Ark: Survival Evolved

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Nibedicus
Ark is a First-Person/3rd Person (switches between the 2) survival MMO(ish) RPG(ish) from Wild Card Games available for Pc Steam, PS4 and XB1. It is set on multiple islands/locations where the player must survive, build a home, gather resources and tame dinosaurs for his use. The gameplay is something like Skyrim meets Minecraft meets Don't Starve within a Jurrasic World setting.

http://ark.gamepedia.com/ARK_Survival_Evolved_Wiki

I downloaded this game as a filler for when Horizon Zero Dawn arrives and ended up not even touching my HZD. I am hopelessly addicted. Each gameplay element from gathering resources and building and taming all have their unique lure and were executed very well. Each feels like a game unto it's own. I once spent a day gathering stone and wood and 6 hours in was tellin myself: "this HAS GOT to get boring sooner or later!" 4 more hours later: still going.

The game is unforgiving, however. You can die from thirst, hunger, the elements, disease, falling (I included this because, unlike a LOT of games that baby its players with fall mechanics, this game is unforgiving!!), getting eaten by dinos (quite often early-mid game) and more often than anything else (in PVP servers) other players that want to rob you or just jerks who do it for the lols.

And death is brutal. You lose everything directly on your char (w/c you worked hard to get) and have to get back to your body within a set time while (or all the stuff on it vanishes) the game does very little to help you along to find your body (more often than not, it'll blend in with the bush and you end up never finding it even tho it might be standing a few feet away). Worse still, the island is huge, and unless you know your death location really well, it'll feel like a needle in a haystack.

Oh, and guess what? That house you spent hours building is not instanced. It exists even when you are offline. Meaning that you may well come back to have hours even days and weeks wiped out by jerk players while you were away.

The game is also still in its beta phase (or is in a perpetual beta to excuse its buggy state) and bugginess plus brutal mechanics can make you wanna smash your controller against the wall sometimes.

Nonetheless, it is a game I would recommend to anyone. I am hopelessly addicted to said game and am inviting anyone to at least give it a try.

ares834

Sacred Fire
Still?! Lol.

Nibedicus
@ares834: Forum won't let me quote for some reason. Will disgree about the game being sh!t. Been playing almost a month and not since WoW Vanilla and Diablo 2 had I had so much fun with a game. Granted, it is brutal (dearhs, getting raided, losing tames) AND unfair (offline raiding, losing tames/gear to crap like misclicks, server crashes and DC) thus it is not for everyone (tho I would recommend it for everyone to try and see if it is something you can get into). I have restarted 5x (not because of PVP but because I made nooby mistakes) and I don't feel frustrated as I feel (IMO) the start of the game (where it is a fight for survival and not a grind for more power) to be where the most fun is.

I tried this game as a placeholder until my prepurchased Horizon: ZD came out, still haven't even thought about opening HZD yet.

Also, the game is techically "finished". It's just that it is a trend for companies these days to "stretch" their alpha stage just to excuse problems like poor server management and in game bugs (although "official" release is in a few months). Like I said, game is far from perfect and many would hate the state of where the game is right now. But for those that can get into the gameplay, it will be one of the most fun experiences you'd have.

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