TEST of ARK Survival Evolved: Between beautiful surprises and big disappointment

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Ark: Survival Evolved is known to be one of the biggest early access games to have finally been released. In addition, it is one of the survival games to have seduced the most people on both Steam, but also on consoles. Is this success due to quality mechanics, or does Ark only enjoy people's love for dinosaurs? Verdict!

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The principle of Ark Survival Evolved is very simple: you land almost naked on an unknown island populated by creatures from the Mesozoic era (what dinosaurs) and other creatures of prehistory (saber tooth tiger, etc). Your goal? Survive it! But before that, you will have to choose your server type and your continent. You have the possibility to evolve either on a PVP server or on a PVE server. Obviously, for a first approach, we strongly advise you to start with PVE, unless you have a big tribe of friends to join in PVP. The difference is simple: in PVE, the nature around you is the only danger. In PVP, it is also the players. Then we go with the choice between 3 different maps:

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• The Island: the original map, which is probably the simplest to start.
• Ragnarok: A community card that was officially added to the game.
• The Center: another community card that was added via a DLC

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" Welcome To Jurassic Park! "

This is where the serious things will begin. No need to dwell on the character editor, because it is so rickety choice that everyone is alike (unless you want to be a deformed). After a (long) load, you are finally at stake and you are not at the end of your surprises. Generally it is more logical to favor a spawn point in easy areas (beaches) because large predators are mainly in the center and the east coast, rather spared. Then, the game comes as most survival games, but ARK stands out by the great intuition of different game mechanics. Through your inventory you have access to all crafting schemes that you can unlock as and when of your climb.

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Denver, the last dinosaur

Each scheme will cost you a specific number of skill points and you will obviously have to learn how to make choices. This is why at the beginning of the game, it is interesting to be with a friend so that the characters can complement each other. Moreover, finding your fellow traveler is not easy because you have to learn to find your way through the map (accessible on PC via the M key) and find landmarks. Because yes, despite predefined spawn zones, your arrival in the game is very random. It is sometimes possible to end up within 10 minutes of walking one or the other. For the sake of this test, we favored a PVP server, as much to tell you that we did not meet only friendly people at the heart of our journey, and the first minutes were simply catastrophic.

This is the lot of any game offering a PVP system, but some players are a pleasure to hunt and kill newcomers. Thus, barely a few minutes after appearing in the world, we were hunted down and cowardly murdered by a person of a level much higher than ours. After a few adventures, we finally discovered the craft and resource system. Overall, your character has several status bars: life, endurance, hunger, thirst, and inventory limit weight. From the first moment, we realize that even the environment can kill you. If the weather is too cold, you must quickly warm up by making a fire. If on the contrary a heat wave takes place, your bar of thirst will descend dramatically and it will be necessary to carry out a few trips in the water to cool your body. To feed and not to fall from starvation (it's possible) the easiest way is to start harvesting berries in the bushes.

But it is quickly realized that all that is vegetable is not what it has more caloric, and you will thus quickly go hunting. For that, nothing more simple, it is necessary to collect a little wood by tapping in a tree, to recover a stone on the ground and to craft a pickaxe. With this pickaxe, you can recover a flint by mining the rock and thus finally forge a spear. The easiest way is to go on a dodo hunt (this curious animal that disappeared at the beginning of the 18th century), because you have no risk of bite and it will bring you fresh meat without much effort.

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The Flintstones family has only to behave well

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Beware however: it is unthinkable to consume raw meat on pain of being seriously ill, and it is necessary above all to make a campfire to cook his precious booty and enjoy his hot meal. In Ark , everything is about feeling and common sense . It will be necessary to build a makeshift shelter to shelter from bad weather, night and various predators that roam (animals as players) . For this, it is necessary to find a strategically interesting place, either by its topography (in height, on the side of a mountain, etc.), or very well hidden (behind rocks, in the thick jungle, etc.). .

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Then you are free to abandon this temporary place or to make it a permanent base. Despite its survival aspect, the game still offers real goals . The map is dotted with huge obelisks each containing a secret. The ultimate goal is to understand your arrival here and to know the origin of the place. But before that, it will obviously evolve enough to hope to overcome the horrible monsters that populate these areas. Generally - and even more on a PVP server - it will not count to see the end of the game before dozens and dozens of hours of play.

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For example, after 65 hours of play, including 30 on the same server, we did not even reach half of the goal . Especially since the priorities can quickly change when we have in front of us a tribe (the equivalent of a guild in an MMO) of players determined to destroy us. The tribal system is very interesting because it offers the possibility of sharing resources in the same group and allows you to recover some of the experience of others by sharing it. And what a joy it is to see immense foundations emerge from the ground from nothing. Gradually transform the frail wooden walls into solid stones, and finally build a futuristic base made of metal and various armored materials. A defect, however, blackens the picture:the building system, while very permissive, is not at all intuitive.

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We must redouble our ingenuity in the construction of our bases, and being in a group is the best way to achieve this . Build traps, palisade systems and of course tame brave dinosaurs.

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John Hammond's dream comes alive

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Because yes, the main focus of the game is his bestiary, which is totally tame.The first hours, you will surely be hunted by a tyrannosaur, or even worse. The adrenaline will rise each time a notch. You will first see a gigantic mass on the edge of the jungle, perhaps not far from your makeshift shelter. Then after a terrifying roar, you'll hear the ground tremble and footsteps come closer to your position. When you realize the horror that awaits you, it will surely be too late. You will be hunted by a carnivore. In the best case it will be a small Allosaurus (which is still four meters high), but in the worst case of a Spinosaurus, a monster of eleven tons of muscles with teeth that can penetrate your bones as if it were butter.

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Afterwards (after very long hours of play), you will understand that if you are able to tame this triceratops by knocking him out with narcotics, it may be the same for the spinosaure. This is where a great deal of hunting, often fatal, can begin. It's going to be time to get all those arrows that you stored in your coffers and smear them with narcotics, a mixture that you could have composed by recovering narcotic berries and spoiled meat. Generally, when you go hunting big carnivorous, it is necessary to have a fast mount available. A raptor for example, once tamed, just add a saddle and the adventure begins. The same goes for herbivores, the notable difference being that it is possible to

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A jjj-eu who who who lag

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All the charm of ARK comes down to a multitude of discoveries as you progress . For this reason you are seriously discouraged from reading tutorials before you start, as this may ruin some of the fun. If ARK has great surprises and good times, it's far from perfect. The game is for example technically flawed . If you can be surprised to admire a sunset from the top of a mountain, with a breathtaking view of a jungle as far as the eye can see, we will also have great disappointments. It will not necessarily be in the visual part, but more in the pure technical part. The animations are terrifying examples. Some dinosaurs are clearly too big for the game engine and it will instantly create a kind of lag making the moves very robotic . Not to mention the multitude of bugs, such as creatures that teleport or hang in the elements of the decor.

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A technical shame

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For this reason, we can not recommend too much to join an official server and run away like the plague private servers with too many players. Unless you know that the machine running behind is a war PC. Because freezes, lags and other connection problems are the lot of the game at the moment. Despite an early access of more than two years, developers have still not solved this problem and it is a shame. To put it bluntly it's even a shame, a mess.

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Ark Survival Evolvedis a survival game that has stood out from the crowd by offering a terribly catchy atmosphere and a context that does not leave indifferent: the dinosaurs. Offering complex game mechanics, a well-crafted craft system and advanced construction, this is without a doubt one of the best games of its kind at the moment. The game is basically good and deserves a better score, but given the catastrophic technique and the many bugs that dot the game, it is unthinkable not to punish it. Because if it was forgivable during the phase of advance access, it is clearly not today, for a game sold at 59.99 euros version "final". In addition to needing a good machine, it is especially impossible, even on official server, to Be safe from bugs and lag problems, despite fiber-type connections. What a pity.

WE LIKE	WE DO NOT LIKE
* A considerable number of dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures.	*Technically doubtful.
* Constant pressure on the PVP servers.	* A game too greedy.
* Many possibilities of craft.	* Bugs of all kinds.
* Useful survival mechanics.	* Problematic animations.
* The possibility of being able to ride almost all the dinosaurs.

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