ARK: Survival Evolved

 PC
User Score
6.5

Mixed or average reviews- based on 652 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 348 out of 652
  2. Mixed: 124 out of 652
  3. Negative: 180 out of 652

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  1. Robobob
    Jun 18, 2022
    4
    It's a game. It exists. And that's how I feel when I'm playing it. I'm just kind of existing in the world populated by dinosaurs. There's the foundations of something decent here: lots of species of prehistoric animals with different pros and cons, an in-depth survival system. But, did anyone ever playtest this game? Did they think it was fun to poke a dinosaur 20x until it dies? OrIt's a game. It exists. And that's how I feel when I'm playing it. I'm just kind of existing in the world populated by dinosaurs. There's the foundations of something decent here: lots of species of prehistoric animals with different pros and cons, an in-depth survival system. But, did anyone ever playtest this game? Did they think it was fun to poke a dinosaur 20x until it dies? Or shoot 20 arrows at a charging animal while running from it? Even dinosaurs well below your level will take 5-10 hits and there's really no variety to the action.
    The mining system is designed so that you are constantly acquiring stuff you don't need to mine for one thing you DO need. Like "metal." One generic metal in the game that you acquire through RNG through mining other rock. But you seem to have a better chance if you use a pick, so you will get hundreds and hundreds of extra flint while looking for metal that I ended up throwing away. Who thought this was a good idea? Why no designated "metal" veins in the world? When flint it onyl useful for a couple crafting recipes why not make it a much rarer pick up?
    Taming dinosaurs might have been fun but if you tame anything below level 25 it is useless. As a mount it can't even carry you without it's movement speed dropping to a crawl.
    I played only the single player campaign and my character wakes up on the beach... and that's it. No story, no NPCs to tell you what to do.
    After building an expensive small house and training some slow mounts, I think I've done everything of interest in this game. And if there is something more interesting to do., the game wasn't good enough to steer me in the right direction. Glad I got it for free on Steam and didn't pay a cent.    … Expand
  2. Vahl
    Aug 23, 2021
    4
    How do you program a game so poorly that the goddamn console commands don't work?

    Welcome to Ark! The game that dare ask, what if Bethesda made a Pokemon game? The game that proves that you really need to hire more than one programmer to make your game actually function properly. The game that taught it's player base, don't expect that bug to get fixed. Cause nothing will ever be    How do you program a game so poorly that the goddamn console commands don't work?

    Welcome to Ark! The game that dare ask, what if Bethesda made a Pokemon game? The game that proves that you really need to hire more than one programmer to make your game actually function properly. The game that taught it's player base, don't expect that bug to get fixed. Cause nothing will ever be fixed... ever.

    In summary f*ck Wildcard Studios. I'm gonna buy Ark II because I have stockholm syndrome, pls help!    … Expand
  3. Noshar
    Sep 3, 2017
    3
    What can i say about Ark? I was a day 1 EA purchaser of this game. The game was beautiful, with a amazing concept and an ambitious dev behind it. For the first 6 months or so, this was the game to play. It was amazing. Very frequent updates, great communication from the developers, lots of community interaction.

    So what happened after that? Well, it's hard to say why, but at the start    What can i say about Ark? I was a day 1 EA purchaser of this game. The game was beautiful, with a amazing concept and an ambitious dev behind it. For the first 6 months or so, this was the game to play. It was amazing. Very frequent updates, great communication from the developers, lots of community interaction.

    So what happened after that? Well, it's hard to say why, but at the start of 2016, the Developers attitude changed for the worst. Updates drew to a month or more a part, often days or even weeks late, and nearly always with the "meat" of that update missing. It was disappointing, but, issues only got worse. Communication stopped almost completely, community interactions stopped at best and at worst became negative. A number of times, a lead member of the development staff posted on reddit calling people liars, and being a complete jerk off. As time went on, things got worse and worse, the customer support got worse, major problems with the game were outright ignored, and in fact intentionally made even worse, the developers began to lie to the community, and they even released DLC while still in EA.

    The devs still to this day refuse to even acknowledge that their game has problems which leaves very little hope for the people on Official Servers. If you say the game is too grindy, the devs will laugh at you and tell you you're wrong. If you want to re spec your stats more than once at max level, the devs will tell you to buy the game again and level an entirely new character on a entirely different copy of the game (and in fact, TheRightHand (one of the lead developers) did say this and received quite a bit of backlash for it). They do nothing but deflect criticism and dodge the issues.

    So, why did i give this game a 3? Well, it's because of the developers. They keep compounding the problems the game has, and making already bad problems flat out worse. They treat the community like dirt, they lie, they could care less about anyone's actual experience playing the game. There is a good game here, but it's so bogged down with all the **** the devs keep piling on it that it's completely buried. Dig this gem out of the pile of **** it's buried in clean it up a little and it will shine, but the devs seem to have no interest in doing that.

    In conclusion, i will say that this game is incredibly grindy, repetitive, unbalanced, and unrefined, not worthy of it's $60 asking price, and the developers, Studio Wildcard, are not worthy of your trust. Because of what Studio Wildcard has done I can not and will not recommend this game or any game they produce in the future.    … Expand
  4. Kayla45
    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 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    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.    … Expand
  5. abacup
    Sep 20, 2021
    0
    Totally poorly optimized game rubbish and cockroaches kill you without giving you a chance to move around the map
  6. S3XU4LH34L1NG
    Nov 20, 2021
    4
    This game gave me janky "trashy" feel from the first time in the main menu to the first time spawning in. I gave it a reasonably fair shot (5hrs or so) but it didnt work for me despite me liking the survival genre. I know whats to come in late game (i watched some youtubers) but i guess there are other games that fare better with the technological progression thing. Optimazation is a messThis game gave me janky "trashy" feel from the first time in the main menu to the first time spawning in. I gave it a reasonably fair shot (5hrs or so) but it didnt work for me despite me liking the survival genre. I know whats to come in late game (i watched some youtubers) but i guess there are other games that fare better with the technological progression thing. Optimazation is a mess for such an old game and these kinda meh graphics.… Expand
  7. js17
    Sep 3, 2017
    2
    the worse support ever. Bunch of players can't connect to the game for a day, and no single word from support.
    lots of bugs.
    toxic community.
    at release - just a queue simulator.
  8. Tuco_Ramires
    Sep 4, 2017
    0
    The constant threatening on legacy servers has end up sickening ppl.
    Many have lost everything at release in the servers cut and the rest don't trust WC anymore.
    Also announced end of support for these servers,what ppl are supposed to think?
  9. DobbleU
    Jun 15, 2020
    2
    I played the game because it was free in Epic Store.
    I am totally stunned that this game is sold for real money over the rest of the year.
    It is full of Bugs and the biggest problem is the server performance. Laggs out of hell. On top of that it is full of people who kill you with a one shot for no reason. I played it for a few hours on different servers and it was just disgusting    I played the game because it was free in Epic Store.
    I am totally stunned that this game is sold for real money over the rest of the year.
    It is full of Bugs and the biggest problem is the server performance. Laggs out of hell.
    On top of that it is full of people who kill you with a one shot for no reason.

    I played it for a few hours on different servers and it was just disgusting

    The idea of the game seems great because of that it gets 2 points.
    But the technical Status of the Game is dreadful.
    I am angry that there are people who earn their money with this Alpha Version of a Game.

    Btw, i own a High End Gaming PC, because of that i am sure that my PC is not the problem.

    I really would like to give it a bad review on Epic Store but they don't give us the chance....    … Expand
  10. Dr4590
    Oct 22, 2021
    0
    decided to play on the weekend, blocked the account
    10 ban out of 10! burn in hell
  11. Themighty
    Sep 2, 2017
    0
    - worse performance
    - clipping issues
    - grind
    - no support
    - worse graphic
    - good music
    - good setting
    - impressive amount of content
    - frequent updates
    - toxic playerbase
    - worse network performance
  12. tuy235
    Aug 5, 2021
    0
    players on official servers use GM accounts and ban players for no reason, wrote to support, did not even answer
    Report # 1787278 # 1790372
  13. girin87
    Sep 13, 2021
    0
    on official servers they block for no reason
    wrote REQUEST # 2039266 in support, closed without an answer, why do they take money?
  14. Sakisensei
    Jun 18, 2020
    0
    Do you like staring at the "connection timeout" screen for the whole afternoon? Then definitely give this game a go. Literally unplayable. I got this game for free and i still want my money back.
  15. lordpopo
    Jan 8, 2021
    3
    Honestly,if you do not have more than 3-5 friends to play this game with or don't have the time to find a non-toxic tribe in your server,just do not play this game.Singleplayer gets boring after some time because its way too grindy .Its not like minecraft here ypu can cure your boredom all alone without anyone to play with.
    Servers are absolute trash,people are completeley heartless.They    Honestly,if you do not have more than 3-5 friends to play this game with or don't have the time to find a non-toxic tribe in your server,just do not play this game.Singleplayer gets boring after some time because its way too grindy .Its not like minecraft here ypu can cure your boredom all alone without anyone to play with.
    Servers are absolute trash,people are completeley heartless.They won't hesitate the slightest bit to completely destroy and loot months and weeks of your progress,leaving you no choice but to start from scratch only to get looted once again.    … Expand
  16. budwheizzah
    Nov 10, 2017
    3
    One of the industry's most promising titles turned into the single most heinous, unplayable, gruesome piece of software in history. This pathetic game studio have over the years finely tuned a CIA torture and interrogation purgatory that would render terrorist groups speechless and in envy.

    From blatant refusal to resolve horrendously broken core game mechanics for two years straight,    One of the industry's most promising titles turned into the single most heinous, unplayable, gruesome piece of software in history. This pathetic game studio have over the years finely tuned a CIA torture and interrogation purgatory that would render terrorist groups speechless and in envy.

    From blatant refusal to resolve horrendously broken core game mechanics for two years straight, to releasing full price DLC midway through the most pathetic Early Access process I've ever seen, to stretching themselves hair-thin across editions, expansions and console versions, constantly making useless content additions while the game's functionality went down the toilet, to not being able to wait until going out of Early Access before charging full price, to not even having a finished product on their hands when getting out of EA and finally making content modifications reinforcing ARK's focus on assaulting players through exhaustion and psychopathic degrees of grind, I not only believe ARK goes down as one of the most disappointing titles in history, but also, the team behind it are a bunch of sick, deranged individuals.    … Expand
  17. Gruber
    Sep 13, 2017
    2
    Great game, so much that you can do, riding a dino, create your own base, exchange, selling or buying dino's. But with poor support, all the issue you get after every new update, they dont listen to your question, sending a ticket, but answer is that they dont tread it,where it sometimes takes hours before you can on a server where your base and dino's are, there are more issue, but theGreat game, so much that you can do, riding a dino, create your own base, exchange, selling or buying dino's. But with poor support, all the issue you get after every new update, they dont listen to your question, sending a ticket, but answer is that they dont tread it,where it sometimes takes hours before you can on a server where your base and dino's are, there are more issue, but the issues destroy the fun for this beautyfull game.… Expand
  18. negrodegambia
    Mar 1, 2020
    0
    Unoptmizied piece of garbage thats not even worth the 5€ i spent on the damn game. RTX 2070, Ryzen 3600X and this game runs like a load of crap, and this was released on 2017, one of the worst games i ever bought. Constant server issues, cant even invite my friends to join my damn server.
  19. BlueBeefalo
    Dec 27, 2018
    4
    The game is fine alone in gameplay, however, runs like it's on a potato on even high-level GPUs. Playing alone is plain annoying. The official servers are mostly thousands of days in but that's not all. Hours, even DAYS of progress can be, for all intents and purposes, deleted, because some **** is able to take a completely overpowered fantasy dinosaur from a DLC that you don't have andThe game is fine alone in gameplay, however, runs like it's on a potato on even high-level GPUs. Playing alone is plain annoying. The official servers are mostly thousands of days in but that's not all. Hours, even DAYS of progress can be, for all intents and purposes, deleted, because some **** is able to take a completely overpowered fantasy dinosaur from a DLC that you don't have and transfer it through to a server on the base game's map, the island, and go on a rampage destroying everything because they're simply a **** sociopath. All in all, unless you play on a private server with your friends or on a newer unofficial server, I don't recommend this at all. There's no stopping anyone from ruining your entire progress using a completely broken tame if you're on an official server, not even the ones that say "No ark data downloads" because that means ****… Expand
  20. zmukh
    Mar 4, 2020
    1
    When I was a little boy, I was a "dino-child", always playing with my toy Triceratops and my little toy Raptor in my sand box. Which is why this games concept was fascinating for me. The games idea is brilliant. It's sort of an adult version of Pokémon, where you capture and breed your favorite dinosaurs and let them fight against the threats of other players and the environment. For theWhen I was a little boy, I was a "dino-child", always playing with my toy Triceratops and my little toy Raptor in my sand box. Which is why this games concept was fascinating for me. The games idea is brilliant. It's sort of an adult version of Pokémon, where you capture and breed your favorite dinosaurs and let them fight against the threats of other players and the environment. For the first 10 or so hours it is tough, but really rewarding. Building controls could be better, but that's nitpicking. After a while you unlock more tools, weapons and other useful stuff for survival, build your base and start exploring. You can even unlock saddles to ride your dinosaurs. Sounds good, right?
    Well if it wasn't for the huge issues the game has. Other people already stated the poor dev support, so I'm not gonna elaborate further. What I want to talk about is the technical issues.
    My PC is by no means a beast, but it is capable of playing the newest games on mid/high settings. For example Assassins Creed Odyssey or Far Cry 5/New Dawn at 60fps.
    I own an RX580 8GB, a 4th gen i7 and 16GB of RAM. This should be enough for everything in 1080p. But ARK struggles to keep constant FPS. I tested the steam version and the version of the Windows Store (which was a disaster, no fullscreen and no mouse lock, forced to use a gamepad) and I couldn't get stable FPS, even on medium settings. On low I get my 60 FPS, but not stable. The developers said this should be fixed by now, but it's just another lie from them. Also the game in its full form is close to 200GB in size, because the developers don't seem know how to pack assets.This game reeks early access in every aspect, but the developers try to sell it to you at full price. With a season pass. Which doesn't include the newest DLC Genesis. Paired with the lies, false promises and the incompetence of the developers, you get a game which is pretty close to fraud.
    If you want another example for the developers incompetence, check reviews of their newest game Atlas. DON'T BUY AT FULL PRICE. DEEP SALE OR NO SALE.    … Expand
  21. BillyrazorG8
    Sep 2, 2017
    0
    What a piece of **** **** The graphics are PS2 level and this game has absolutely no **** reason to exist and no reason for it to be so popular. I hope this dies as soon as possible.
  22. Xelluse
    Jan 10, 2018
    0
    Can say just one thing: This so called Game is just a scam! Stay away from it!
  23. One-Eyed-Jack
    Dec 7, 2019
    0
    I used to like this game. It's a truly great idea, with horrible execution.

    I liked a lot of ideas this game had, especially with the different maps that offered you unique things to craft and new dinos. I found myself at times surprised with how large and pretty this game was, the idea of starting out as nothing at all, and making torches, spears, etc, and evolving eventually into a    I used to like this game. It's a truly great idea, with horrible execution.

    I liked a lot of ideas this game had, especially with the different maps that offered you unique things to craft and new dinos. I found myself at times surprised with how large and pretty this game was, the idea of starting out as nothing at all, and making torches, spears, etc, and evolving eventually into a tribe with advanced weapons and vehecles is interesting and as far as progression, it was executed well.

    I found myself getting killed by raptors A LOT, even when I had good armor/equipment, it ended in me getting very pissed off a lot as I lost a lot of good dinos to packs of raptors. At times I found myself having to spawn in a sword and shield below level to craft one just so I'd have a fighting chance if I encountered them.

    But none of that is what's influencing my review. I could handle most of the bugs, as a former Fallout/Bethesda fan. But what really does it for me is the poor way this half-baked game was executed. It's not ever going to get fixed, so if you're hoping it will, you might aswell give up.
    Instead of fixing it, they decided to first start pumping out paid content for it, which compounded the already existing glitches/bugs in it even worse, as an aspiring game dev, seeing what a lot of companies are doing has really taught me how not to make games. Building on already broken code with more broken code is going to result in something really bad.
    But then they took it a step further with Atlas, and the way they've handled these games is the real reason I'm giving it a 0 despite that fact that at times I loved playing this game.

    All in all, the people who oversaw this game and made the decisions, should be absolutely ashamed. Ark was a lazy cashgrab, and Atlas was even worse. I'll never buy another game from Wildcard/Grapeshot/etc, you've lost my business.    … Expand
  24. DJKrimson
    Jan 5, 2021
    3
    Played this with my friends for around 35 hours. Seemed to have potential of being fun at first but we got very sick of it after a while because we didn't know what to do, where to go, where to find the resources we needed for crafting or anything.

    It feels like it takes eternities to farm materials for upgrades and that makes it really annoying that you can't fast travel with your    Played this with my friends for around 35 hours. Seemed to have potential of being fun at first but we got very sick of it after a while because we didn't know what to do, where to go, where to find the resources we needed for crafting or anything.

    It feels like it takes eternities to farm materials for upgrades and that makes it really annoying that you can't fast travel with your inventory (at least we didn't find out how). Also you'll die pretty often which makes you lose all your stuff you collected + the gear you had so at those times you might have to start farming smaller stuff for the 100th time so you can build basic gear and weapons again.

    If you don't have a dedicated server then playing together is a mess, you can't move 100 meters away from eachother.

    A few of my steam friends have 1000+ hours in this game so it might be fun if you really know what you are doing, but I can't be bothered to find out.    … Expand
  25. Lidergelm
    Oct 12, 2020
    3
    Реализация не плохал, но есть огромное НО. Ты не можешь спокойно нормально строиться и развиваться, так как ебаные мудозвоны максимального лвла прилетают на неебических драконах и разъёбывают всё что ты сделал, просто так. Играл часов 10 и за это время мне расхреначили, на 3х разных серваках, 3 чертовых дома. Нахуй эту игру со всеми гандонами!Реализация не плохал, но есть огромное НО. Ты не можешь спокойно нормально строиться и развиваться, так как ебаные мудозвоны максимального лвла прилетают на неебических драконах и разъёбывают всё что ты сделал, просто так. Играл часов 10 и за это время мне расхреначили, на 3х разных серваках, 3 чертовых дома. Нахуй эту игру со всеми гандонами!
  26. Zecvi
    Jul 10, 2021
    0
    This game is unbalanced and broken. It is time consuming to a fault. It's bad for your health and the devloppers expect that you forfeit your real life to play this game. It could have been the best but it has too many issues. DON'T PLAY IT. PvE is boring and PvP was handled so badly by the devs that it ruined the whole game. So once again, Don't play this, it's bad and need fix. It alsoThis game is unbalanced and broken. It is time consuming to a fault. It's bad for your health and the devloppers expect that you forfeit your real life to play this game. It could have been the best but it has too many issues. DON'T PLAY IT. PvE is boring and PvP was handled so badly by the devs that it ruined the whole game. So once again, Don't play this, it's bad and need fix. It also have the worst community in the world and devs let 13year old with too much time on they re hand to rule this game and ruin everybody s fun. This game will make you want to murder people, don't play it. It's like a EA game where you cannot trust the devs… Expand
  27. imagtx1080
    May 8, 2018
    0
    Belongs in the top 5 worst games i haver ever played. Not to mention Devs who arent even Devs just in Disguise since 3 other teams are actually developing it and they cant develope either. Its running on an very old Unreal Engine 4. you read right its not an actual Engine. Thats why it runs like crap.
  28. daviddavidson
    Jun 13, 2020
    0
    Spawn in.
    Die. Spawn in again. Die again. Finally get some hide by hunting the only available creature on the island. Accidentally start a tribe. Leave it to start another tribe. No warnings that leaving your tribe makes everything you own inaccessible to you even though your player name is on it.
    Spawn in again. Quickly harvest hide for a second bed. Stop for thirty seconds to try to set    Spawn in.
    Die. Spawn in again. Die again. Finally get some hide by hunting the only available creature on the island. Accidentally start a tribe. Leave it to start another tribe. No warnings that leaving your tribe makes everything you own inaccessible to you even though your player name is on it.
    Spawn in again. Quickly harvest hide for a second bed. Stop for thirty seconds to try to set up a house in a fairly safe area. Get killed by a cockroach. Try again. Get killed by a compy (basically a midget raptor that you could stomp).
    Rinse, repeat. Peak gaming! Such fun. Much wow.
    Totally worth the 220GB that this piece of 'modern art' takes up.



    Also the soundtrack is headache inducing.    … Expand
  29. ManChile
    Jun 2, 2018
    2
    A broken time sink of a game, a grind with no payoff. Your biggest enemy in the game isn't the dinosaurs; it's the poor optimization, unreliable servers, rushed content, and the developers themselves.

    Bumping the price from $30 to $60 for the "official release" without fixing anything beforehand is criminal. Three years after initial launch, this game shouldn't be considered as anything    A broken time sink of a game, a grind with no payoff. Your biggest enemy in the game isn't the dinosaurs; it's the poor optimization, unreliable servers, rushed content, and the developers themselves.

    Bumping the price from $30 to $60 for the "official release" without fixing anything beforehand is criminal. Three years after initial launch, this game shouldn't be considered as anything more than a mess of an early access title, as it's still needing constant updates. The developers are unprofessional and have been known to ban players that raid clans that have devs as members. They ban players for playing by the rules of their own game, no glitches or cheats required. They wiped the servers of everyone who played for the first 2 years to make room for the new customers for the "official release". They released new maps before they even had skyboxes, textures, proper collisions, or working servers.

    The only redeemable thing about this chore of a game is the variety of creatures and the animations for them. Regardless if you'll play single player or multiplayer, avoid this game, and don't support it either. This is coming from a longtime player of the game.    … Expand
  30. Echang
    Nov 2, 2019
    0
    This is one of the worst survival games I have ever played in my entire life backed by a scummy irredeemable company that I can't justify supporting.
    The game has an unbelievably terrible progression system. It will take hours upon hours to level up your character and until you level up a ton you can barely do anything. The only way to level up is to join a clan on a server and attempting    This is one of the worst survival games I have ever played in my entire life backed by a scummy irredeemable company that I can't justify supporting.
    The game has an unbelievably terrible progression system. It will take hours upon hours to level up your character and until you level up a ton you can barely do anything. The only way to level up is to join a clan on a server and attempting to join a clan which isn't even worth your time because the community is toxic and the servers consist of Chinese people with incredible lag and over 1k hours in that specific server alone. And with that crappy progression system, you have no weapons or means to defend yourself. Skill or smarts doesn't matter in this game, the amount of sweat and sheer hours does. All they'll do is kill you.
    The combat system is also awful, with the combat feeling incredibly floaty with almost no feedback for you attacking stuff, your attacks have no impact and getting attacked by dinosaurs will launch you back and kill you in 1 - 2 hits.
    The game runs like garbage even on great hardware. I've got a GTX 1070ti and an I7 6770 and 16gb of ram and I get 30-40fps on medium settings at 1080p. Not to mention it doesn't look very good.
    The only thing good about this game is that it can be fun with friends because the character creator is so unbelievably bad that it's funny. Then again, anything can be fun with friends, even watching paint dry.

    I could go on and on, DON'T BUY THIS GAME. Especially at 60 dollars, if you want to see how awful this game is without spending money, play Ark Mobile, the basics are all there the only difference being that Wildcard made it Pay To Win because they're scum and they represent everything wrong with the industry today. Play a game like 7 Days to Die, It is constantly getting fresh updates with devs who listen to the community with much better balance all for 15 - 20 dollars.    … Expand
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Awards & Rankings

22
#22 Most Discussed PC Game of 2017
72
#72 Most Shared PC Game of 2017

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
70

Mixed or average reviews - based on 18 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 18
  2. Mixed: 11 out of 18
  3. Negative: 0 out of 18
  1. PC PowerPlay
    Nov 12, 2017
    70
    Specialises in trick shots before mastering the fundamentals. Deeply flawed, but hard to ignore. [Issue#267, p.58]
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  2. DarkStation
    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.
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  3. 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]
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