ARK: Survival Evolved Review: A Real Struggle For Survival

Story
A naked caveman awakens up in the middle of a swamp - no introduction, no tutorial. It isn't long before his body is covered in leeches and he succumbs to swamp fever, a disease contracted from the parasite's feast. Again, he awakens in the swamp, dazed and confused. Fearing a repeat event with the leeches, he turns to exit the swamp and is met with the gaping jaws of a sarcosuchus. During his third life, the caveman awakens on a beach. Huddled next to a campfire and clutching a torch, he freezes to death on the tropical island.

Gameplay
A good portion of ARK's gameplay is centered around building: find an area rich in ore? Build a forge. Need a place for water creatures? Build a dock. Need a steady supply of food? Build a greenhouse. The variety of building pieces available and their utility is rather impressive. Several items are even multipurpose or capable of turning waste products into useful items. Crops for example, are used for food, narcotics, kibble, paint, beer brewing and more. 

 

The player and their dinos gain a small amount of experience over time from doing nothing, and substantially more for engaging in activities such as harvesting and building. Points gained from each level up are then used to unlock new build-able items. There is a lot of control over the game settings available from the start: increasing/decreasing stats, harvest rates, taming times, day/night length and so on. The food drain and temperatures were so out of wack that I had to turn them off completely. I honestly couldn't play the game without this feature!

Ark's main draw is the ability to tame and ride prehistoric animals. The taming strategy varies from animal to animal. Regular tames require the animal to be incapacitated first, usually with tranquilizer or by beating them unconscious. Once downed, the player has to shove that animal's favorite foodstuffs into their body and then wait for a taming bar to fill, all the while ensuring that the creature doesn't wake up until the process is complete. This is accomplished by periodically drugging the animal with narcotics - a mixture of rotten meat and narcoberries. Most of the beasts are uniquely useful to the player in some way: transport, buffs, exp increase, harvesting resources, fighting, etc. However, some Dinos are noticeably more useful than others, or were initially a great option when they were first introduced to the game, but have since been rendered obsolete by newer additions. For example, the ichthyosaurus has little to no practical use at all. It was initially useful for diving until the Megalodons were added. Flying mounts allow the player to go almost anywhere - quickly, unhindered by water, mountains, or other obstacles. Once the player has obtained one, most ground mounts become unnecessary.

You can and will loose your pets in ARK. Early on I lost everything to a giganotosaurus that burst through my primitive defenses.

Left: Taking to the air for the first time is amazing. Right: Hatch and raise baby dinosaurs.

 Its no secret that ARK has it's share of bugs, made worse by the devs prioritizing game expansions over bug fixes. Knowing this, I waited until ARK was officially released out of Early Access and I cannot believe this is what Studio Wildcard considered "finished". The game threatened to freeze up often, and occasionally did. I was experiencing a crash at least once every hour. For the longest time I had a pink/purple glare taking up half of the screen whenever I was near water. A little research revealed this was one of many bugs that had been present in the game since day one. I managed to solve the problem (and make the game look better) by turning off motion blur and turning on detailed graphics. If they were going to charge full retail price, the developers should have spent at least another year polishing the main game up instead of churning out new expansions that consist of nothing more than a new map, items and dinos.

The glare and spawn problems are unbearable.

Conclusion
Getting a flying mount for the first time was an amazing feeling! I also appreciate the use of some of the less publicly known beasts in the game, like chalicotherium, kairuku, pelagornis and phiomia. However, the lack of instruction when starting out can be frustrating given how unintuitive the mechanics and layout is. Despite this being the "official release" with a hefty price tag to go along with it, ARK is still very much an early access game. If I wasn't as big into prehistoric life as I am, I probably would have quit the game long ago. In fact I think I would LOVE this game if it didn't have all the technical issues. In it's current state I am hard pressed to recommend it to anyone.

UPDATE: Four years later, with the release of patch number 2.64 / 694.37 - 50GB (the game launched with 501.0), it is finally stable and playable.  

UPDATE #2: I have this game on disc, but it was so broken at launch that the updates are nearly 100GB! I spent a week downloading them. Whenever a new update comes out and it forces me to re-download the whole thing again - another week. The downloads often became corrupted and at this point I am so fed up with the "fix it later" mentally of the industry.

First posted to videogamegeek.com on December 21, 2019.

Related Reviews: