MrCrash84

Power Unlimited in The Netherlands

I was asked to do a review for a gaming magazine. This is what I wrote. At first you'd say it looks amazing but soon you'll realize graphics are very buggy, mostly it's the lighting thats is weird. It doesn't seem to come close to the realism Unreal Engine 5 offers, despite using maximum graphic settings. The dino's look cool at about 20 feet, further away they tend to look cartoonish and standing close the textures do not seem to be all that much better than ASE. The dino's give a very MMORPG vibe, simply programmed to do a few things (walk around, attack stuff). Especially herbivores come across as empty vessels, they do not move in herds in ASA, unfortunately. They tried to improve the navigating when dino's are following a player but the dino's seem to go nuts in crowded area's and you'll end up losing them all the same. Fighting from dino's makes the player want to smash his/hers keyboard, there is no crosshair so trying to select a target to engage is next to impossible in chaotic moments. It also won't work if a pet dino stands in front of the target so you'll likely end up with you and your pets being killed. In multiplayer, forget about achieving anything if you do not have a large group of friends to play with. Getting enough resources to build anything fun is next to impossible so forget about caves, bosses or heck, even a few dino pets. Next time you'll login all is gone, killed or destroyed so you'll be starting all over again. Single player is the only way to go if you want to feel like a true survivor and be sure you can finish your building. But fiddle around with the harvest setting otherwise you'll still be building in 2030. You can tell they copied most of the code from ASE and as a result you have a game that, most of the time, looks good but feels 10 years old when playing. In conclusion you can pretty much state that Wildcard had a golden idea but was only able to sell copper.

Where can we post the user content that's displayed in crunches? Building a big sanctuary on the southern falls, when it's finished I would love for others to see it. Plus: raft building is kinda dissapointing. In ASE I had a boat that could carry 2 T-Rex, 4-6 para's, a bunch of raptors and 6 birds on a flight deck. I used it to grind the northern parts. Now my massive docks feel a bit over the top for the maximized cute tiny raft I was able to build.

I thought this was an early access game? How are you adding all these things when the game can't even run properly for 10 minutes without crashing (PC). Is it opening your bag? Climbing a dino? Or did you just try to drop an item? The game is amazing, as long as you stand still and do absolutely nothing. Oh wait, the sun shifts, crash! This is exactly the same issue as with ASE, you should really consider hire some better developers.

On PC when I run and look down, or look down and chop/slash whatever, the screen flickers quite a bit. It's less noticeable in foliage but on the beaches quite annoying. I have an i7, GeForce RTX 4070, 32gb ram, ssd. Anyone else noticing the same problem? It feels as if they used the same code as before only with a new engine. The exact same flaws as in ASE seem to come up. Pets getting stuck inside rocks for example. You have to ghost them out. Dino's were supposed to be smarter this time but still get stuck behind two trees or a tree and a rock. You have to keep navigating them and finding them back when you forget about that for a few seconds when running away from a raptor. How hard is it to add code that does 'can't move forward, turn backwards and try again'. With their turn radius they likely won't get stuck exactly the same way again. There seems to be a bug that hides your personal stuff after you die. A few times I got back to where I was killed and nothing. 10 minutes later and the bag with stuff is there. At first I thought the foliage just made it impossible to see the corpse, which was kinda cool. But nope, bug. And the bugs will definitely kill you in this game. When selecting a dino the green arrows on dino's aren't visible. Not always but at some point they disappear only to never return. I retract my previous statement about the eyes. Some dino's do have moving pupils. Caught my first ptera and he is even trying to look inside his brain. You can see his pupil moving half into his skull lol. Funny, I have a cross-eyed ptera (obviously I let him fly into everything to keep the realism intact. Kinds too bad I can't craft glasses for him to see better). Dreadnaught is crazy big. I decided to be smart and build next to a forest for supplies. Along came bigfoot and well, hence forth I lived next to a huge grassy plain. Last but not least, I so love this game. It looks stunning, there are still some weird things happening with the lighting but man this game is so cool that I really don't care (well I do but still). Love it. Can't wait to see the first Rex.

So..given the amount of crashes on PC, a keyboard binding for 'Save game' would be nice. So far it hasn't crashed yet when saving so at least there's improvement over ASE.

So..on Xbox series X.. - Can't name dino's, name won't save. - Dino shows it's following 'Human', not my kewl nickname. - Can't access the Y menu on dino's properly. When highlighting an option it has to be activated with A. It should auto activate on highlighting. Try to press A when you have to hold Y down and the left joystick to a certain position. - Can't access dino groups via quick menu at all. - Lots of hovering pebbles on the beaches. - Dino's still feel kind off dead, their pupils are static. Would have been much more realistic if they followed the avatar or looked around (static eyes are not next gen). - Hardly heard any sound coming from a trashing Spino. When getting closer I heard him roaring but as if he was whispering. It looked great, he was crushing trees and splashing. But no sound at all from those effects. It really diminished the feeling of epicness. - The avatar is standing half a meter above the raft when sailing. - The night is bright. Not very much scary (however it was full moon come to think of it, so basically so far that makes sense). - The shore lines are too static. And from some perspectives look as if they're hovering above the water - Sunbeams with crazy amount of noise - Same for clouds at night Is a joy to play though, apart from above. Looks good, hella scary going into the water..

I prefer to stay out of pc gaming. The communities became so vile. Mostly people like you, the way you react and seem to know it all better...the condescending attitude reminds me of how even the most fun communities got ruined. I doubt you could ever understand any reasoning but your own, maybe ask yourself 'why then do I need to comment on people?'

Plus, I really really really really reaaaaally love ARK. It's by far the most epic game I have ever played. Even dethroned GTA in my book. And for what it's worth, I am just happy that they take the effort to build it for us to enjoy, flaws and all.

You kind of seem to forget Ark 2 will not be available on PS. Learned as well I can play Starfield too. The money is already paying off. Not sure where you're from, and no offense, but 500 is peanuts. Plus I only payed 389, which isn't a big deal to be fair.

Where did you read that? :0 Crunch before this one speaks of a launch day on nov 14th.

That actually makes me so happy. Didn't know I could play Starfield, I already planned on a gaming pc next year for that specific game (and Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous).

It's still the 13th depending on where you are. Plus they said it will launch on that day, that gives them 24 hours to be fair.

I bought an xbox X today next to my PS5 for one purpose... Ascended. Fell in love with ARK a year ago and hate that PS comes last in many cross platform games, especially now with no release date for Ascended. I can understand that but the xBox version better be launched at 0.00. Ps. How are xbox users not completely annoyed with the controllers..batteries..really? xD