in this game, like having to tediously wait for your fire to start up, staying indoors for too long literally giving you a cabin fever debuff that can kill you, and a constant chance to get parasites from meat that's cooked. Animals basically kill you on site, I didn't mind this really but I did find it amusing that they remind you that this is for gameplay reasons every time you boot the game. The story mode was reasonably interesting for me, but again on the whole still pretty simplistic. You're mainly given a few fetch quests which feel a lot like padding just to give you something to do. Hopefully it picks up a bit when the rest of the story episodes are released. Overall there's definitely a certain kind of person who could get a lot of enjoyment out of this game but for me it feels seriously lacking in features. Summary + Great atmosphere + Fairly unique concept and take on the survival genre - Repetitive, tedious gameplay - Some questionable design choices