ARK: Survival Ascended has entered early access, and the developers at Studio Wildcard have outdone themselves on this iteration of the original game while still being very much Studio Wildcard. From the stunning visuals to the improved systems, ARK: Survival Ascended would be a complete joy to play for fans of the original, if not for a mix of issues.
ARK: Survival Ascended looks stunning. Once players finish creating their survivor in the new character creator, listen to the short new cutscene, and spawn onto The Island, it's immediately apparent that Unreal 5 makes a huge difference. Everything looks fantastic, from the dinosaurs to the underwater particle effects. It was a joy to wander the beach as all the visual improvements brought the base map to life.
As I started my routine of gatherings and building from ARK: Survival Evolved, I was shocked at how smooth the single-player gameplay initially felt. The menus are snappy, and I quickly noticed many quality-of-life improvements within the gameplay systems and UI. But as I played, old familiar issues appeared mixed in with a few new problems.
Did I mention that ARK: Survival Ascended looks fantastic? Good, because it's worth saying again. The developers have done a great job making the environment a feast for the eyes when all the bells and whistles are turned on. This starts with character creation. Gone are the limited options of ARK: Survival Evolved; players can now adjust almost every aspect of their survivor's appearance and make some decently good-looking characters or an absolute monstrosity. The only minor criticism I have of the character creator is that Studio Wildcard needs to let us change the character's expression eventually. The permanent frown on the male model looks horrible, and I want to cover it with facial hair.
Once a survivor is created, a short cutscene is played. It does a decent job of setting up a plot hook in the quickest way possible, and it's nice to see the equivalent of a visually upgraded Cortana still getting work these days. I wondered where she ended up after Microsoft canned her from the Windows voice recognition gig.
I loved the look of the foliage, the volumetric clouds, the fog, and the water. It reminded me of the first time I loaded up ARK: Survival Evolved and how impressive the visuals were during its early access. Unlike version 1.0, the overall performance is much better if you have the hardware to run the game. My wife initially used a GTX 1080 and could run ARK: Survival Ascended on low settings without too many issues. It was pretty stable, and while there were visual improvements, they were definitely more limited in scope. But what really shocked me is she didn't experience any crashes during more than 20 hours of initial gameplay in single-player and on our hosted server.
I, on the other hand, was using an RTX 3080. While I did experience the appearance of grainy clouds at times, the rest of the visuals have been a treat with all the video settings on High. Watching resource nodes deteriorate as I harvested from them has even been a joy. Once my wife upgraded to a 7900 XT last week, she saw even more of a step up from my experience once all settings were set on Epic.
But with all the visual bells and whistles comes a performance cost, even with a high-end current-gen graphics card. After the new shine became at least somewhere normalized, we both immediately started using console commands to turn off volumetric clouds, volumetric fog, and grass. While they do make for a more immersive experience, the cost of system resources is just too high, in my opinion.
ARK: Survival Ascended brings many system improvements that may not be immediately apparent. The first I encountered was right in the main menu. The different game types are easily accessible, and if I want to install single-player mods, they are now fully integrated. Click Mod List, browse, and click Install. For the dedicated servers hosted by Nitrado, scanning the list of available mods and installing them is easy once the option is set for Steam PC. Great changes.
The UI has also seen a considerable overhaul. Various screens are snappier and more responsive. The options on many UI screens, such as the clan menu, have been simplified and streamlined. Owned dinos can now be tracked and easily found after you die unexpectedly by micro raptor stuns. Every death generates a waypoint on the map to help players find their remains easily. The map is now amazingly useful, where you can add markers easily. The redial menus for building elements and dinos have been expanded.
The build system has been vastly improved; placing tiles how you want them is now so much easier. Foundations will snap to each other more easily; they can be raised and lowered as needed if the terrain supports it, and the new types of building tiles, such as triangular foundations, quarter walls, and triangular roof tiles, allow for so much more to be done when putting a base together. One improvement I love is combining walls and doors into one engram. When placing a wall, the R key quickly swaps between a wall and a doorway. A similar combination has been made with other engrams, such as ramps and stairs. Of course, my base still looks like a bunch of boxes, but I have enjoyed playing around with all the new options.
When expanding my base, I noticed certain elements/items have been further improved and changed. When placed, water pipes, feeding troughs, and generators now have a radius of effect displayed. This makes life so much easier for placing things like gardening plots and items that need electricity instead of running pipes and wires everywhere.
Characters can now place torches on a belt to provide light and warmth instead of carrying it in the offhand. I also love that when holding a weapon by pressing R, a radial menu pops up, allowing for a quick swap of attachments and ammo. The targeting between 1st and 3rd person has also been improved, but I still find myself swapping back to 1st person when harvesting leather and meat.
Many of the dinosaurs have received ability upgrades as well. There are so many pathing and AI improvements that I am still finding new ones after 70 hours. Tamed egg and poop gatherers will now automatically go about completing their tasks. Some dinos have had ability improvements like a roar that causes fear, while others can stun you that I don't remember originally being a thing from ARK: Survival Evolved. I am looking forward to taming the new giant insect on The Island once I can overcome my fear of it.
Exploration also feels more rewarding in ARK: Survival Ascended. Supply drops are now worth regularly gathering when they land. The supplies, weapons, and saddles within seem more abundant and useful. I look forward to delving into caves more next and seeing if the rewards there feel similarly increased.
One final note on the quality-of-life improvements is the breeding system overhaul and dino babies/juveniles. While I have not done much with breeding so far, it seems more intuitive, and I love being able to imprint on wild baby/juvenile dinos as an additional option to taming. I look forward to playing more with what mutations we can create and how colorful I can make some of my pets in the future.
While all the changes are great so far in ARK: Survival Ascended, it does suffer from some familiar issues and a few new ones. During the initial few days of early access, server performance was horrible. While Studio Wildcard patched the game quickly, and performance improved quickly, it still impacted the initial experience for many.
Even now, I am still experiencing the occasional lag spike on a privately hosted server and crash to my desktop multiple times a day. To help avoid some of the crash issues, I have turned off all the Nvidia-specific features and UI transition effects. But I still seem to crash randomly when opening the UI or, at times, when I close a UI window. What is strange is that my wife, using a 7900 XT, rarely has a crash to the desktop, maybe once a day, if at all.
Some of the meta has changed for those who had established tactics and preferred using certain ARK: Survival Evolved items to make life easier, such as the net gun from a later expansion. Move speed is also no longer an option to increase as a stat unless your server has it on. Also, the only map currently is The Island.
Certain items/tames that came with later maps and expansions are unavailable unless modded in. The dinos getting stuck in terrain seem to be fewer than before, but it still occurs. I have also noticed that finding a decent-sized piece of flat terrain to build on in ARK: Survival Ascended can be difficult, but I am experimenting now with building on pillars to see if I can work around it.
The final issue I will touch on is server hosting. At release, personal private server hosting was not available, and to host a private server online, you had to go through Nitrado as a provider. The community backlash was immediate as many ARK players typically hosted personal private servers or rented a server from a preferred service. Studio Wildcard quickly corrected the issue so that the community could start hosting personal private servers again.
But the server hosting service Nitrado has exclusive rights to ARK: Survival Ascended, which has disappointed many. This was not helped by the initial requirements of a 26-slot minimum server for a somewhat expensive price. With a recent server patch that reduced the amount of RAM required to run a server, Nitrado reduced the minimum number of slots to 20, but the price is still a bit high. I have been running my own server through Nitrado and will say it has been relatively hassle-free.
ARK: Survival Ascended is a gorgeous game if you have the hardware to turn on most of the bells and whistles. But make no mistake, this is ARK: Survival Evolved 1.5 with only The Island map to explore until more are released. The systems and UI have been refined to make the experience more enjoyable. But if you have played ARK: Survival Evolved and had your fill of that experience, I might at least wait awhile. There is also the cost of $45 to consider and the additional expansion costs in the future once they are released. The server rental exclusivity deal with Nitrado may also be a deal breaker for some. If you are a fan of the ARK experience, ARK: Survival Ascended scratches that itch and then some. It's a drastic improvement over the first iteration, even with the current technical issues.
