Online game "Ark: Survival Evolved"

Games about harsh survival in the open world, where you need to create your base, collect resources, craft tools, feed and feed your character, have long been in high demand. And especially popular remains Ark: Survival Evolved, the first version of which was released back in 2015. What's the reason for this? The attention to detail, the presence of dinosaurs, or maybe the fact that it is, among other things, a large-scale multiplayer game? Let's find out in our review.

Indeed, Ark: Survival Evolved was initially released in early access in 2015 and received moderately optimistic reviews - the raw technical state and the general underdevelopment of the game at that time. The project was constantly supplemented and fixed with patches, and 2 years later the game appeared on Steam - but even after that it continued to actively develop, confidently winning the hearts of gamers. As a result, the versions, for example, from 2020 and from 2015 are strikingly different.

But in any case, one thing remains unchanged - this is a game about survival on a distant mysterious island, where we wake up without remembering how and why we got here. And the island is inhabited by different dinosaurs, pterodactyls and other ancient animals, which try to eat the player for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And the plot (yes, there is a plot here!) is connected with the attempts to find out what is going on here, who we are and where we are.

In the process we learn about the disaster called "Incident Ark", after which the island became a site for experiments organized by some high-tech forces - they populated the territory with prehistoric beasts. We will also learn about how these experiments were resisted by the previous inhabitants - the search for the notes and diaries left by them makes up the storyline.

In addition, the research of mysterious anomalies affecting the surrounding world and dinosaurs is crucial to the plot and understanding the history of this world. And with the release of the Genesis Chronicles add-on, the story became much more interesting - we were even sent to a certain space station.

And still the main thing in Ark: Survival Evolved is, of course, the gameplay and the process of survival, which is organized in maximum detail. Your character must eat, drink and constantly monitor the temperature of the air and his body. He can also catch some disease like swamp fever - you will have to search for or make your own medicine.

Temperature is affected by many factors, including, of course, the weather - rain, snow, fog, heat. It also changes with the time of day. In addition, being in water lowers the temperature (and at the same time reduces thirst), and if you stand near a fire source, it increases accordingly. And this is important - the lower the temperature, the more the character wants to eat and will quickly reach a state of hunger, which begins to decrease health and stun effect appears. Well, the higher the air and body temperature, the more thirsty and thirsty the character becomes, which leads to the same negative health effects.

To reduce the impact of extreme weather and temperature on your body, you need to wear appropriate clothing and eat food with special properties. But, of course, the first thing to do is to build and strengthen your shelter, which starts with building a fire and gradually turns into what we used to call the phrase "my house is my fortress". There are all kinds of structures, from thatched to metal, and even futuristic ones made of a made-up material called "tek". And the buildings themselves include different types, including not only walls, doors, ceilings, but even window frames.

On your base you can also engage in full-fledged farming, grow plants, vegetables and fruits - for this purpose, there is even a provision for the creation of glass structures that provide a greenhouse effect. The food we make from our recipes will spoil over time - so it's important to put a refrigerator on the base. It's also better to place containers to collect rainwater - this will help to provide fresh water. And earthen walls that block heat ensure a balanced temperature inside the shelter. To build all this, you need resources, which we spend the whole game collecting by chopping trees, poking rocks with a pickaxe, mining ore, and then melting it in furnaces.

Also a lot of resources go into creating and improving equipment, consumables and weapons. For crafting, of course, you need blueprints, as well as the so-called "engrams" - these are recipes that provide constant crafting from any place, and, unlike blueprints, they are not lost after the death of the character and do not take up space in the inventory. The latter is also important - the more inventory weight you have, the slower you move.

As in any similar game, we also have to pump up the character - with getting new levels you can increase various characteristics, including health, stamina, maximum carrying weight, movement speed, resistance (it is just responsible for resistance to cold and heat), oxygen level (the higher it is, the longer you can stay underwater), and crafting speed. All in all, you can gain up to 200 levels.

In addition, you can and should improve the characteristics of our tamed creatures - each of them is pumped up to a maximum of 75 levels. And each of them helps a lot in the process of survival. The mechanics of taming them is one of the most important in the whole game. You can tame almost all (with rare exceptions) creatures, and there are about two hundred of them on the island. These are not only dinosaurs, all those diplodocs, tyrannosaurs, brontosaurs and other saurians, but also saber-toothed tigers, mammoths, didicurs. In addition to real prehistoric animals with the appearance of add-ons and the development of the storyline in the game added mythological phoenixes, griffins, golems, wyverns, dragons, as well as completely fictional monsters and robots invented by the authors. All of them live in their own biomes, where there is their own hierarchy of predators.

Creatures can be tamed in various violent and non-violent ways, but in any case they must be given their favorite food. Moreover, you can breed creatures and do their selection to get offspring of different levels more perfect in their characteristics than their parents - there are detailed guides on how to do it better and more efficiently. And in the process, various mutations can even occur. This is also a very important and deep mechanic, including, among other things, taking care of the babies.

Tame animals can be used in a variety of ways depending on the species - most often as transportation and additional inventory, where you can carry a bunch of stuff and where food doesn't spoil as quickly. On pterodactyls we can fly and even throw spears or shoot crossbows in the process. On others, we swim fast underwater or gallop across the land like a trusty horse.

Especially large animals like Brontosaurus or Mosasaurus can even be used as a mobile walking base and shelters can be built on their backs. There are creatures that are perfect for defending your base or, on the contrary, for attacking other players' bases.

Yes, as we have already said, Ark: Survival Evolved is a large-scale multiplayer game. It doesn't prevent you from playing alone if you want to. For such a quieter solo playthrough it is best suited to the PvE mode, where our enemies are nature itself, dinosaurs and other creatures, but not other players. They do not interfere, but on the contrary help each other. If you want, you can team up and run together to hunt some mammoth or tyrannosaur.

In PvP mode everything is different - here players are free to attack each other, their bases and shelters to loot or steal eggs of valuable breeds of dinosaurs. And on servers with enabled PvP-mode, of course, it is better to immediately join clans and entire tribes, which in turn are free to create alliances - it gives bonuses to experience and other advantages, including the ability to use all the tamed tribe creatures.

Tribe members work together to defend their buildings, gather resources and organize raids, raid other tribes' bases or simply (although it's not easy at all) try to complete the game by defeating all bosses. For defense in your possessions you can leave your guardian pets and install turrets. And when attacking, you are free to take a squad of triceratops and other predators with you.

In addition, the game has a special mode "Survival of the fittest", the purpose of which is to be the last survivor on the island, getting rid of all other competitors. And in such trials, especially if the "Hardcore" function is enabled (in this case the character dies forever), often help various reinforcements and bonuses, which can be purchased for real money. Yes, Ark: Survival Evolved is a paid game, but it also has a micropayment system. However, the main bet is still made on cosmetic items for customization of the character and his dinosaurs.

However, no money can buy the pleasure you get from playing Ark: Survival Evolved, and most importantly - from the way you survive despite everything. This is really one of the best games in this genre, where, on the one hand, a lot of attention is paid to the realism of the survival process itself, and on the other hand, there are dinosaurs, dragons and griffins, which we are free to fly and which we can even breed. The game looks and sounds gorgeous at the same time. And the most interesting thing is that it continues to develop - even though the authors have recently released a remake of the very first version on Unreal Engine 5 (it is called Ark: Survival Ascended) and are now preparing a full-fledged second part.

Zarium. November 2023