A review I wrote for TheLong Dark on Steam. Hope it helps...

[lordkevnar]

The Long Dark is everything I wanted Skyrim to be. I loved Skyrim. I still do. But I wanted more realism. I wanted to feel like every little choice really mattered. In Skyrim, you can run through the snow in your underwear, and the only thing you have to worry about is stumbling across a wolf or troll, but you can usually cut them down with a chop or two.

Not so with The Long Dark. The Long Dark, even in its alpha stage is as intense and challenging as a game of chess against the game world itself. Every move you make has consequences. Every little thing you do or don't do could mean life or death.

You are a survivor of a plane crash in the Canadian North. You have the shirt on your back, a pair of boots, and a few bits of food. You're in a blizzard in the middle of nowhere, and there are wolves on the hunt. Go.

Maybe you see a cabin in the distance, in the blinding cold and blowing snow. Maybe you find a hatchet. Maybe you find nothing at all. You're slowly freezing to death, but you must find some wood. Do you have enough calories to go out foraging? But if you don't, how will you melt snow and boil it to get clean water? You're thirsty too. Very thirsty. And the clock is ticking.

It's this kind of intensity, this kind of challenge, where consequences loom behind every little choice that's missing in almost every other game I've ever played. It keeps you coming back, again and again, even after you died so many times in the bitter cold. You keep coming back because you learned something, and you just might do better the next time. You just might survive a few more days.

A good game rewards you. And this is something that's beautiful in The Long Dark. Because every little choice matters, because every hour of survival is bought with intelligent choices and lots of luck, that one scrap of food or firewood you find in a cabin is worth more than gold to you. You almost want to cheer. The rewards are doled out like breadcrumbs down the trail of life, and you keep searching for the next one. You keep fighting for your next hour of life.

You're also rewarded by levelling up skills. You become better and better at making a fire after a few days. You improve in repairing and crafting new gear.

The crafting system is interesting and engaging as well. You find an old pair of pants or a sweater that you don't need? Harvest it for cloth and use it to repair the gear you're already wearing. Patch that hole the wolves tore in it. Fix up your hatchet with the scrap metal you found in a locker. Cobble together a pair of deerskin boots with the hides you've scavenged off of a carcass in the woods. It's all so involving, and it only adds to the sense of reward. I made this! And it just might help me survive a few more days.

The music is creepy and intense, but it only comes on occasionally, when something of consequence is going down. Otherwise, there's only the wind and woods, creaking trees, squawking crows, and your own breath.

The graphics are stylized. It's not a realistic world. It's somewhat cartoony, TF2 style. But it's not a flaw. You can see for miles on a clear day, and everything looks beautiful, like a painting you've somehow wandered into, a painting that's trying to kill you.

And thank God, there are no zombies. I'm sick to death of zombies. This game pits you against the real world, a world unpolluted by all the survival horror cliches that have been done to death in by every other game in the past ten years. (Guitar Hero: Zombie Edition? Go f*ck yourself.)

If I had to complain about anything in this game, I'd say the item lists need to be expanded. There are only five or six types of food. A couple of each type of clothing. Tools, weapons, gear--they all need to be diversified. After a few hours of play, I'd discovered pretty much everything there was to be discovered. I was no longer being surprised. The rewards were still rewarding, but I would have been thrilled to walk into a house somewhere and find some new article of clothing or type of food I'd never even seen before.

The wolves are too over-powered at times, and you spend a lot of time just walking around in very wide circles to avoid them. Some items, weapons, or defense that might give you a bit of an edge on them would be awesome, especially if it took a hell of a lot to earn it.

I got stuck in a hole at some point, between two boulders by a bridge. The walls were too steep, and I couldn't get out. I was worried I'd be stuck there and lose my week's worth of gear. But I somehow managed to go into crawl mode and wiggle and squirm until I glitched right through the ground. then I was walking under the earth. All of this could have been avoided with a simple jump function.

The game is still in alpha, so all these things will surely be fixed over time. And all these things are forgivable, considering the massive amounts of fun I'm having. It's looking like the devs at Hinterland are putting out an update every couple of weeks. I look forward to the new developments. New regions to explore. New animals to hunt and be hunted by. Maybe even a multiplayer mode, where you can team up with a buddy or two and face the elements together, or hunt each other down in a last-man-standing survival showdown. That would be too amazing for words.

All that is yet to come. For now, I recommend this game to anyone who likes an intellectual challenge in their game play. You'll be hard pressed to find this much intensity in any other game you can pick up for only $20. If you enjoy a game that makes you think, strategize, and plan every move in order to win, you'll love The Long Dark. If you're more the mindless hack n' slash type, you might still like it. There is excitement, there is atmosphere, there are scares and thrills. But mostly it's about slow, methodical puzzle solving, where every move could mean a miserable death, bleeding out in the dark, with an empty stomach in the cold bitter snow...

[indianajonas]

Wow, what a text, lordkevnar! I can feel a lot of passion. This is what we need, so a warm welcome to The Long Dark family.