Game Details
- Publisher: Studio Wildcard
- Developer: Studio Wildcard
- ESRB Rating: “T" for Teen
- Genre: Action / Survival
- Pros: DINOSAURS!; sliders; lots of content
- Cons: Performance issues; glitches; long grind to the good stuff
- MSRP: $60
I want to start out by noting that this review is
exclusively about the single-player experience in ARK. I’ve played hundreds of
hours solo and exactly zero hours online, so I’m going to review my experience.
While most of the marketing has been about the online multiplayer aspect of ARK
– forming tribes with other players, building large bases, working together to
survive, and going to war with other human tribes, oh and also dinosaurs - it
is still a viable and very fun single-player experience. Probably better in
multiplayer, but still solid solo.
ARK: Survival Evolved is an open world survival game set in
a land of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures (and even mythical
creatures like dragons, depending on what map you choose). The game comes with
three large maps and features dozens and dozens of species of animals. It can
be played either in single-player, local multiplayer with splitscreen, or
online with dozens of players on the map. In terms of the amount of content
you’re getting for $60, it is hard to argue you aren’t getting your money’s
worth here.
You begin the game as a lowly level 1 human and, similar to
Minecraft, have to start out by punching trees and breaking rocks in order to
get materials to build simple tools like axes or picks. As you gather materials
and build items, as well as kill animals, you earn XP that allows you to level
up. When you level up you also earn engram points that you use to learn how to
build new and increasingly more powerful and technically advanced items.
ARK’s upgrade and level up system is fascinating because it
starts you out with sticks and rocks and simple thatch buildings, but you
eventually end up with guns and lasers and metal buildings and all sorts of
crazy stuff. This is also a problem, though, because it takes a long, long,
long time until you actually get to the good stuff and the grind just to
survive for the first several hours isn’t particularly fun. High-end items also
require a large number of rare materials, but your character can only carry a
limited amount, so traveling all over to find enough materials to actually
build stuff is, again, a grind. You can tame dinosaurs and other creatures in
order to help you harvest materials and carry things, but that in itself is a
convoluted pain due to clunky associated systems and a poorly designed U.I..
I mentioned “survival” above because, yes, ARK: Survival
Evolved is a survival sim. You have to drink water, eat food, maintain your
body temperature, and other associated survival-y things. And it’s all a huge
pain in the butt. Just like it is in every survival game.
Thankfully, ARK: Survival Evolved does a couple of very
smart, very clever things to help make the game more fun and accessible. First
are a ton of sliders (see how sliders work here) that let you adjust pretty much every aspect of the game.
You can change (or turn off entirely) hunger / thirst / other survival
elements, you can change how much damage dinosaurs do as well as take, how much
materials you harvest at a time, how much XP you earn, how fast the day / night
cycle passes, how easy it is to tame dinosaurs, and much, much, much more. You
can fully customize your experience to be as easy or difficult as you want, and
that is freaking amazing. I love it. If you want even more control you can also
use PC-style console commands (yes, even on Xbox but you’ll have to look up how
to use them on your own …) to basically cheat your ass off. With the console
commands you can fly, activate god mode, give yourself tons of XP so you level
up quickly, instantly tame animals, and much more. Again, I can’t stress enough
how much I love that ARK gives you so much control to play the game however you
want. This is an amazing feature.
While the sliders and console commands can solve one set of
problems with ARK – the slow grind to fun stuff and annoying survival aspects –
there are some fundamental issues that still remain. The menus and U.I. are
clearly meant for PC players using mouse and keyboard and are awkward and
clunky to use at best with a controller. Nothing you can do is easy in ARK:
Survival Evolved. Everything is always multiple awkward menu screens away and
it just feels really damn clunky. The normal moving around and shooting stuff
and exploring controls just fine, but taming animals or building structures or
even using the menus to make items is just awful and unintuitive.
A bigger problem with ARK: Survival Evolved is that it
performs like an absolute pig on Xbox One. The framerate fluctuates wildly and
the game regularly drops all the way to 0 FPS even as you’re just walking
around. It seriously just stops for a second or two and you can’t do anything.
I can’t say if the game is pausing to load stuff, which I suppose would be
understandable, because it does it even if you’re focused on just one small
area (like building a structure). The constant stutters and stops and pauses
are incredibly annoying. There are lots of graphical glitches, too, where textures
won’t load properly and shadows only activate 10-feet in front of your
character. When you’re standing still, ARK can look really beautiful. Start
moving, however, and it all falls apart. Speaking of glitches, dinosaurs will
regularly get stuck in environmental objects and all sorts of other weird stuff
happens, which really ruins the immersion.
The most disappointing thing about all of the problems I
mentioned in the previous paragraph is that they have all been present from the
start of early access and have never been fully addressed even after nearly two
years. When ARK first hit Xbox Game Preview in December 2015 everyone was
optimistic that things would eventually get fixed. Well, we’re in September
2017 now and it’s the same as ever, so I can’t see the performance ever really
improving. Maybe it will get better on Xbox One X (even though high-end PCs
also struggle to run ARK), but almost certainly not on standard Xbox One. For a
game to be full MSRP $60 “finished product” I think it is fair to expect it to
be a little more polished particularly when the problems have been so obvious
for so long.
With all of that said, however, I’d by lying if I said I
didn’t still have a lot of fun with ARK: Survival Evolved. It’s basically
Minecraft with dinosaurs, and that is very, very appealing. This is probably
the best dinosaur game ever, too, and the sheer number of species present is
absolutely incredible. I wouldn’t say the A.I. behavior is particularly
realistic or believable, at all, but just exploring this world even if it’s
full of dumb stupid idiot animals that just stand around while predators
constantly chew on their butts is still freaking awesome. I’ve loved dinosaurs
ever since I was a little kid so ARK: Survival Evolved, even with its many problems,
is like a dream come true.
I also have to say that ARK can be pretty darn great looking
when everything loads properly. The water is incredibly good looking and the
lighting is really quite impressive. The game is also really lush and dense
with plant life and can be stunningly realistic looking. The dinosaurs and
other animals also all look really great, too. And then you actually start
moving and the screen starts tearing and the framerate dies and the shadows
start popping in and out and the textures don’t load and it all goes to heck,
but for brief moments at least, ARK is gorgeous.
The sound, on the other hand, is pretty universally
mediocre. The animals all make different noises, sure enough, but only like one
sound each, so you hear the same sound effects over and over and over again.
Likewise, there are only a couple of musical themes so you hear the “Oh crap,
animals are attacking you” music pretty much constantly, which gets annoying
pretty quickly.
PS4 Version Impressions
In other words, ARK: Survival Evolved is kind of a
technical mess regardless of what platform you’re playing on. Maybe they should
have spent the 18-months+ in early access on sorting out the performance rather
than adding a bazillion creatures and crafting items. Sorry if I’m being
passive aggressive, but ARK is a game I want to love but just can’t.
Bottom Line
All in all, ARK: Survival Evolved is a game that I would definitely say I like, but I also know it isn’t objectively very good in its current state. It’s hard to justify paying $60 for a game that still needs a lot of work and, judging from how early access went, may not actually ever get better. I’m not saying you can’t have a good time with ARK: Survival Evolved, especially if you love dinosaurs, but it’s best to know what you’re getting into before you decide to buy it. I also want to add that while I didn’t cover multiplayer at all, if you do have a dedicated group to play with that will definitely make ARK more appealing and worthwhile. Dinosaur lovers should definitely check ARK: Survival Evolved out, but I’d recommend waiting for a sale.
Disclosure: A review code was provided by the publisher.
We have also had the opportunity to play ARK: Survival
Evolved on a slim PS4 (no Pro, sorry) and the performance is a little better
than on Xbox One. The game doesn’t just die and go to 0 FPS every so often the
way it does on the Xbox One version, I can happily say. The framerate is still
somewhat unstable overall, though. V-sync seems to be better (or simply
present, maybe?) as the game isn’t tearing itself apart right in front of your
eyes like on Xbox. Other problems still persist, though, such as extreme pop in
as plants and ground cover will suddenly pop into existence mere feet in front
of you, textures can take a wile to load, and there are still tons of glitches
and wonky things happening with dinosaur A.I. all the time.
Bottom Line
All in all, ARK: Survival Evolved is a game that I would definitely say I like, but I also know it isn’t objectively very good in its current state. It’s hard to justify paying $60 for a game that still needs a lot of work and, judging from how early access went, may not actually ever get better. I’m not saying you can’t have a good time with ARK: Survival Evolved, especially if you love dinosaurs, but it’s best to know what you’re getting into before you decide to buy it. I also want to add that while I didn’t cover multiplayer at all, if you do have a dedicated group to play with that will definitely make ARK more appealing and worthwhile. Dinosaur lovers should definitely check ARK: Survival Evolved out, but I’d recommend waiting for a sale.
