Player Preview - Ark: Survival Evolved

Title: Ark: Survival Evolved
Developer: Wild Card Studios
Status: Early Access
 

Official Site: http://bit.ly/1KGDgLc
Steam Page: http://bit.ly/1dP2Q6r

Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a look at the pre-historic Survival game, Ark: Survival Evolved, the first game developed by Studio Wildcard. 

The survival genre on Early Access has been fairly saturated almost from its beginning starting off with the popular DayZ standalone. Most of these games however are either extremely bare in terms of content and updates or are clearly quick cash grabs to get a quick buck from the new hot thing. With the release of Jurassic World, Ark could have easily fit into the latter category but the game, well it’s pretty damn good already for an early access title with a ton of content which is even more impressive when you look at the games current state being a result of an extremely short 8 month development phase.

The basics of the game come down to hunting, gathering and surviving. This will be all you can really do for the first couple of levels with your first objective after spawning being the crafting of a pickaxe were you will be minecraft punching trees to get the materials you need for it, be careful though as this does injure you. The game spawns you on the beach and lucky for all the fresh spawns, the beach is a pretty safe place, at least from the carnivores of the island, other players though is a different story. You will get to decide which coast you spawn on whether it be the north, south, east or west coast and this decision is actually pretty important as certain dinosaurs and resources reside in certain areas of the island. For instance Saber Tooth Tigers are native to the north while metal ore is rare on the south coast. If you’re feeling up to it you can move further inland but that’s when you’ll start running into raptors and T-rexses and if not geared up and prepared, it could end badly.

Gearing up and being prepared will only come with levelling up and unlocking new engrams or crafting diagrams through the tech tree. Starting out with rocks tied to sticks to forged metal tools and eventually guns you will slowly get more powerful and be able to deal with the harsh dinosaur infested environment. Ark does a good job to not make the game extremely grindy atleast in the early stages. Levelling up happens quite frequently and taming dinosaurs at your level only takes around 5 to 20 minutes. The grind in the game does pop up however at around level 30 onwards, levelling starts taking a rather long time and the dinosaurs that you start to tame around this level can take numerous hours. This is equally true for the building aspect of the game with thatch buildings being relatively easy to set up but later on with wood and metal structures it takes considerably longer. Setting up a base of operations will help you collect resources, keep you protected for the most part and lets you be a little creative in the game. Your base isn’t entirely secure though and is currently a big problem with griefing players destroying bases during server off peaks. Setting up a base isn’t the only option though as you can keep on the move with a caravan of dinosaurs in tow that act as both storage of goods and protection against aggressive creatures and is especially viable once you manage to tame one of the larger dinosaurs like the Brontosaurus, Mammoth or T-Rex. You will have to give up some of the more advance smithing and forging options though.

The survival elements of the game currently implemented are the basic food and water with some climate and clothing features in there too with cold weather eating into your food supplies and hot weather draining you water supply. To get more food you can either farm berries for quick but small amounts of sustenance’s or get meat from creatures and cook it for a bunch of food gain. To get more water you can just collect from any water source including rain. A future update expected to drop in the next couple of weeks will also introduce disease and illness to the game along with craft able remedies for them which will require you to deal with the climate more appropriately. 

The variety of creatures already a part of Ark is fantastic and what’s even more impressive is that almost every creature has a purpose, a function that can be utilized once tamed. For instance the Ankylo is a fantastic resource farming dino that can haul in massive amounts of resources in minutes or the Scorpion that uses its venom to knock out targets for easy taming or killing. Each creature also comes in a variety of colours so you can have a somewhat unique creature like an albino T-Rex or an orange and blue Saber-Tooth. There are currently 48 confirmed creatures for Ark with 27 currently implemented and a bunch more that are rumoured to be coming later on in development. There is currently an issue with tamed dinosaurs though if you’re a casual players that isn’t able to log into the game every day because of the constant need to feed them to keep them alive. The developers have already stated that they’re looking into a sleep mode for dinosaurs so that you can keep your tamed dinosaurs alive if you can’t play for a while.

There are some issues with the end game of ark at the moment however, not so much for PvE players as there are numerous world bosses that you can summon and caves to take on including those underwater, but for PvP players it is a little bare. I believe that loot drops were an attempt to encourage PvP with the drop taking some time to actually reach the ground however due to the size of the world and the number of players restricted to 70 or 100, unless you have built right next to someone else you will usually have no competition for them. This is probably where the game struggles most at the moment. You can stock up on guns and ammunition but you don’t really have any use for them unless you have a super aggressive tribe on your server. There’s not really a resource or any good reason to PvP over with the risk and reward to PvP just not being worth it. Saying that however, the developers are working on a Battle Royale mode for the game that is expected to be patched in sometime this week or next so for those after a more PvP orientated experience this may just be what you’re looking for.

Other Features of the game include a single player mode which is basically just playing on a private server which gives you access to numerous admin commands. The game already has full mod support through steam workshop with modders already creating new maps and testing out the extent they can mod the game. You can group up via the tribe system in the game which is basically like a clan were you can build and work together but you can also set up your tribe to have private buildings and animals via the tribe governance feature so that even if you are working together you can still having something to yourself too. Customization options are available as both craftable items like coloured dye that allows you to colour walls, weapons, armour, saddles and more as well as full 3D cosmetics for your character and animals that can only be found in creature loot drops. Ark will also have full VR support for the Occulus and Morpheus so you can get fully immersed in the game if you like.

Altogether Ark: Survival Evolved is the beginning of a great dinosaur based survival game that is receiving large content patches every Friday that introduces new creatures, mechanics and features a lot of which are sourced from the community discussion on the official forums and reddit. The game is still heavily un-optimized with even the best machines struggling to achieve a good stable frame rate on the highest settings but it is getting better. Having said all that the gameplay is already incredibly enjoyable and is very easy to lose yourself in especially if you are a dinosaur fan. In its current state Ark is heavily PvE based and about building up a base and taming a bunch of dinosaurs. If you’re looking for a PvP experience well it’s just not there at the moment so maybe give it some more time before you jump in.

Anyway, that’s been my player preview for Ark: Survival Evolved, the game is currently in beta testing on Steam Early Access with a release window scheduled sometime in 2016. If you want to find out more about the game check out the links below. Thanks for watching, I’ll see you guys next time.