Given the popularity of a spate of TV shows starring survival experts such as Bear Grylls, Ray Mears, and Mykel Hawke over the last few years, people have started to think that surviving on your own in the wilderness isn?t all that difficult. Some would say that productions (and I use that term loosely) like Survivor and Alone have even made it seem like getting by without ready-made food and soft drinks is almost glamorous. Well, The Long Dark is here to put it all into perspective, by providing as realistic and tough a survival experience as it can muster, where you must forage through frozen wastelands for every morsel of food and drip of water whilst finding ways to stave off the cold (and the wolves) during the long, dark nights.
Most players will start out with Wintermute, the game?s episodic story mode. After surviving a plane crash in the mountains, you start with the absolute bare minimum of supplies and must stay alive until you?re strong enough to climb out of the ravine in which you?re stuck. These few days serve as The Long Dark?s tutorial and while it does introduce some key controls and ideas, it generally does a poor job of setting you up to go out on your own. You?ll learn how to wantonly waste fuel and food ? in fact, you?re required to do both to progress ? in a manner you?d never do in the game proper, but you won?t be told anything about recovering health or the requirement for sleep. Of course, you won?t know that the instructions are incorrect until ...