Recent reviews by nullforceomega

This was supposed to be a 1000 hour review. Then it was supposed to be a 2000 hour review. But every time I tried to write it I just ended up playing more Kenshi.

I don't know how I could give a more positive review than this, so I'll end it with this, "How long til Kenshi 2?"

This is, without question, the best $3 I have ever spent.

Buy it, play it, love it.

Edit:

July 15, 2025: Snail Games has pushed a new update to A:SE which has bricked every single mod on the workshop. It is my belief that this has been done intentionally in order to drive players into purchasing Ark: Survival Ascended, as such I must change my rating to not recommended, and further state that I would not in good conscience recommend A:SA either, as this is a clear breach of customer trust.


The original text of this review remains below for interested parties.


This is the first review I have written so please forgive any missteps I may make.

ARK: Survival Evolved is a very good game, with a few glaring problems, so my recommendation of this product is provisional.

Pros:

Dinosaurs, and a rather large variety thereof, alongside a sizable number of other pre-historic creatures. All beautifully modelled, textured, and animated, with distinct behaviors.

Very configurable gameplay, a great many factors can be adjusted through the game's own interface or through it's ini file, making your experience range from brutally punishing to only slightly harrowing.

Beautiful. Graphically amazing with solid sound design, the world of ARK, be it The Island, The Center, or one of the excellently made third party maps has never failed to impress me.

Neutral:

Geared heavily towards online multi-player. While not ignoring single player, ARK is built around multiplayer, thanks to the above mentioned configurability this is not specifically problematic, but as a solo player you will need tose tweaks or will be bogged down by large resource costs, massive time-sink activities like taming and breeding dinosaurs and other creatures.

Difficulty, ARK is harsh in the beginning, and has a great many random elements, including spawning hostile creatures in close proximity to players, this, combined with needing to recover lost belongings (or keeping extensive supplies of spares) can be very off-putting, especially to new players.

Cons:

Massive HD footprint. Even without mods ARK is huge, easily devouring 80 GB of disk space, if you don't have copious amounts of HD space or the means to acquire it, don't buy this game.

Extremely demanding, without good quality hardware ARK can bring systems to their knees even on lower settings, and even higher-tier systems may struggle with its extensive post-processing effects.

Is not optimized. ARK is in early access, it is not a complete product and as such has not had much optimization, this compounds the above issues many times over, leading to stuttering, severe FPS loss, and occasionally crashes.

I have tried to keep this short and to the point, and thank those of you who have stuck with me to this point. Ultimately ARK is a very good game, especially for those interested in multiplayer, and I whole heartedly reccomend it to those with the specs and patience to participate in its development. I myself however, am uninstalling the game, I've invested many hours into it, and enjoyed much of that time, but the immense file size and infuriating randomness of spawns have frustrated me to the point that I will not be returning to this game until it is finished, and even then, only if file sizes are reduced to a managable level.