ARK: Survival Ascended. EARLY ACCESS. Review

What’s new Old buddy?

The ARK survival saga, famous for being characterized by surviving in a prehistoric world full of dinosaurs, but with certain technology, came back recharged and below I will tell you its differences from the original.

Development:
ARK Survival Ascended, is, so to speak, the replacement of its predecessor ARK Survival Evolved. The differences? They are found in the great leap that the game made at a graphic level, since the Unreal Engine 4 engine was replaced by Unreal Engine 5, the premise is very tempting, we know that the new Unreal engine is incredible, and it is a delight to For the games of this generation, by this I mean a powerful PC, PS5, or Xbox Series X/S failing that.

This Early Access can be very tempting, the graphic quality between Survival Ascended and Survival Evolved (predecessor) is abysmal, but be careful you have to be prepared for this leap and even more so on PC; where our computers will suffer three or four times as much for running it.
With a mid-range machine, I barely achieved 30 FPS in a 2K resolution, and only a little more FPS in Full HD, we cannot ask for miracles, if Evolved was already heavy, this is a pork milanesa with fried egg on. However, at 30 FPS the game is very enjoyable, it is a shame that there is not (for the moment) the possibility of rescaling resolution, an option that could gain more FPS on any machine or PC.

However, the question is: Is it worth buying again? The answer is again misleading, on the one hand the graphical leap is abysmal, and this makes it clear that this new generation of PC and consoles does not come with detours, the graphical change as I said is “night and day” and on the other hand On the other hand, it should be noted that Evolved closed official servers already in September 2023, which I do not agree with, since Evolved took forever to become a “playable” product due to its bugs; Ascended suffers from the same thing, its EARLY ACCESS presupposes a game at a lower price, with an abysmal jump in graphics but that is plagued with bugs that at least do not break the game or the experience but that we will have to wait for them to be solved.

Gameplay:
For those who do not know the game ARK Ascended or Evolved, it is a survival game where we can create houses, we will have to get our own food, evolve, in an area full of dangerous dinosaurs, as we increase our level by doing the aforementioned, we will achieve evolution points that will allow us to build new and more advanced weapons, structures, and why we will not be able to ride dinosaurs.
In ARK we have several modes, we can play against other tribes, cooperatively with friends, or just what is better known as PvE (player versus everyone) or player against the world, the options are vast, and in my experience I found a mode where you level up quickly, this in a way, I believe, compensates for the closure of the servers of the previous game, since many people deposited hundreds of hours in ARK; and when he said hundreds he did not hesitate.

Conclusion:
It should be noted that this is the first time that I am not going to leave a score in a game, it is not ethical to do so because of what has already been explained, and because of its EARLY ACCESS, at this point it is obviously recommended only to those who enjoyed its predecessor Evolved, since the price It is also more accessible, for the rest and with ARK 2 coming out at the end of the year, I recommend you wait and enjoy it in a better way.

More info: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399830/ARK_Survival_Ascended/

Writing: Joe Tesone

We thank the developers for the copy provided on PC.