The genre of "survival" has become very popular in recent years. A lone player is forced to fight either with hordes of zombies (7 days to die), or with inhospitable natives (The forest). However, these games do not carry any plot burden. September 22, 2014 the world saw the project of an independent studio - The Long Dark. The story, telling about a man’s struggle with wildlife, has become a breath of fresh frosty air in his genre.
operating system
The Long Dark system requirements were modest even for 2014. Despite the fact that the development of the game was carried out by an indie studio, optimization was taken to a new level. This allowed to stop the resource consumption of the application at a low level. In order for the game to start with minimal settings, the user will need just normal Windows XP.
In 2016, it is already hard to imagine that computers with this operating system could remain. But if a person from nostalgia or for the sake of experiment installed it, then the game may well start. True, then the latest SP3 updates will be required. The Long Dark has the PC system requirements necessary for the game to work at maximum settings, very different from the minimum. For stable operation, you will need Windows 7 with all related updates.
CPU
Speaking about the hardware suitable for The Long Dark system requirements, it’s worth mentioning immediately its “heart” - processor. The graphics in the game leaves much to be desired, so the main computational operations fall on the CPU. Given the fact that The Long Dark system requirements (minimum) require only WinXP, the processor needs a very strong, at least generation Intel I5 with a power of 2GHz. Theoretically, any mediocre computer is suitable for such a description. At maximum settings, you already need Intel I7 with a frequency of 2.6 GHz. However, as practice shows, such parameters are too high. And games work quietly even with smaller numbers.
RAM
All that has been said about the system requirements of The Long Dark and the processor of the computer also applies to its RAM. Knowing that WinXP OS is indicated in the minimum game requests, the 2 gigabytes of RAM required to run the application do not seem such a small number. The converse is also true. Windows 7 consumes a lot of computer resources on its own. Therefore, developers expect 8 gigabytes of RAM to run the game at maximum settings.
Video card
Despite the fact that the game does not sparkle with graphics, and only a view of the starry sky and the northern lights can bring a vivid impression, the player may need a good card. This does not mean that she should have a large amount of video memory. But at least all modern technologies should be supported. Among the official recommendations is the Intel 4xxx series video card with 512 megabytes of video memory. If you want to run the game at maximum parameters, it would be better to have an nVidia GTX 555 with 1GB of video memory. Given the absence of a large load on the computing centers of the video card, we can confidently say that The Long Dark will work well on most equipment that falls between the maximum and minimum requirements.
Additionally
What else can you say about the system requirements of The Long Dark? There is no multiplayer in the game, so you are unlikely to need an Internet connection when buying a disc. On the other hand, The Long Dark is in the early access, and updates are not long in coming. So, if you are a patient person, then you have enough slow Internet to update the game.
A good sound card is also not needed. The developers claim that the application works even with integrated cards. However, for the full immersion in the atmosphere of wildlife it is better to use any external card. There should also be no problems with the hard drive. The game takes up only 1 gigabyte. Given this size, we can say with confidence that a high data exchange rate is also not required. Therefore, The Long Dark will easily work even with older models of hard drives.