ARK: Survival Evolved sucks. It freaking sucks. It is one of the most disappointing games of the generation. It had so much potential - goddamn DINOSAURS - but then totally wasted it by being one of the most boring, clunky, glitchy, terribly designed games in years. At least it has a creative mode that makes the game marginally more fun for ten extra minutes. Read more and watch gameplay here.
I love dinosaurs, and at first I loved ARK: Survival Evolved. The dinosaurs were so cool and it looked awesome and OMG dinosaurs. It has so many freaking problems, though, that never ever got fixed. It runs terribly, the survival mechanics blow, the crafting mechanics blow, it controls like ass on consoles because it was clearly meant for a mouse and keyboard, the progression system blows, and I could go on and on. All of these problems were present during the (very long) early access period of the game, but instead of actually fixing any of it, they just kept adding more crap on top of it and even made paid DLC expansions before the base game was done.
So the game still plays like ass. And the progression system still sucks. And crafting is awful. And you have to grind and grind and grind for hours to get to the good stuff. It still runs like a pig, too. Why the hell didn't they every fix anything? Now the game is just a bloated disgusting mess full of "stuff" built on an extremely shaky foundation. I hate it.
There is a reason why my video on adjusting the sliders to make the game more fun is the most popular thing I ever made - people want to skip to the fun parts and not struggle with the AWFUL game design.
But it has dinosaurs in it, which makes hating it hurt more than you'd expect. I do have to say, also, that they have made the graphics quite a bit better over the last couple of years, and on Xbox One X is actually looks pretty nice.
It also does have a creative mode (see how to access it in today's video) that gives you essentially God Mode and lets you craft anything you want without needing resources. Creative mode turns off achievements, but you can de-activate creative mode and achievements can still pop on that same save file, so obviously you can take advantage of that if you want.
This is probably the last time I'm ever going to play ARK. The file size is gigantic now and the only reason why I bothered to download it this time is because my ISP gave everyone unlimited data because of the Corona-pocalypse. Whatever. ARK sucks. Good riddance.
