“…truly one of those games that will have you sitting with your mouth wide open as you play.”
ARK Survival Evolved is an indie survival game from Studio Wildcard. Your character awakes on a mysterious tropical island inhabited by dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts. A device has been implanted into your wrist, and strange floating structures with a similar architecture are strewn around the land around you. With only your loincloth, your fists and your wits you must attempt to stay alive in this dangerous wilderness, rebuilding not only your own life, but the pieces of the puzzle as to what this place is and why you are here…
As with many survival games however, this is not as straight forward a task as it initially sounds. The wilderness is a dangerous place with creatures far more dangerous than your naked self roaming it. Not only that, but you are not alone in your predicament, as other humans are stuck on the island as well. Deciding who you should trust as you gather resources and establish a home base could make or break your journey just as much as any unpleasant encounters with the creatures along the way. It is also not a quick and easy task in ARK to gather all of the resources you need and stay alive at the same time. Without clothes you will quickly become cold. Without food you will starve, but the best source of meat is the very creatures you fear. Without a home, you are simply not safe. Management of your time and resources and awareness of your surroundings are key in the early game.
Playing ARK feels a lot like playing Minecraft crossed with The Sims 2 Castaway (if any of you actually played that game as I did). Forget all of your mods that try to make the blocky game look real, because ARK steps on to the scene and does just that. Ok, so you can’t create anything that your mind desires as you can in Minecraft, but punching trees, making tools, building a home, finding food, fending offfrightening creatures, frantically running for your stuff when you die; that is all here. The two games are remarkably similar in their gameplay style, which has probably contributed to ARK’s popularity on PC. On the Xbox One ARK has the advantage of a much easier toolbar for changing between quick-reference inventory items too, however it does fall short in the larger inventory and menu navigations. These can be confusing and are certainly not intuitive to get around.
The levelling system in ARK is a bit bizarre as well, but once you figure it out it is actually a pretty easy and rather clever one to use. The main trick is finding out how to level up, as this is not a clear button or menu to enter. Instead, in your inventory panel, you have a list of skills below an experience bar. In order to level up, you simply have to increase one of these skills, which influence your ability to survive in the world of ARK. These include your health, stamina and food and water requirements amongst other parameters. Once you increase your selected skill, you are taken to a menu to spend points on learning new crafting techniques. This is how you learn to make new tools, clothes, structural items and the like in order to improve your survival chances further. Which techniques you learn first can affect how easy your ongoing survival will turn out to be. Do you choose to learn how to make new tools and collect resources faster for example, or do you instead choose structures for safety or clothes for warmth. This system is clever, making you think and encouraging players who are enjoying ARK with friends to share their newly learned skills for joint survival. It certainly changes the way that you play the game.
The style of gameplay is not the only factor which has led to ARK’s success to date, with the far clearer reason being its setting. There have been dinosaur-based games in the past, but none quite as natural and well thought out as this. Every species behaves differently, and interacts with you the player differently too. Some are automatically aggressive, whilst some will run from conflict. Others are also pack hunters and stick together, creating a greater danger the more of them there are. Aside from the clever mechanics of the game’s inhabitants though, the very appearance of them is something to marvel at. The big ones, in particular, are really big, and even cause the screen to shake when they move. It is incredible to take in, and the excellent visuals of ARK only push this awe factor further. This is truly one of those games that will have you sitting with your mouth wide open as you play.
ARK looks great and plays reasonably well too, and has certainly been adapted well for the Xbox One. It is most likely to encounter its biggest wall on this system when trying to encourage players to properly interact, which in the PC version of the game is easier and makes up a big part of what makes the game fun. There are only one or two flaws which I came across whilst playing the game which really bothered me. One was a simple spawning issue. On some servers, certain spawning areas are listed as “Easy”, which naturally should suit a beginner. When spawning here however, I instantly died at the hands of high level creatures on multiple occasions. I found that single player mode is a much better place to learn the ropes. The other downside to ARK is the character creations, which despite using sliders is very limited, and actually a little weird. I would rather be able to choose my model’s hair style than extend their neck in all honesty, but the game seems to go for the opposite and I felt it made the creation stage pretty uninteresting.
The final thing about ARK I feel is worthy of note is how it teaches you, and I mean this in a couple of different ways. For starters, there is a guide which can help you learn how to use the various systems in game. This is great, but doesn’t quite add up to the quality of a tutorial, and equally the game doesn’t stop for you to read it, leaving you somewhat unguarded if you need to learn how not to starve to death. What ARK is really good at however is educating you on the creatures in the game. Each time you defeat a new creature, you expand your own documentation on the island’s inhabitants, and it is a really clever and really cool way of helping you get to know the prehistoric characters you are now apparently destined to live with.
Initially, I was unsure whether I liked ARK or not. The character creation system was sloppy and instantly dying all the time was a drag. This is definitely a game you have to stick with to begin with in order to appreciate its overall quality as you reach deeper into what it has to offer. This is very much the same way that I did initially feel about Minecraft when I first played. Both games have the same thing in common then; from the outside looking in, they don’t necessarily look like much, and the initial learning curve is heavily disheartening. Past that however they are hugely exhilarating to play, and everyone should certainly give them a go. ARK in its own right however is amazing in its setting, which is what really sells it above other survival titles. Despite my initial uncertainties then, by the time I shut down my console for the night I could not wait to play again the next day. ARK is certainly a welcome addition to my Xbox One library, and I am sure it will be too for many others.
The Good:
- A gameplay style reminiscent of Minecraft’s, making it familiar to many survival game players from the offset and attractive to those trying to decide whether they should play.
- The setting of the game is incredible, with the dinosaur theme selling ARK on its own.
- The quick reference inventory menu is very easy to navigate to switch between items.
- An intuitive in-game levelling system makes you think about how best to survive, making you choose between one skill and another to encourage you to work with others and plan for the long term.
- The mechanics behind the behaviour of dinosaurs and other creatures in the game make it a very believable and immersive experience, as well as very awe-inspiring.
- Superb visuals; if you ever wanted to be in Walking With Dinosaurs or Jurassic Park and witness the sheer size and majesty of these creatures, ARK is the best place to do it!
- The game helps you learn about the world and its inhabitant as you play with an intuitive journal system, as well as helping you learn the ropes with a useful survival guide.
The Bad:
- Not the best inventory/menu setup for a survival game; not well suited to controller use.
- Character creation is peculiar, missing more preferable elements for seemingly random ones.
- The description “Easy” is not to be trusted on all online servers, many of which will see you die here instantly.
- The survival guide does not have the same teaching quality as a tutorial level would.
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