ARK: Survival Ascended Impressions - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

14.11.2023 - 22:19 / mmorpg.com / Studio Wildcard

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