Steam says I have had Ark: Survival Evolved running for 1,855 hours. Hours. Now, that number is true. That is NOT how long I have played. Ark is a long, slow load. So there were plenty of times I would launch it, then walk away and take a shower or make dinner or go to bed. It might sit for 1-8 hours before I came to actually play. I’m not saying this is a good plan, but it’s what worked.
I still have played a lot of Ark.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the real number was close to 1,000 hours. I got this game back in 2015 to play along with some friends. I hope I never forget that first session, the fear of the Island and the terror when we got caught by a t-rex. It took us 2 tries to get to the base the group was building. It was exhilerating. It was terrifying. It was fun.
The rest of the people who introduced me to the game filtered off over the next few months, distracted with other, newer games. I stuck around. I bought some of the expansions as they came out. I bemoaned the terrible communication of the studio.
I got extremely excited about Ark 2’s trailer in…. 2018? 2019? Vin Diesel!! Suddenly this game which had felt small and niche…. I felt seen. I knew the numbers said a lot of people played on Ark servers, but since I was the only one among my friends who still played, I didn’t feel that.
Now you know that as a reviewer I am biased. I have enjoyed my time in the game. What else you need to know is that most of my play time has been solo. I don’t like servers. Unless I know the people I’m playing with, I don’t tend to enjoy online play. Since having a kid – a pause is kind of a necessary feature to playing games. That isn’t an option in online play. So there is a lot of single-player. Which is not necessarily how the game was designed.
There is still something positively thrilling about getting on the back of a T-rex and running around slaughtering other dinos. And the T-rex isn’t even my favorite in the game (ok, the otter might be but I can’t ride them, they are just too cute to allow anything to kill them!). I really like the baryonx, but the therizenasaur also feels very special to me. Not necessarily for good reasons, I’ve just had some really good ones.
The studio has just released a “remastered” Ark: Survival Ascended (cue a sprained eyeball because I rolled it so hard). They put up a “btw, we submitted paperwork to get the game on Steam and stuff” about a week ago. They played the trailer yesterday on the xbox partner showcase with “coming soon!” Then they put up the steam store page and apparently released “early access” on pc sometime last night. Typical for this studio – communication sucked. No one knew what was really happening. My attitude was “I’ll believe when I see it.” Apparently what they released is…. buggy.
My feelings are mixed. I am not going to pay for the remaster at $40+. Yes, I want to play it. The studio desperately needs to work on some significant improvements in their management and communication and programming teams. It’s a mess and I don’t trust them as far as I can throw an orca.
Dream by Day 