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ARK: Survival Evolved Image
Metascore
70

Mixed or average reviews - based on 18 Critics What's this?

User Score
4.1

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 92 Ratings

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  • Summary: Stranded on the shores of a mysterious island, you must learn to survive. Use your cunning to kill or tame the primeval creatures roaming the land, and encounter other players to survive, dominate... and escape.

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Ark: Survival Evolved - Spotlight: Oviraptor!
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 18
  2. Negative: 0 out of 18
  1. Games Master UK
    Oct 6, 2017
    85
    It'll delight you, it'll make you despair, but ultimately Ark will leave you with a real sense of satisfaction. [Nov 2017, p.76]
  2. Aug 29, 2017
    80
    Ark’s ambition pulls it in the right direction with more force than its clunkiness tugs it the other way. It’s always more enjoyable to spend time with a game that tries something new and exciting, stumbling along the way, than a game that tries to tick focus group-inspired boxes. If that game also happens to simulate an entire prehistoric ecosystem, and produces bewildering emergent scenarios like clockwork, all the better.
  3. Sep 1, 2017
    77
    When I’m having a good time in ARK, I’m having a really good time. The problem is that those moments are usually one part to every nine parts menial grinding and crafting - especially at the later tech tiers. Having to repeat so much work after failing an attempt at a boss feels far too punishing, and some really dumb dinosaurs can take a lot of the challenge and sense of danger out of the many primal locations. Even with all of those quirks, however, I’m still hungry to play more after the 60 hours I’ve spent so far.
  4. Sep 3, 2017
    70
    In its best moments, Ark is the dream game of every Dino fan. But bugs and the grind-based game-mechanics often spoil the fun.
  5. Oct 9, 2017
    70
    Like so many survival/crafting games, from Minecraft to Subnautica, ARK presupposes a player with a lot of time to dedicate to the experience, a high tolerance for repetition, and a fondness for chaos and the unexpected. With its sci-fi inflected single player campaign, ARK at least offers a solo player the chance to get the gist of the game without the threat of anti-social humans ruining whatever progress has been made. For the past two years, ARK has been helping to shape the genre and now that it's finished, it feels like the genre is due for the next stage of evolution.
  6. 70
    ARK is an ambitious project that, at the moment, lacks in optimisation: bugs, glitches and crashes happen too often and affect the gamer experience. The potential is enormous, but the devs should concentrate their work to solve all the issues and to fix what is already done, instead to produce new contents. Beware: the PvP servers are full of awful people, that's why you should buy the game if you are oriented to a PvE experience only.
  7. Sep 1, 2017
    50
    Ark: Survival Evolved is a game full of rough edges. It's also a game full of some amazing moments over my total playtime. It's the kind of experience that has a lot of boredom and tedium, and a great deal of looking the other way in the face of bugs, but also some clear water cooler moments. There's something very cool buried in here, though I can't tell if that's because of some developer decisions or in spite of them.

See all 20 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 25
  2. Negative: 12 out of 25
  1. Oct 24, 2017
    10
    While it has its problems, I can't justify giving this game anything less than a 10. I have over a thousand hours in it. A THOUSAND HOURS.While it has its problems, I can't justify giving this game anything less than a 10. I have over a thousand hours in it. A THOUSAND HOURS. That's ~41 days of nothing but playing this game.

    It's fun, but incredibly un-optimized. Even if you have a good card, be prepared to turn those settings down to medium or low to get playable fps.

    A lot of the bugs people have mentioned have been fixed since well before EA, I'm not sure what they're going on about. Yeah the game's support is genuinely terrible, but I only had to use it twice, once when I got a dinosaur stuck underneath the terrain (back in early access - and this only happened once) and second when I messed up with tranferring tribe ownership. Couldn't get any help with the first one because I couldn't remember the dino's name and it had been a few days (it was dead, jim), but the second one got resolved speedily.
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  2. Jun 3, 2015
    9
    GIVE THIS GAME A SHOT! Great "next/current" gen survival game! Has a lot of great promise but a rather steep learning curve if playing aloneGIVE THIS GAME A SHOT! Great "next/current" gen survival game! Has a lot of great promise but a rather steep learning curve if playing alone (similar to Don't Starve), but has a ton of potential for being the next great survival game. Lots of solo and community driven gameplay elements and a pretty immersive world to be in. Not the most "realistic" survival game in existence but it does take a more grounded approach to movement and fatigue (i.e. If you are swimming to long and you run out of stamina you may actually drown just like in real life).

    Biggest issues are that it does take a pretty meaty rig to take full advantage of the graphics (seems like a modified Crytek engine) on the highest settings. This game is JUST in early access so I expect to see some of the animations, bugs, and slight clipping issues get resolved over time. I only have about 8ish hours with this game so my review is based on initial impression and overall potential the game has.
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  3. Sep 7, 2017
    8
    I enjoy this game a lot. Been playing it since early access, so it's countless hours already. Yeah it demands quite a high spec PC/laptop (espI enjoy this game a lot. Been playing it since early access, so it's countless hours already. Yeah it demands quite a high spec PC/laptop (esp VGA and RAM), but it all pays off with the excitement I have every single day: building stuffs (THE SIMS), exploring the world (FAR CRY), taming dinos (POKEMON) etc. Nothing's perfect, but the devs always give game updates. Bring your friends along to conquer this game, or if you play single, there's always cheat codes to help you get through things. Expand
  4. Nov 22, 2017
    5
    No no. This is not how to develop a good game. The gameplay is slow and boring. Sure there are dinosaurs but i dont like them. I dont evenNo no. This is not how to develop a good game. The gameplay is slow and boring. Sure there are dinosaurs but i dont like them. I dont even know why i bought this game. Lol Expand
  5. Nov 18, 2017
    3
    Ok I am writing this review as a new player, I have not read any other reviews, this is my personal experience playing on 11/17/17-11/18/17.Ok I am writing this review as a new player, I have not read any other reviews, this is my personal experience playing on 11/17/17-11/18/17.

    I tried 8 different NA servers 4 being PVE and 4 being PVP to make sure it wasn't just a "One time" occurrence.

    Firstly the game IS NOTHING LIKE ADVERTISED. NOTHING. Literally no one gives a f*** if you are a new player they will kill you and grief you on a PVP server because they can.

    Forget taming dinosuars, you will NEVER get the chance on a PVE server. Older players have made it their life mission to royally screw you over as a new player. You get to choose spawn locations from a tab, first logging in you will be surrounded by bases of other players. Why? Because they are d***s. The mechanics in the game don't allow you to build near anyone's base, so the low level area with hardly any carnivores? Ya they have them locked down to make it impossible for you to level, progress, and respawn when you die. It's also intentional. They will build small nods inbetween their bases to prevent other players from building. So you are forced to move into the higher level carnivore infested areas to do anything.

    All in all if this doesn't detour you from buying the game you've been warned. It's nothing like it's presented on youtube, by people that have been in the game since day one, with huge tribes, and private servers.

    In all honesty No Man's Sky was better than this game.
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  6. Sep 8, 2017
    2
    Ark Survival Evolved:
    I have finally decided to review this game after 8400+ hours of gameplay in early access mode.
    Positives: The game
    Ark Survival Evolved:
    I have finally decided to review this game after 8400+ hours of gameplay in early access mode.

    Positives:
    The game is a great idea. The way the game begins is tough… I mean really tough. It is a challenge to get started and anyone without any patience is going to struggle but I do have patience and to me the hard difficulty of this game was a real refreshing eye opener… but be warned it is not for the feint hearted. The best part of the game is the idea that you can breed your dinosaurs. This has been implemented in a really interesting way, where you can pool your breeding into achievable goals and breed out your favourite dinosaurs to have the stats that you have always wanted… but all this comes after you have set up a kibble base, and tamed great level versions of your favourite dinosaurs. I personally play on PVE and as you can see, for over 8K hours I have had a great deal of fun and I have met some fantastic friends in the community… This ought to be a great game, but there is another side to it that I have to address…

    Negatives:
    I am so sad to say this, because I have put so much effort into playing this game legitimately and have done my best to help create a wonderful community and support network on a great PVE server… however, the developers of the game have treated us long serving players with utter contempt. We have been completely mistreated, taken for granted, unrewarded, lied to, mis-sold to… under a cloak of awful communication and absolutely brutal and dire decisions that have kicked the games player base in the teeth. The scenario now is that the devs were going to cull the lowest 10% of ghost servers… and instead have decided to wipe over 33% of servers with medium traffic to consolidate their server lists and re-use these to plonk new servers on that do not have the same issues that the old servers had, and then to cap it all, any support for the old servers and the long serving players who play on those servers is to be canned so that we are on our own if we lose a character or experience any technical issues… This is a huge let down of the Ark gaming community, and sadly it is pretty irrelevant, because any support I have needed in my 8K+ hours has been utterly non-existent anyway. I reported a serious harassment case and followed every single instruction to the letter, and no action was taken against the wrong-doers. This was a shameful let down and completely spoiled my enjoyment of the game… The devs carried on doing little tiny favours for a select few gamers whilst most tickets were left completely unattended. I have colleagues who lost their level 100 character in transit and not a single effort to answer the ticket was made, that was over 2 months ago now. The sad truth is, that this team of developers and community managers, is sadly the most useless and incompetent and uncaring team that I have ever experienced in a game… so if you have any issues playing this game… do not even bother to report it… nothing will be done… this Dev team do not care. They care that they receive your money… they will go on to look after the new servers and make things look as though they are prepared to provide support there… but it is as many things are in ark… it is lies and false promises.

    Conclusion:
    This game had SO much going for it… it was a fantastic idea but the execution of the game and the choices made by the developers has left a bruised gaming community feeling ripped off and mistreated, un-respected and un-supported… and sadly their actions and incompetence in how they run their business has led to this review being a vote of no confidence. The way the legacy servers are setup now means that over-time the old servers will lose players and get wiped, so either old players stick around on current servers and wait for the server to die, or we start afresh on a new server and wait to be lied to and sit having no confidence that one day these new servers wont be wiped themselves… and that is the finding of this review… that ultimately, there is no point in playing this game, because it provides 10% fun, 80% grief and trolling and a final 10% of crying into your coffee as you hope your dino baby survives over the next ridiculously badly timed update that takes away something else that used to be a good idea.

    Do not buy this game… do not play this game… go and play something similar where the developers actually deserve your money.
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  7. Nov 2, 2017
    0
    I bought ARK+Scorched Earth Expansion for a bargain (10€ each) during EA, the current final release price is ridiculous. I had a lot of funI bought ARK+Scorched Earth Expansion for a bargain (10€ each) during EA, the current final release price is ridiculous. I had a lot of fun with the game so far - BUT that´s because I decided early to host and administer my own private server, playing with a bunch of people I know and trust. There are some technical problems with this game, such as disappearing items and dinos, resetting characters, missing skills and stuff. If I played on an official server, I had to live with that, but since I was my own boss with my own server I could always execute some console commands to let dinos and items reappear or level up some character again which was mysteriously lost in oblivion before. I fully understand all those negative reviewers here, according to the official servers and the developer´s ignorance. If you want to play this game: Basically it´s worth it, but don´t even consider playing on official servers and start your own one, alternatively find some good unofficial server hosted by a good private community.

    Update November 2017:

    To quote the developers: "There will never, ever be any monetization of this game whatsoever other than possible entirely new Expansion ARK's (whole new worlds as expansion pack). There will never be any pay items, not even cosmetics -- there WILL be tons of cosmetic "item skins" but they will all be earnable in-game rewards and time-limited free events to encourage gameplay, nothing ever to spend any $$$ on. [...] To be clear, we at Studio Wildcard are very much against any in-game monetization whatsoever. We've seen it distort too many otherwise good games."

    Now they have added microtransactions to the game! No hint, no announcment, but perky excuses. Dear gamers: Do not buy this game, it´s been developed by liars.
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See all 25 User Reviews

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