Brian Rowe

The more I try other survival games, the more I appreciate The Long Dark. Not only is it a good concept, but it's executed well. You get the impression that they actually care about making a quality product. Yes, the graphics are a bit dumbed down, but that also means that things are very clear, even at a distance. There's no straining to see things that blend into the background. The lighting is also done very well. You don't get extreme brightness next to muddy darkness like you do in a lot of games. I can play for hours without my eyes and head feeling angry. Plus, HDR actually makes it look better instead of worse. Seems like a ton of games just get washed out and/or harsh with HDR on. But Long Dark just looks a bit nicer, like it's supposed to. Long Dark also does it's menus pretty well. The quick menu wheel is very useful and time saving. The backpack menu is ok, and gives a decent amount of shortcut options. If you start feeling frustrated, just try playing Ark or Stranded Deep on PS4... holy hell those menus are awful. When so much of survival games is inventory management, it's shocking how bad that aspect can be in some games. But Long Dark does a good job of letting you get things done without getting in the way. I also really like that it focuses on survival instead of combat. There's a lot of thinking and planning to do... and trying to figure out the most efficient way of doing things. There are times of danger and stress, but then there's also times when you can relax and work on some project. It's a good balance that doesn't fry your nerves. As far as problems go, there aren't many. It hardly ever crashes... and I've played hundreds of hours. There's a slight stutter sometimes when entering/exciting buildings... but PS4 is pretty old, and a single slight stutter now and then is still WAY better than a lot of indie games. It's annoying that you can't see your meters while in the backpack menu, and sticks are harder to pick up than they should be... but other than that, I've got no complaints. I'd say you have to like the concept to like the game. I think it only gets bad reviews from people who want a FPS and get bored. Long Dark is about earning every day through struggle and planning. It's a solitary battle of persistence. It's not a social battlefield. Hinterland has my respect for sure. It's sad how few indie games actually function well these days. Long Dark is a quality product that's obviously had a lot of thought, testing, and optimizing put into it. The only other survival-type game I can say that about is No Man's Sky.

I've only played the tutorial a couple times. Had to stop because of how nauseated it made me. It looks like you've got a glass bowl in front of your face. All the distortion around the edges really messed me up. I'm fine with first person games, but not this one. Hopefully they'll fix that someday so I can actually play it. Also there seems to be a lot of screen tearing on a standard PS4.

The PS4 version is broken and unplayable. It may be fine on other systems, but it's a trainwreck on PS4. It starts off fine, but the longer you play it, the worse it gets. Even if you go back and spend hours deleting bases, it still just gets more laggy and crashy. I've never played a game that crashed so much. And saving takes a very long time. It feels like at least a minute to complete the saving process, and you don't dare do anything during that minute, because moving makes it more likely that it'll crash again. So instead of enjoying the game, you just end up trying to see how much you can accomplish before the next crash... and then waiting around for the saving process to complete over and over again. Rendering gets slower and slower as well. It got to the point where I'd get stuck in things that wouldn't render until after I'd stopped moving for awhile. Frame rates drop constantly too. The fog effect glitched out and disappeared at one point too. I really wanted to like this game. It was a lot of fun at first. But then after it got me to like it, it started falling apart. I never finished it because it just made me too angry to continue the masochism. Again, it could be fine on other systems, but the PS4 port is absolute trash. I'm glad I got it for free. Seems really wrong that they charged people money for something so broken.

It's a good concept. Calling it a good game would be a stretch though, at least on a standard PS4. I set the wildlife to "passive" because the added struggle was unnecessary. It's plenty difficult just fighting with the game mechanics, the menus, and the headache from the constant stuttering. Things that are way more difficult than they should be: climbing onto your raft, climbing down ladders, adding parts to your raft, getting tires out of ships, placing the item in your hand into a container, flipping your raft back over, eating, drinking, adding materials to the fire/still/etc. It could be a really good game if all of that was fixed. Instead it's a fairly fun game mixed with a lot of frustration. If I'd actually paid money for it, I'd be upset. It makes me appreciate The Long Dark even more.