And quotes are in order, because the game still looks like it's in beta. First of all, the optimization is poor, and even with a powerful PC you will have a hard time pushing the graphics options to the limit. In addition, many bugs remain, including collisions or animations. And despite the presence of a wheel that allows access to different options when approaching an object, an animal or a person, the interface lacks clarity and practicality. True to their (bad) reputation, the developers continue to cram more and more things into the game, forceps if necessary, without ever taking the time to refine the elements already present. Moreover, the Wildcard studio has even managed to alienate a good part of the community that has supported it from the start, so much their communication and their general behavior leave something to be desired. It is therefore no surprise that a feeling of incompleteness emerges from the gaming experience.
True to their (bad) reputation, the developers continue to cram more and more things into the game, forceps if necessary, without ever taking the time to refine the elements already present.
ARK is undeniably a bit of a crazy sandbox, and the adventure would have gained enormously in interest and accessibility if it had a more solid backbone, or even a backbone at all. Because we will have to do without an interactive tutorial (just a few explanatory texts), without a single-player campaign, and without a real story. The only script elements come from excerpts from diaries scattered around the open world, and you'll have to figure it out yourself, or using websites or Youtube videos, how everything works. Therefore, one might be tempted to dedicate the game to scorn and move on directly to something else. It is also a safe bet that this is what many players will do, as long as they have not spent too much money to obtain this strange product. But they would be wrong to do so, and not only for financial reasons! Because in the middle of all the flaws of the game, buried under technical problems, hidden behind the clumsy interface and hidden behind the mortuary of the developers, is an experience that deserves close attention.
I WILL SURVIVE
The first quality of the game is certainly to offer uncompromising survival phases. You start the adventure in your underwear, literally, and therefore really start from scratch. You will have to manage your thirst, your hunger, your stamina, your health, the weight of what you carry, the heat, the cold, the oxygen when you swim and, above all, totally black nights where you will shiver with cold as of fear, and will be totally at the mercy of the first carnivore that will pass by. Suffice to say that your first steps will not be easy. You will start by picking up some stones on the ground, some plant fibers in the middle of the clumps of grass and some berries. Then you will understand that by tapping on the fragile trees, you will collect wood and branches. What to make a pickaxe, which will optimize the harvesting phases, then a torch (just to see something at night), a campfire, a stone ax, a wooden spear, then clothes, a gourd, foundations shelter, thatched walls and roofs and so on, until obtaining, a few hundred hours later, assault rifles and other automatic turrets. Because yes, the game universe is as prehistoric as it is technological… But before creating metal parts in workshops, you will have a good time in Jurassic Robinson Crusoe mode. And it is under these conditions that the game begins to reveal its charms. When, tormented by hunger and while you do not yet have a weapon powerful enough to face the few dinos around you, you decide to catch a weak fish in the river and, in doing so, you find yourself fight a kind of giant crocodile, while a pterodactyl takes advantage of this setback to take the pike you had just had time to exterminate into the skies… Frankly, that does it!
You will also tame all these beautiful people, so that ankylosaurs, brontosaurs, dilophosaurs, dodos, triceratops and other tyrannosaurs (we pass a bunch of them because the list is very long) help you with transport, hunting, harvesting, storage or defense.
The life simulation seems to work, and it will thrill anyone with a particular taste for prehistory. Because you will come across a bunch of dinosaurs! Some realistic, some wacky, but all very impressive. And you won't just walk alongside herbivores or observe carnivores from afar. You will also tame all these beautiful people, so that ankylosaurs, brontosaurs, dilophosaurs, dodos, triceratops and other tyrannosaurs (we pass a bunch of them because the list is very long) help you with transport, hunting, harvesting, storage or defense. To do this, you can approach certain animals from behind and press the main action key after placing the target creature's favorite food in a specific inventory slot. We're still trying to figure out why we have to feed our targets from behind rather than from the front, but maybe it's better not to think too much about it... Anyway, the most lively or aggressive creatures are recalcitrant at this point. processing. These will have to be knocked out first, using a slingshot, a club, tranquilizer darts or, in the worst case, your clenched little fists. Once the dinosaur is unconscious, all you have to do is put enough food in its inventory for it to have you definitely the right one. From then on, you can give him orders, have him reproduce with members of his species of the opposite sex, and even ride him if you have made the appropriate saddle beforehand. At high levels, you can even build buildings and weapons on the biggest dinos, including those able to fly. But for that, you will have to unlock as many patterns as possible, called engrams, and therefore repeat the same actions over and over again.
JURASSIC CROC LANTA PARK
Gather resources, make fire, collect berries, kill dinos for meat, build shelters out of thatch, then wood, then stone, etc. ARK is a bit like Minecraft among the dinos, but with a good dose of Korean MMO "grinding". It is also so tedious to unlock all the engrams on your own and to collect enough resources to craft the highest level items, that you quickly end up wanting to join a guild (called a tribe), in order to share the tasks and progress faster. But in this case, be careful if you play on a PVP server. The atmosphere there is generally deleterious, and it is very likely that after sweating blood and water to build a small base worthy of the name, alone or with others, you will discover on your next connection that it has been completely razed by an evil tribe. PvE servers and local games are widely recommended for those who would be afraid of this prospect. In any case, playing ARK is never completely fun, especially because of the flaws mentioned at the start of the article. It takes a certain amount of masochism to enjoy the experience. But the fact is that it is quite possible to have a lot of good time with this game apart.
