Ark: Survival Evolved

• Developers: Studio Wildcard, Instinct Games, Virtual Basement, Efecto Studios
• Publisher: Studio Wildcard
• Genre: RPG
• Players: 1-75
• Platforms: PC, Playstation 4, Xbox One
• Release Date: June 2015 (Early Access)
• Microtransactions: None

Goodbye Life

Thrown on to Jurassic Park island! That’s how it feels anyway. Let’s jump in on the beautiful game that is Ark: Survival Evolved. Let’s start with what this game is lacking…any story whatsoever! There is nothing when you begin, no cut scene, no tutorial no nothing. Or there wasn’t when I’ve been playing it. I know it’s still in testing blah blah it’s been like that for years. A little something would have been nice.

Now I have let off some steam with that let’s get in to the gameplay, you wake up with nothing and a little bit of cloth to cover your bits, not knowing what to do or where to go, your first spawn could even be next to an aggressive dinosaur, where you die horribly in seconds and have to spawn in again. Once that is over with and you are in a safe spot, you can check out the beautiful scenery and how to play the game.

Punch trees and pick up rocks to get some materials, make yourself a pick and hatchet to help harvest them, level up in the lower levels nice and quick aaaaaaaaaaaand you are starving or dehydrated…run in to the water to drink, punch dodos to death and cook their meat on a campfire, you do what you have to to survive.

It’s a steep learning curve but you get used to it, a few levels in and you realise you can assign engrams to make some cool stuff! Melee weapons, ranged weapons, clothes, structures it’s all there, this is where you look at what you can unlock at level 80 and realise you have to get it! Goodbye life and hello ark!

Hello Ark

It’s got some glitches and it’s not perfect but this is one addictive game, started on the PC over a year ago and now it’s on console, it’s hard to get away. You build a 2x2x2 house out of thatch with a campfire and a storage box, realise you can upgrade the house to wood, then stone, then metal…you can make the house bigger, add floors, ladders, hatches, dinosaur gates for your tamed dinos, it goes on. It’s a builders dream, you just need to make sure you are in the right area and T Rex doesn’t walk past every 5 minutes.

Once you get to grips with the engrams and building its time to look at the fun stuff…the dinosaurs! Yeah that’s right you can tame the things, although it’s not easy and it’s not quick. You need to get your hands on some narcotics, which come from the plants dotted around everywhere, make yourself some narcotic arrows or stick to just beating a dinosaur unconscious with a club. Now comes the mind numbing task of taming the dinosaur, where you need the narcotics to keep it unconscious, and some food so it likes you. Then there’s the task of making sure no other player kills it or a wild dino kills it.

3 hours later, 400 bits of food and 300 narcotic berries and you have a dinosaur! Might be a slight exaggeration but that’s what happens later on when you tame higher level better dinos. The lower end ones usually take 5 minutes to an hour max.

Fast forward a week, you have a massive house with many floors, 25 dinosaurs all called something like Dave or Daisy, having a total of 12 hours sleep in 7 days, Ark life has kicked in. Once you get to around level 30 the dinosaurs open up a bit more, you can craft saddles for a lot of them and realise you can now get a saddle for a pteradon, it’s time to fly!

This in itself is great but it causes more problems, you find a better spot for your base, on the other side of the map! I think we relocated 4 times…it’s never fun.

Tribal Mentality

Playing on the online servers you can make a tribe for you and your buddies to get together and make mansions, group up to take down bigger and better dinos, or just watch each other die horribly and launch an arrow to their knee. Again this has a downside…others can do the same and others can blow holes in your base and steal everything you have worked hard for, killing Dave in the process (RIP little buddy). This game on PVP can be harsh, very harsh. But you pick yourselves up, fortify the base, add defences and try again, taming bigger and better dinos and leave them on aggressive so if it happens again the dinos get to play.

You start to become a master at this game and wonder what else the ark game offers, baby dinosaurs! Yes, that’s right you can play some Barry White and have them mate. Combining the stats of the mum and dad dino to create one with better stats, also just look at them!

Raising a baby dino is like taming an adult one, but 10 times harder and 10 times longer, I think I had to keep one fed for 2 days…2 days! It was worth it in the end and my Argentavis bird called Argelina Jolie is a beast. Get creative with them names! Dodo Baggins (Dodo), Ptaylor Swift (Pteradon), the list goes on…or just Dave (RIP little buddy)

I would definitely say grab a pick and have a bash at this game, it’s not for everyone, but I am most definitely addicted.

PROS

• In depth building
• Taming dinos
• Graphics

CONS

• No real story
• No tutorials

Verdict

8/10

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No Mans Sky

• Developers: Hello Games
• Publisher: Hello Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment
• Genre:  Exploration, Adventure, Crafting
• Platforms: Playstation 4 (Reviewed), Microsoft Windows
• Release Date: 9th August 2016
• Microtransactions: No

Just 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 Planets

Just the thought of an open world sandbox with so much room for expansion and things to explore and do got me hooked right from the start. Every planet is different and unique, it could be a floral green planet full of life or on the other end of the scale a barren land with toxic atmosphere

Graphically this game is beautiful, on any of the planets or in open space its visually amazing.

That Ain’t No Moon

You begin the game standing next to your broken ship, they pretty much throw you in the deep end and you have to find resources to fix it. I thought a bit of back story would have been good to start the game off, crash landed on an alien planet after a mission going wrong etc but as this is a sandbox game I got over it quickly.

Jumping in to space and starting to discover the many planets, space stations and alien races is brilliant to start off with, visiting the Atlas interface and getting an Atlas Pass, you can start your quest to the centre of the galaxy or complete the Atlas Path, or what I did was just visit as many planets as possible and not bother with the story, cos I could.

Unfortunately, after a while visiting new planets and doing the same thing on each one gets very repetitive and boring, so starting the Atlas path had to be done. This again became repetitive and boring, but hearing about a new update for the game, I put the game down and waited to see what was in store.

I’m glad I did!

Base Building, claiming your own planet

For me this was an unbelievable update, on most games I love building my own bases, and having my own planet to build everything on got me straight back on the game. I forgot completely about the quest to the centre, and the Atlas, it’s time to build!

In the update they also introduced new modes, creative mode and survival mode. Creative mode allows you to build without limits and survival makes the experience more challenging, I jumped back in to normal mode to claim my own planet.

Not every planet can be claimed, so it took me awhile to find one, but once you find the spot to start base building you get so many new challenges to find and explore, including recruiting aliens to occupy your base! A new journey has begun!

The options they have for this game are unbelievable and if this is the first update to come through I have a very good feeling for the ones to follow.

Vanilla No Many Sky 6/10

Updated No Many Sky 8/10

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