ARK Survival Evolved

Played this a little bit today splitscreen on Xbox One, was a lot of fun. Looking forward to what else the game has to offer.

 

Have played a few more times now, it's starting to slow a bit into a grind which I'm not liking but you can adjust XP rates and stuff which is nice. Some of the systems are very unforgiving, it's a much slower game than Minecraft. I don't like how much is tied to levels so you have to grind killing things and gathering things so you can finally make new stuff even though you already have the material. I do like where it's going though, it's got a lot of survival aspects to it like getting cold, hot, hungry, thirsty... food spoiling (which is the most annoying thing ever). It spoils way to quickly imo... unlocking food storage helps but even then it's still pretty limited and it takes some time to unlock in the first place so your wasting food to that point. The respawn system tends to be REALLY annoying too.

The biggest issue by far is performance. On Xbox One it can really chug at times and I've heard similar stories on PC. The game is still in active development so this is expected but it's still pretty annoying how rough it can be. Graphically it's pretty solid though... mostly animations that need improving.

One thing to note is the developers have already said they firmly against adding in game real money transactions. This is pretty good news considering it's more of an online game than anything else. It sounds like it will remain a game you buy once and don't have to spend a penny more on.

 

It does need a ton of optimization.

 

Why not? What don't you like about it?