Review of The Long Dark. Dollars for kindling. The Long Dark: review of the game Give My Ear

Just recently, Valve announced the closure of the Steam Greenlight service, thanks to which many indie hits of recent years have been greenlit. What’s funny is that some of them, even four years later, did not make it to a full release - just look at the legendary Survival-unfinished construction, which one can envy.

But on the other hand, its main competitor took confident steps towards the release, which, for no apparent reason, pulled out of Early Access. How timely is this decision? We'll find out after the review.

Survive at any cost

Initially, when the game was in Early Access, there was only one mode - survival. No plot, just explore the game world and try not to die. To do this, as in any good “survival” game, was difficult, since for a successful (relatively) life in the Canadian taiga it was necessary (and is necessary) to balance between basic human needs.

Thoughtful research is perhaps the only key to a successful existence in The Long Dark. If survival in the harsh Canadian winter can be called "successful" in any way.

There are four of them in The Long Dark: thirst, hunger, body temperature and pep. All of them influence the main character in one way or another. The first two are clear: food will help satisfy hunger, and water will help satisfy thirst. Another thing is how to find them? You will have to constantly search for food, water and overnight accommodation, so let’s dwell on this aspect in more detail.

Everything you need to light a fire can be found literally under your feet - there is no particular shortage of dry branches. Although if you want to quickly and reliably (with branches there is a chance that nothing will happen) light a fire, it is better to stock up on fuel, which is not so easy to find.

However, for a number of reasons, it is safer to get firewood in the nearest abandoned shack. Local tables and chairs burn great!

Food can be obtained in two different ways. If you feel the spirit of a hunter within you, it’s time to go to the nearest clearing and hunt hares. If you don't have a weapon at hand, stones will help you. He shot it at the fleeing animal, ran up while it was lying unconscious, twisted its neck - dinner was almost ready. Why "almost"? Yes, because it still needs to be cooked. To do this, in turn, you need to make a fire or find a fireplace in some house nearby.

It's a little easier with water. In order to get it, you just need to light a fire, after which you can melt the snow in the appropriate menu, and then boil the resulting water. But no one has canceled collecting: cans of soda can be found in almost every home.

In The Long Dark, as in real life, nothing happens instantly; every action here costs a certain amount of time and effort.

With temperature and vigor, everything is simpler - they are spent slowly and are easily restored, you just need to go into the house or go to bed. But everything written is useless if you cannot properly manage the resources of the main character’s body.

In a sense, The Long Dark is a strategy whose main resource is calories. You can’t just go to bed, like in some The Elder Scrolls - the next morning the hero will wake up very hungry and then he’ll have to urgently look for food. It’s the same with actions - if you decide to chop huge logs in a hungry state, you will most likely die, since the number of calories consumed will exceed the number of calories the character has.

The hero cannot jump, but the space button calls up a special interactive “wheel” in which you can quickly check the character’s basic characteristics or instantly switch to a weapon.

What action - even simple waiting has an adverse effect on the characteristics of hunger and thirst! Therefore, if you do not want to constantly see “game overs” in front of your eyes, then you need to approach every action you take (especially at high difficulty levels) wisely.

But hunger, cold, thirst and fatigue are not your only enemies. Wild animals roam the long-deserted streets of Canadian villages, mostly wolves, who don’t mind tasting human flesh. The best tactic you can follow is to see the silhouette of a forest orderly on the horizon and try to avoid it.

Most likely, if your health bar is incomplete, then this is the last thing the character will see in his life...

Well, if you have the strength, you can even fight the beast in a simple mini-game “click on the left mouse button until it falls off.”

But gamers familiar with The Long Dark since the days of Early Access will object: “All this has already happened in one form or another!” And they will be right, because the creators from Hinterland Studio made the main bet in the full release on the story mode.

And, unfortunately, they got it wrong.

Most of the plot information is conveyed through such insert videos.

Perhaps someone thought that the story mode was an optional attraction that served as a lengthy tutorial. If. The problem is that even the quality of training is poor: no one but yourself will help you figure out how, for example, to melt snow. The corresponding task will simply appear in the journal, and then you can spin around as you wish.

And such hardcore could only be a plus for the story mode (after all, the very word “survival” implies great difficulties), but it cannot offer anything interesting. All you have to do during the three to four hours of the first and second chapters is to carry out the tedious tasks of dubious individuals who push Will around as they please (that’s our hero’s name).

Gray Mother is a blind woman and the only survivor Mackenzie meets in the abandoned town of Milton. She knows something that the hero needs, but in return she will urgently ask you to chop wood, get food and crack a safe in the nearest bank (don’t even ask why she needs this). This is the whole essence of the gameplay in the “story mod” of The Long Dark - before us is a mediocre single-player MMORPG that is incredibly sad and boring to play.

From all this, plot problems flow smoothly, because there is no common sense in the actions of the heroes. Just look at the premise: Astrid, Will McKenzie’s former love, shows up to our bearded man and demands to take her somewhere. It doesn’t matter that the weather outside is bad, he agrees to fulfill his ex’s stupid request. Naturally, everything does not go according to plan and during a risky flight the electronics fail, after which the plane crashes.

After this, you no longer want to sympathize with the characters and the only desire that arises is the desire to nominate them for a Darwin Award. Posthumously.

Each chapter is divided into separate subchapters. By the way, the game is saved in three cases: at checkpoints, during sleep and after entering any building.

As for the visual aspect, a lot has changed in this regard since the times (especially if you remember the alpha version). And although the same “drawn”, deliberately clumsy style has been preserved, the surroundings have noticeably increased in detail. Despite this, everything is fine with optimization and on the “recommended” configuration (Intel Core i7 2.6 GHz, 8 GB of RAM and a video card of GeForce GTX 555 or higher) the game produces a stable sixty frames per second.

The only thing that can overshadow survival in technical terms is the ubiquitous bugs. And we are not talking about banal crashes at all - the errors here are more likely related to a violation of the game logic. For example, many gamers currently cannot finish the second episode due to the fact that a certain necessary item (let’s do without spoilers) simply cannot be taken.

There are several solutions in this case: replay the episode again, wait for patches, or forget about the story mode as a bad dream and plunge headlong into “survival”.

This is exactly the case when the game looks worse in static screenshots than in dynamics.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the main feature of The Long Dark, for which everyone was waiting for the full release of the game by Hinterland Studio, turned out to be its weakest point. The story mode is boring, uninventive and useless - it's unlikely to provide any emotion other than disappointment. In some places, the developers are trying to create drama, and occasionally it works, but the linear and predictable gameplay ruins everything related to the plot in the bud.

Well, what about survival mode... What about survival mode? Exploring the world and fighting for life in harsh conditions is still interesting (provided that you do this on the highest difficulty level), but... He was already there. Thanks to numerous updates, surviving has now become more pleasant and interesting, but from development that lasted almost four years, you expect more significant results, don’t you?

Verdict: The Long Dark is still good as a survival simulator, but the authors failed to tell an interesting story: the story mode is too boring, linear and monotonous.

Rating: 7.0 (“Good”).

Ruslan Gubaidullin

We express our gratitude to:

• To the digital distribution store GOG.com for the key provided for the game.

“...We think of Hell as fire, supervised
by a cackling sadist in a red union suit.
Fyrine IV taught me this much: Hell is
loneliness, hunger, and endless cold."
Barry B. Longyear"Enemy Mine"

A fictional island located somewhere in northern Canada has become a kind of arena where civilization clashes violently with wildlife. The first round was left to the people: there are paved roads, tourist centers, mines, fishing settlements and small towns, one of the rivers was even blocked with an impressive dam... But the economic crisis began, and big business ceased to be interested in the distant piece of land. Earthquakes destroyed the carefully built infrastructure, the unpleasant climate scared away the inhabitants, and an inexplicable cataclysm finally completed the defeat. Now the local expanses resemble a post-apocalyptic wasteland - devastation is all around, abandoned cars are rusting on the highway, empty houses in abandoned settlements are creaking in the icy wind. Winter, although not nuclear, is in full swing, and instead of predatory mutants, eternally hungry and unnaturally aggressive wolves and bears are prowling around.

Unlike the similar one, it does not create its own island randomly at the beginning of each “race” - we have to wander around the same map. However, it is difficult to call this a real problem. The authors managed to compensate for the lack of “random”: games can be very long, the world is big, we choose the starting point ourselves, and the “loot” is moved to new places every time, so you won’t get bored walking here soon. The advantages of this approach are obvious: hand-made terrain is more interesting, more convincing and prettier than generator crafts. By the way, the appearance of the game is in order - the peculiar stylized graphics do not shine with detail, but beautiful landscapes often appear on the monitor.

True, there is usually no time to leisurely view spectacular sunsets, sunrises and northern lights. The cold penetrates to the bones, the stomach is aching from hunger and thirst, a familiar melancholy howl is heard not far away, there are only three cartridges left in the precious hunting rifle. No, it doesn’t force you to run back and forth as if scalded, trying to keep up with the rapidly running clock, like many other representatives of the genre - the speed of the passage of time is adequate and does not cause bewilderment. But winter is merciless, and in order to survive it, you need to hunt hares and deer, fish, repair and make equipment, chop wood for a saving fire... And, of course, explore this terrible, frozen land cut off from civilization in search of clothing and useful items and suitable shelters - after all, the most ordinary blizzard can be much more dangerous than a whole pack of wolves if you don’t have a thick down jacket on your shoulders.

The juice, as we know, is hidden in the details, and with their abundance, the creation is capable of squeezing a stingy stalker’s tear out of the harsh virtual “survivors.” For example, freezing is affected not only by air temperature, but also by wind, and you can hide from it behind rocks and thick tree trunks to light a fire and catch your breath. In snowfall, clothing gets wet, impairing heat retention, and then stiffens, making movement difficult. The blizzard is gradually tearing it apart, and if you are left without the same mittens, you will no longer get away with general hypothermia - the hero (or heroine) will easily freeze his hands. Of course, it is advisable to dress your character wisely, combining warm and windproof things in the most favorable proportions. And such nuances are a dime a dozen.

A wise stalker regularly goes through his backpack, dooming himself to the agony of choice, because the 30 kg limit cannot be increased with any additional bag, and overweight leads to overwork. You need to think about almost every action - even quickly preparing brushwood in the cold destroys precious calories, not to mention carefully cutting up a deer carcass. It’s important to look around carefully - you can make a disinfecting compress from that moss, it’s better to avoid wolves, those circling crows point to someone’s corpse, and no one has canceled searching through the ruins. However, throwing yourself headlong into research, forgetting about time, is dangerous: the cold at night is almost unbearable, and it is wiser to save signal light bombs for attacks by predators - they scare away crazy animals no worse than fire. It also forces you to extricate yourself from seemingly hopeless situations - bad luck and mistakes are completely inevitable, so sooner or later you will definitely find yourself in a hellish blizzard, fall through the ice at -35 ° C, get lost in the fog or grapple with an angry bear.

Yes, the world could have been a little more rich, and the tedious QTE battles with wolves that replaced melee combat should have been thrown into the trash altogether, but overall it turned out to be a cool “sandbox” capable of creating the right atmosphere and exciting adventures without the intervention of the screenwriter. But the attempt to tie it into the plot completely failed - Wintermute looks like a hastily sewn on add-on, even less exciting than the boring missions from the Challenges section, offering to run away from the bear and stock up on supplies before a monstrous storm.

Like the unnamed character from Survival, Will McKenzie is a pilot who makes an emergency landing when a strange anomaly causes his engine to fail. Only he was not flying alone, but with his ex-wife, a doctor named Astrid, who urgently needed to get to Great Bear, despite the night and disgusting weather. Dr. Astrid's case seems to be of truly critical importance - to such an extent that she left the wounded Will and disappeared into the forest, abandoning her mysterious suitcase with a combination lock. Now we need to find her without dying in the process.

The search is supposed to follow a linear route - the passages to “unnecessary” locations are carefully blocked, and even in the necessary ones it is almost pointless to study the area, since the pilot will most likely be sent to all more or less interesting places according to the plot. A couple of characters (a blind old woman with a gun in the first episode and a hunter mauled by a bear in the second) selflessly throw out idiotic “grind” tasks like “bring 5 kg of fish and 10 kg of meat,” promising in return to tell them where Astrid went and refuse them, of course. by yourself, you can’t. It is clear that the inhabitants of the island are extremely concerned about their food, but Mackenzie seems to be rushing to the aid of a beautiful lady... Add a pinch of “bugs” and shortcomings, unimportant dialogues, an absurd “boss” bear - and the unpleasant picture will appear before you in its entirety dubious beauty.

* * *

Perhaps one of the best “survival simulators”. Just don't run Wintermute - save your nerves.

Andrey Miroshnichenko

The Long Dark

I have already written about all kinds more than once and always emphasized that against the backdrop of the incredible abundance of entertainment of this kind, such a game definitely needs to stand out in some way. What is remarkable about The Long Dark, which became one of the most notable and anticipated projects in this genre even before its official release? And why did the brainchild of the Canadian studio gain an even stronger foothold in the survival Olympus?

The remaining three episodes of the campaign should be released during this period.

According to the laws of the genre

You probably haven’t heard about The Long Dark except in the dark (although the game is the closest), and we wrote a detailed preview. Therefore, let’s get straight to the point, or rather, to the search for an answer to the question asked.

Meat that is not roasted over a fire, of course, can lead to poisoning, a fall from a hill or a wolf bite can lead to injury, and sleeping on an empty stomach can lead to death, because the calories in which health is calculated here are also consumed during sleep. The torches go out, the matches run out, the list of available drawings and “craft” gradually expands, we drag everything that doesn’t fit into our backpack into our backpack, and we learn to rummage through drawers, cabinets, cars and pockets better than any homeless person or burglar.

There is also a simple one. Basic skills - repairing, cutting up carcasses, cooking, making a fire, fishing, using a gun or bow - are trained as you successfully do the corresponding tasks, that is, skinning carcasses, cooking, fishing, making a fire, shooting, etc. . All this is clear, familiar and has been seen more than once in other survival games.

Life truth

But, as we know, the devil is in the details, and this fully applies to The Long Dark. Firstly, there really are a lot of details, details that give the game a very precise, true degree of realism. Clothes get wet, making us feel even colder and sicker, the backpack becomes heavier, which is why we walk slower and use up more stamina when running - and we need to run in order, for example, to get away from thin ice faster and not fall through.

Everything here is drawn very stylishly and nicely, but there’s no time to admire the views - you’ll freeze.

There is a lot of clothing here - of different types and practically on the body: all things differ in their parameters (including in terms of heat retention and protection from wind), and the authors directly advise wearing several layers, and it is more reliable - however, it will be harder to run, because even the weight of socks is taken into account.

The Long Dark LET'S TRY TO SURVIVE #1

You can’t do practically anything in the dark - make crafts, repair equipment and do other things. The fire does not start automatically, but with a certain chance, which increases greatly if you add some liquid. It’s practically useless to try in the wind, and it will die out quickly. It’s better to sleep by the fire, in sleeping bags or in warm, or even just closed, rooms, receiving a bonus for heating and restoring health.

The gun needs to be cleaned so that it doesn’t misfire, the water needs to be boiled or disinfected, a can of food needs to be opened first and then the contents boiled, and the trunk of a car can only be accessed with a crowbar or a nail puller. And for all this - both for making a fire, and for collecting, hacking, boiling, manufacturing, even for lighting a simple match - both calories and precious time are spent, over which you become more and more hungry and thirsty and freeze more and more.

Survivor

Therefore, you need to act quickly, accurately, optimally, calibrating and planning your actions, as in some strategies - what exactly is needed now, is it worth chasing that hare, is it necessary to spend ten minutes chopping a chair for firewood, is there Is there any point in loading a backpack and trying to skin the carcass of that elk over there if a wolf is wandering and growling somewhere nearby, and it’s already getting dark around you and the wind is picking up? Or is it better to run to the house and spend the night there, hoping that he won’t have time to kill you in your sleep?

It is clear that a lot in the game is made up - both the anomalous geomagnetic storm itself, which formed the basis of the entire setting of The Long Dark, and the behavior of the same wolves that usually do not attack people (here they are so aggressive precisely because of the anomaly). And the authors honestly warn about this, not advising against viewing the game as a survival guide and repeating all this in real life.

Often you have to rob corpses, sleep, warm yourself and eat next to them.

Nevertheless, because of these precise details and details in The Long Dark, some kind of homespun truth of life is felt - and only enhances this feeling. There are no absolutely fantastic things here like zombies or alien flora and fauna, so everything is perceived as something like what happened to Leonardo DiCaprio's hero in The Revenant - this is often lacking in many isometric survival games "

Feat in the snow

Secondly, The Long has a surprising amount of content for a game of this type. In addition to the free one, which was the main one (where you choose the difficulty and find yourself in the vastness of a hand-created world), there are also different test scenarios: in one, for example, you need to survive in conditions when a bear is on you, in another - hold out for three days in the marked locations.

For achievements in free mode and trials, so-called “feats” and “badges” are awarded, which here are equated to “perks”. Spent a hundred days in open areas - now you are resistant to cold and receive a permanent bonus of +2 degrees to the temperature you feel. We ran fifty kilometers - now running burns 25% less calories.

With the full release, the game also included, more precisely, its first two episodes. And this is not just something background, but a completely interesting story about how Will McKenzie took his ex-wife Astrid somewhere Bear, but had an accident and is now following her trail, trying to survive and find out what happened. The direction is top notch, the beautifully shot videos are intriguing, and in Will and Astrid you can feel the nerve, some kind of hidden story.

The Long Dark was released on August 1st. But many players have been familiar with it for several years. The fact is that since 2015, game owners have had the opportunity to survive in an unlimited sandbox. And all this time, “stalkers” and “uninvited guests,” with hundreds of hours of play behind them, were waiting for the release of the story campaign, on which they had high hopes.

Finally, the first two episodes of the campaign have opened. They brought joy... and disappointment.

Here they are, the conditions, here it is, Wednesday!

So, in the wind, the accumulated reserve of heat evaporates faster, and sweet soda not only quenches thirst, but also satisfies a little. Sleep relieves some health problems, such as sprains and bruises, but even during sleep, calories are consumed, so if you jump into a sleeping bag on an empty stomach, you may well not wake up.

And if, when entering a room, you undress naked, then the clothes will last longer: after all, everything here wears out, breaks, tears, deteriorates and becomes unusable.

Built-in medical reference: headband, painkiller for arm. The main thing is not to mix it up, otherwise you will have to start the game over again!

At the beginning of the game in survival mode, we select a map and then appear on it in a random place. Also by chance, a set of trophies appears in cabinets and chests scattered throughout the area: from old newspapers to an ultra-rare gun with cartridges. The task is simple: survive as long as possible.

At simple difficulty levels, you can walk through the Canadian taiga endlessly: predatory animals are not aggressive, and immunity to infections and food poisoning is high. The peak of the nightmare comes at the level “Uninvited Guest”: surviving on it for a week is already an achievement.

A couple of years ago, maps had to be drawn by hand. Since then the game has become more user friendly

Why not in the story campaign? Let's explain now.

Due to weather conditions, sometimes you have to stay indoors all day. Fortunately, when visiting survivors you don't have to worry about firewood

Mine, miners, mine

In theory, local crazed wolves can answer the last question: they are methodically clearing the area of ​​everything that consists of flesh and blood. But the forest orderlies are definitely not involved in the general destruction of the material base. All this needs to be explained.

Who slept on this mattress before the establishment finally closed? Watchman?

The banking crisis led to an unprecedented economic downturn. Dollars began to cost less than the paper they were printed on, and all payments switched to yuan and bitcoins. And while the United States was still fluttering around, Canada instantly slipped under the protectorate of its southern neighbor, becoming a modern colony. And she was quickly convinced that any colony is a resource that the metropolis will quickly suck out to the last drop.

Pieces of other people's lives. There could be a lot more of them, but most of the abandoned houses are completely faceless

Most of them were dealt with by natural disasters and crazy animals.

The ATMs have run out of cash. All the dollars went to kindling, because there is no point in them anymore. But at Milton's bank we will have several opportunities to practice cracking safes. It's pretty simple

An old lady plus a hatchet?

The plot of the story: the doctor rushes to the patient, and, fortunately, she has a pilot acquaintance. This is where the happiness ends. In subsequent episodes, we have yet to find out what became of Dr. Astrid. And what's in her locked suitcase?

With the arrival of the half-naked pilot, the population of the town of survivors will exactly double, and the old woman with a rifle will teach us how to make supplies, run from wolves and sew rabbit mittens. And in the second episode, William will fall into the tenacious hands of a wounded trapper, who will provide him with a gun and bless him to fight a man-eating bear. Spoiler? Completely, there is nothing to spoil in the local plot at all!

Everything Will learns on his journey is recorded in a journal. Sometimes you can find valuable advice there

In the end, of course, it turns out that their whims were important for moving forward in the plot. But, having chosen the “catch up and save” approach, the scriptwriters did not quite hit the notes, which is why Will’s journey received a controversial validity: while completing the quests, Dr. Astrid could easily have run to the Canadian border even with a broken leg.

Dead people are not scary. They lie there quietly, and sometimes they keep something valuable in their pockets

Yes, trust cannot be gained this way, which means we will be left without rabbit mittens. In survival mode, this could be a tragedy... but not here. Here Will, with a light heart, says to himself: “Well, God be with them, because there are plenty of branches, firewood, fuel and matches at every step!”

The cute rabbit just wants to be stroked and released. But... food! Fishing lines! Mittens!

Give me my ear!

After his first attempt, Will will not soon pick up a gun again. And in general, you need to save cartridges; you can’t make them on a workbench

Wherever Will goes, he leaves behind a trail of discarded or left-behind finds. The plot is generous with trophies

Mountaineering is another source of technical problems. If the weight of the backpack is even one hundred grams above the limit, you will see amazing special effects

Well hello. It's me, your most unpleasant encounter

So, having made a circle of a couple of years, we return to the roots.

Interesting fact: both an airplane and a fire burn the same way. But the fire warms, but the plane does not!

Even if subsequent episodes do not improve the situation with the campaign in any way, The Long Dark will still remain one of the best survival simulators and perhaps the only truly realistic one. Over the years in early access, simple, logical mechanics have acquired a finally smoothed out and completed look.

The last minutes of the second episode give a shaky hope that everything will still “spin” in an interesting and unpredictable way. But even if this happens, not everyone will make it through the long path along the corridor of the banal plot of the first two episodes.

Verdict