Ark Survival Evolved is one of the first games to take advantage of the newly-introduced scheme by Microsoft, known as the Xbox Game Preview Program. Introduced by the Xbox team back at E3, The Xbox Preview Program is a way for gamers to download games that are still being developed by their creators and to enable fans to give feedback based on what they have played so far ahead of a full release later in the pipeline. It`s a great little initiative and gives both fans and developers the best chance to play the game, and for developers to also improve the game over time, to be able to give them the best chance of having a game on release that will be that hit that developers hope it will be.
Ark Survival Evolved was released firstly to Steam members back in June for early access, ahead of being released for Xbox One members in December. The game is developed by four developers who have collaborated together, Studio Wildcard, Instinct Games, Efecto Studios, Virtual Basement, and is an action-adventure survival game, where the player must survive in a world that is inhabited with dinosaurs, natural hazards, and at frustrating and hostile times, other players.
As soon as you boot up the game, you are given the option to either go singularly, in which you will be the only player as you go to make yourself the ultimate survival king, or you can jump into one of the many ARK online servers (which since the game was released in December, has been upped massively) and have other people join you in your quest to survive. Upon going into a server (which was pretty full, each server holds 70 people) you are asked to create a character and build him up to how you see fit. You may decide you want a man who looks like he`d been to the gym every day for the past 30 years, or someone the complete opposite, and of course, you get the ability to name your character. After naming my character Joe, and building him up to be like a tank, I took him into the online server, where I didn’t know what I was going to be in store for.
The controls are something that you`ll pick up as you go along. You spam the Y button for picking up items such as Stones, many a type of flower, and much much more, and of course, as most games where you have to shoot or hit something, the right trigger to throw a punch, or a weapon (if you have one crafted and equipped). Fairly simple things. You`ll then be able to hit the circle button that will take you to your main home-page, where you can find out what you have in your inventory, craft things, and also spend points to improve your abilities such as health. You get more points through picking things up, crafting things etc. The more you pick up and craft, the more points you`ll get to increase your ability, making your job surviving against the dangerous species you will come up against, a little less-easier. Looking around for anything I could pick up, I built myself a camp fire, and base on the beach, looking out to the hills and valley. You can later on as you develop you`re level and points, gather groups of dinosaurs to defend you`re base, or attack another person`s one. The game is powered by Unreal Engine 4 (which a lot of newly-developed games are using, and I expect a lot more to use them this year) and uses tens of thousands Artificial intelligence entities according to director Jesse Rapczak.
However, there are a few things in the game that to me are quite gritty. For example, you have to play on the same server any time you boot up the game. For example, if we were to go onto Server 70 and start creating a character and building him up, you would have to go onto Server 70 every time you go onto the game. You would not be able to jump onto another server without creating another character. If you scroll right down the list at the start, you may find one that doesn’t hit full capacity (although due to the popularity of the game) I`d be very surprised. So if you are on a server that is currently full, then you will have to wait until someone drops out before you`ll actually be able to get onto the server to start playing the game.
Another thing for me is that the FPS rate can drop massively at times, making the game quite a mission to be able to play without getting frustrated. Again, I`ve no doubt that this will be something that is addressed before the full release, but I personally always struggle to play a game when it is constantly lagging and dropping in frame rates. Upon reading up, it appears that it can drop to a lowly 15fps at times.
I think it`s very difficult to fully critique a game that has not had its full release yet, and isn’t anywhere near being fully released. That`s the point of the program that Ark has found itself in. For the gamers to play the game and give their feedback, and the developers to address their feedback. It has a lot of potential to be one of those games that is very big, both on the Xbox One and PC. It seems that the fans are being listened to. They gave feedback about the lack of servers online. They got more servers added. I think it`s a great initiative, and if you get stuck into it, and play on the same server building your character up, you have the potential to have a lot of fun with it. It`s also being rumoured to be able to support VR, which with the partnership that Xbox have with Oculus Rift, could be a huge one in terms of VR Gaming. For me, if they can fix the little niggles in the game such as the low FPS rates, then they could well have themselves a winner.
A huge thank you to XCN for supplying us with a Review Copy of Ark Survival Evolved.
