Game Review – Ark: Survival Evolved

Many years ago, I found a game on Steam during the Winter Break sale. I don’t know what drove me to buy it, as my computer couldn’t even run it for the first six months after I got it, but something allured me to get it. When I finally got a computer that could run the game, I was quite happy with my purchase. This game, Ark: Survival Evolved, begins in a mysterious world, where you wake up with an odd device implanted into your wrist. Despite this seemingly futuristic technology, you are surrounded by dinosaurs. Some can be rather friendly, like the herbivore Parasaurs. Others roam looking for dinos and survivors to dine on. The player can choose to play singleplayer on their own world, or decide to live in an online multiplayer server cluster. In multiplayer, it can feel more like a community, but there is a greater worry of being raided and losing all of your items while you are offline. To combat this, dinosaurs can be tamed and defenses can be built to try to stop other survivors from raiding you, and establishing tribes with people from all over the world can give greater chance someone will be online and ready to defend if a raid begins.

This game shines out from others in the same genre due to the creativity of the worldbuilding and the unique creatures it provides. Each creature has its design based off of what we believe they looked like in the past, and it helps bring light to many dinosaurs some may not have known about. To a certain extent, the first map can prove quite educational for some in terms of creature’s names and looks, and hidden across the map are small dossiers containing information on each creature. Along with the creativity, the graphics are extremely stunning for an indie game, hosting by far some of the most beautiful environments I have seen in games. The first map contains mountains, plains, redwood forests, a volcano, a snowy region, and a swamp running in the middle of all of them. Each biome contains its own creatures much like would happen in reality, adding to the atmosphere of the game. It is also made very well in terms of balance of players, where the beginning islands in the south are calmer and have mostly basic resources like wood and stone, the northern islands contain metal and oil nodes, along with more dangerous dinosaurs. As one progresses through the game and levels up, they unlock more blueprints in order to advance their defenses or gather resources faster and in larger quantities. The game hides a story underneath the surface level PvPvE Survival game that the players have to dig for through finding the explorer notes of those who inhabited the lands prior to them.

Flaws in the System

While the game is seen with flying colors in my heart, there is nothing without its flaws. Ark is known by its players to be filled with bugs. From dropping out of the world mesh randomly and dying to getting stuck inside your dinosaurs. On one of the maps, logging off while not in a bed gives a large chance of slipping through the mesh and dying. Along with that, since it is a persistently-run game, there are players who play on it far more and far longer than others. When you start out, there’s a fair chance all of your items and creatures will be gone when you next log on due to players going around and hunting the weaker tribes.

There are some solutions to these problems. For the first one, simply going through and fixing some of these simple bugs instead of pushing out new features. For the latter player-based issue, they already created a form of solution. For players not interested in the world that has been built up over a long period, there is something known as the Arkpocalypse servers, which restart entirely every month. These are heavily based around PvP and raiding others bases, and everyone is given an equal start at the beginning of the month.

Conclusion

While I didn’t go through all of the issues, it is clear that Wildcard has gone through great lengths to resolve what they feel is easiest to resolve and have created an amazing game nevertheless. For me, I play for the story, the sandbox-style building and resource gathering, the taming, and the dinosaurs. For others, they come for the competitive environment. All in all, Ark is a wonderful game for a vast multitude of players.

[1] https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymotion.com%2Fvideo%2Fx6fwkdc&psig=AOvVaw2juiUx5Olwe-pwcII-fIsA&ust=1631845180771000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAwQjhxqFwoTCJjQx8q7gvMCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAY

[2] https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fsurvivetheark%2Fstatus%2F1338234217222664192&psig=AOvVaw3ZxhersSiFkG1hrTzoqgs1&ust=1631846855418000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAwQjhxqFwoTCKimpbO9gvMCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD