The Long Dark Review (311Gryphon)
This is a good game.........however....DEVS I'm talking to you right now....CHANGE THE STUPID WINTERMUTE BEAR ATTACK SEQUENCE. This is literally, and I mean literally, the worst mechanic of any game I've ever played. I've been carrying a rifle and 40 bullets around for days in this game but I can't kill "the bear" with it. I have to use the spear. I followed your rules, went and got the spear, forged a new head, carried that stupid bastard around for days and days and days, finally confront the bear (not by my choice but by yours), set the spear, fought back, wound up with injuries and torn clothing but wounded the bear, had the bear run off then attack again, and again, and then it just disappeared. Literally...disappeared. The tracks lead out into the middle of a field then disappear. Great, I think to myself, I have to fight it again sometime down the road. Oh well, I'll heal up. I do that then continue on my quest for transponder parts. Sure enough, the bear attacks again at the next tower. But this time, it makes me drop my spear for some reason even though I'm still following your rules. And now for the 5th attack I've had to endure it's running circles around me because of bad AI programming and then it warps through objects and attacks me. If I don't "set" my spear I have no chance. I can't shoot the wounded bear from any range. It takes no damage and immediately attacks. I'm getting sprains so that I can't even hold my spear and the bear will chase me down if I try to heal up. I can't kit it around objects because it warps around and through them. The worst of it is no matter if I do things correctly or not I have to sit through animations that take forever. I'm either watching myself die in lengthy animations or watching myself get mutilated knowing I have to fend off another immediate attack in lengthy animations. This is far dumber than the end of the original MW2, which was dumb. I'd be fine with it if you had to fend of one or two attacks then track the bear down and finish it off with a rifle shot to the dome, which I have to say, a rifle shot to the vitals would kill any bear in real life so I'm not sure why you didn't allow that to work in this game. For a dev team that feels the need to post a message about wanton destruction of wildlife at the start of your video game you're sure dragging out the torture and eventual demise of a bear.
NOW, to all the would be players, I'm talking to you. The game is a good game. There are some quirks that annoy me, like wildlife not behaving properly (in the real world it would be rare for a wolf to track you down and attack you but they all will, every time in this game). But the mechanics are mostly solid. It's meant to be a brutally hard game and for the most part that works. It is just when the devs want to punish you for no reason that it gets old. The game does a great job of incentivizing you to not take risks, but then forcing you to take some calculated ones, and giving you a huge sense of relief and reward when you get to a safe place where you can start a fire and cook some food and rest without fear of freezing to death. You can easily find yourself in a position where you have to take large risks and those almost never pay off, but if you plan ahead and plan carefully the risks are more manageable and rewarding.
I've only played a couple pure survival games and mechanically I think this one is the best. I'm not sure I care for the story itself (Wintermute) but I like having end goals other than just seeing how long I can survive, so that's what I've been playing. I find other games like Stranded Deep to be pretty fun but there is something about The Long Dark that just feels more real. I think it may be the environment and the fact that the calorie, warmth, rest, and hydration mechanics are simple to understand and work through, and that instead of trying to build a lot of base upgrades your character is trying to move through an area to an end goal and you can't really stay in one place too long. I do love base building, but for a pure survival game The Long Dark just works really well.
Except for the "killer bear" in Wintermute. That is just the dumbest thing I've ever had to deal with in a game.