Welcome everyone, today is a special day, we are going to review one of my favorite titles, a game that i found most pleasing, fun and very intresting to play. Ark is a game with a big amount of negative things in it but none of them is enough to take away the fun. So prepare to DIE, like A LOT.
(Image source: http://mytechshout.com)
The Game
Welcome to one of the Maps of Ark, there are three in the main game and one more if you are to buy the expansion (Scorched Earth). The game is still in early access but its price has sky rocket from 27,99 Euros to 59,99 Euros today. Standing naked in the wild is a dangerous thing, standing naked in the wild and facing forgotten creatures like Dinos and pre-Ice age mammals is even worse. The game begins, you wake up as a man or woman (your choice) and you are in a totaly new world which you have to explore. Your mission for now is simple, level up, unlock the understanding of crafting and building (engram system), build something that can protect you from the dangers of the wild and of course survive. Gather your materials, you wont need metal for now, wood, thatch, fiber, stone and flint will do the trick. The whole human evolution of tech and society can be found in the game. You start at a gathering state where you build thatch and wooden structures to protect yourself from nature and its predators while you are trying to become more sophisticated and finally build iron man like suites and futuristic bases. While your first base is ready you already can realize that carrying stuff by yourself is not such a good idea. No worries people, you can tame the beasts that hunt you, yes you read that one right, your own T-Rex your own Raptors your own Brontosauros. Every creature is good at something, of course some of them are not worth your time. But after taming them you need a place to protect them from the wild ones, and if your are not afraid the wild cause your creatures are high level and can kill almost everything that does not mean the other survivors are going to just let your creatures and you be and do as you please.
(Image source: http://backgrounds4k.net)
Tribes
The best way to protect yourself and your pets is to be a part of a tribe with a name in the game. People are going to be afraid of harming you cause of your mates, power comes in numbers. Of course there is always someone stronger so your tribe might need to build great and powerful defences. Strategic placement of your defencive structures is vital. The material that you are building them is vital too, and the commands that you leave with your dinos when you go offline matter. Wars between tribes tend to be very much fun and tactics and strategic hits may support the outcome that pleases you. Grindind for better dinos and defences is vital and leveling up is vital too. Actual currency does not exist so whatever someone has can be of great value for someone else, they might come to steal your tribes vaults or they might ask for a trade. I ve been in a few servers where trade routes between tribes were more or less established. Being a friendly tribe has many benefits to your social establishment in the server, but being aggressive and destroying your enemies can plant fear and might keep you safe for a very long time (until an other powerful tribe comes from an other server and attack you). If you are friendly the other tribes and players might actually support you in this kind of situation. In one of my favorite Island servers the Alpha tribe (how they call the strongest tribe) Stranded Soldiers were totally friendly. They traded with the other players and had my respect, i got myself in having enough power to support them in war when the time came and so i did. So choosing a game style for a tribe is vital too.
(Image source: http://i.imgur.com)
Weather system
The game has a changing weather which is random(snowing, raining, fog, cloudy, sunny), that might be a good thing when you are somewhere with no water and rain starts falling but it might be a hellish situation if mist comes and the Rex that hunts you is somewhere around and you are not able to see it. If you are playing Scorched Earth weather is a very difficult and dangerous thing, sandstorms take away your stamina and water, electro-magnetic storms damage your generators and makes them useless for the duration of the storm, superheat wave burns you and give you heat-strokes and of course rain which is a good thing in the desert environment.
(Image source: http://www.tehbuildbox.com)
The Ocean
Aside Scorched Earth the other maps have deep waters and more creatures to fight/kill/tame. Deep waters are dangerous but there can be found end game materials like pearls, black pearls and oil that you need in order to craft or use late game gear and buildings. Nowadays your can even build underwater bases which of course are very expensive and only strong tribes can actually have.
(Image source: https://i.imgur.com)
Notable Creatures
Well i should start with my favorite, Griffin, it is a marvelous flyer, it can dive like a hawk and of course it carries you and even small animals if you wish. T-Rexes are very useful for farming meat and for protecting yourself and team. Equus is a kind of horse that can be very useful in mid-game. Ankylo is the best to farm metal with. Brontosauros is good at farming berries. Doedicurus is the king of stone farming and Casteroides is my personal choice for wood (Mammoth and Therizinosaurs are as good as Casteroides). Traveling around the Map in the late game is basically flying and the king of the skies is none other than the Wyvern, yes there are dragon like creatures that you can mount (difficult to get of course so i ll stick to Griffin).
(Image source: http://www.playjurassicark.com)
The Gameplay
First-person, MMORPG like stats and ideology and unique character outlook is the main concept. More or less you are running around gathering and using what you believe is useful (i ll write a guide in the future on how you can do that the right way in my opinion). You need tools, you need to have a big enough weight limit so that you can actually run fast and you definately need clothes(armor) that can protect you from the wild. Having a roof over your head is essential and a storage to place the materials for your future buildings or plans or tools or whatever is essential too. Your character doesn't need to sleep but you need to feed him, keep him hydrated and of course warm enough. Taming dinos takes time but the benefits of having pet friends are huge, they gather faster, they travel faster and they are able to carry by far more weight than you. To add on these benefits they fight along you and killing wild dinos becomes easier and quicker. In th gameplay i should add the building sickness. You have never enough buildings, and the architecture is never good enough. I have build so many buidlings for so many different reasons and i still find myself wondering how much better things can i build. If you are building for PvP simple buildings can be good enough but a complex full of traps building can be even better. I still laugh when i remember an enemy trying to raid my maze house oh it was so much fun.
(Image source: https://static1.gamespot.com)
Negatives
So as i mentioned already there are some serious negatives on this game, it is not in gameplay or game content. Lags, and lags a lot, i thought it was just me but i already tried far better internet conections and no it is not me. The servers are finding difficult to share so much stuff. More over the communite is too aggressive, and they are actually taking it to a whole new level. DDOS to the server that a tribe wants to raid so that there is none in there to defend it. Yea you might say those are some noobs that don't care about the game, well no that is all the mega tribes. Wars between them are huge and the DDOS attacks are frequent. And of course there is too much salt, ye it is a PvP based game so it is natural but if you are getting DDOS attacks and can't actually play/defend salt comes in great amounts. Finally the game price has risen like a lot and as i have mentioned in the past games should not cost that much no matter what they offer.
Well that was not all, i could keep on talking about Ark, but you do now know enough to try the game. And remember you are going to DIE, like A LOT. So don't worry about it we all died like a thousand times the first 100 hours (i am not exaggerating exactly).
You can find more articles of mine here: @diasdr For all personal thinking content, i am sorry if you find it in any way offensive, i didn't mean to offend anyone just to discuss/express my opinion.
