Recent reviews by Wolverine

Good game to come back to every other year. I dont understand all the negative reviews. In a time when I can play 10 games at the same time this game doesnt seem like a time sink. I like it. Just pick up something else like Frostpunk and come back in a couple of years. So what?

Still not worth it. The new map extention is ridiclously small and the weapons balance update makes the enemies even bigger bullet sponges. This game is like the stupid friend you had in high school. You liked him for a while and you are looking forward to seeing him again every few years. Only whenever you see him you realise why you broke contact in the first place. The graphics are extremly outdated by todays standarts. It almost seems like something on the old Xbox 360. Maybe if you are in the hospital and all your other games are not aviable play this.

PVE experiance

The good:
- There seems to be more high lvl dinos here than on the island. So good map for taming
- Lots of space to build even on PVE. Wide flat spaces.
- Lots of water. Probably better than the island to find water tames.
- Large swamp and redwood. Good to find thyla for example.
- Once the player rates normalize the map mind be quite good for people that prefer a more open map.


The bad:
- Hands down the performance is bad. My game stutters every now and than. The FPS for me is the same as on a fully populated island server with large bases and dinos out. About 30FPS in 4K Ultra with a 4070 TI. But it also drops waaay down (here and on a full island..)
- The rock formations only make it seem more interesting until you realise there is nothing special to this map. Its like the island with more water and the rest is stretched out thin.


The ugly:
The volcano island is a big mistake. Putting green vegetation there is a mistake. Should have kept it dark and unfriendly. There seems to be almost no resources there.


This map seems to have some potential but over all even if they fix the performance - wich I dont think they will - this map is nothing special. Its like an island server with better spawn rates for high lvl dinos. Once Val and Rag drop this map will be empty.

Try to do the very first mission without google or youtube. Its super rewarding.

So far I have found several glitches and texture errors, and I have not really seen a lot of the map. The map sadly seems like a cheap copy/paste from the UE 4 version, with the Ascended additions. Here are my personal pluses and minuses so far:

Plus:

- New types of cute babies like wolves, sabers.
- The mountains seem to be taller in UE 5, thus the whole map seems more realistic.
- New green pockets in the desert with new water well placements, it seems.
- New ruins to explore, just like on the new ASC island map.
- Many areas now seem a bit more fleshed out like the mountains west of the blue obi

Minus:

- The weather events must be bugged right now. A new one triggers every 10 minutes.
- My Bob's content does not work although I bought the DLC in the Steam launcher. Other people in chat write of bugged Bob's content as well.
-Visual glitches around the map like floating vegetation and cut-off terrain.
-No more scattered metal deposits in the western area where the trench is. There seems to be more metal nodes on the tall mountains though. It seems like they forgot to add the metal back in when they did UE 4 to UE 5 in one afternoon or so.
- The trench now is in a more orangeish sandy look. Less black and darkish look. It looks sad.
- The sand dunes just stop around the main part of the map in some sort of an unnatural trench. It looks not organic at all.

Neutral:

- Blue obi is now this lush tropic lagoon type of obi which is odd since blue obi was more of a barren late game area. Everything tries to kill you still.

Right now its a ♥♥♥♥ show and it will be for the next 3 or so months. I am talking about having 2h a day of play time on an offical server because the servers are so full and unstable. Its an early access launch after all.
However after this time I see a lot of potential and I can not wait to explore all the DLCs again! This version of ARK gives me a very destinct vibe of a mystic dinosaur island just like what we saw in the jurassic park movies. The foilage and lighting is amazing and the devs made good use of the UE5.x tools.

Edit: its the 1st of Jan 2024 and I still get fatal errors. Only that now the servers are stable so I wait 30min to join my full server... Stay away from this game!

Edit2: With SE the game became more like ASE in many ways again. I am looking forward to the The Center release. Official SE and The Island performance wise is still a bad experiance since people just dont know when to stop building. And SE servers are still overcrowded. It seems the game is not made for anything above 30 players on an official (pve) server. And not made for giant a** bases covering everything arround green obi ffs...... For now PVE EU 5445 seems pretty good and snappy. Its my old server and I wish my new one ran like that. The Island in general now is pretty low player nr and it feels better.

I started to play on a temporary SE server in April 24 and it felt like a completly diferent game. Not choppy or laggy or so. Not overcrowded and global chat was friendly and helpful. Just a really nice oldschool ARK experiance.

For now I feel like the game is on an ok course and I change my recommendation into a "Yes". I am really looking forward to seeing Aberration in UE5. Game is worth buying.

Edit 3: The missions on the Club Ark Servers are just absolute brain rot. You can not heal. You have to start over the whole mission and the missions are catered to groups of up to 4 and even on the gamma level quite hard. The mechanics are like a 5 year old designed the missions. Now I know why these servers are empty 99% of the time.

Edit 4, April of 2025:
Still a buggy mess. The easter event was a mess.

Edit5, June of 2025:
ARK: Lost Colony Expansion Pass is 35$... ♥♥♥♥. This. ♥♥♥♥.

Fantastic survival game.
- One find or decission can be the difference between life and death!
- You can get lost when its foggy or freeze to death when wind comes up feets from your hut.
- The graphics are really nicely done!
- Wolfes actually follow you arround the terrain if you are on top of a stone. AI is quite good.

Not so good yet:
- Indoors are often completly the same
- Its to easy to melt snow. Better implement a mechanic to collect thorn away bottles outside.
- Game is not really realistic: for example you can freeze to death inside a house where there are carpets and coutches arround you. You cant use this things to help you.