A bright white light blinds you. As your eyes adjust you see you have woken up on a beach. There is a forest behind you and a group of players to the left of you. As you turn to face the right you hear a roar and a T-Rex emerges from the trees dashing towards you.
There are now five maps for Ark Survival Evolved. Each map has its own challenges and creatures making the map unique and fun to play. I really liked that The Island, the first map, was predominantly dinosaurs and the information given about each. I learned a lot about the creatures without even leaving the game.
Ragnarok Was my favourite map to play through because It had a fantasy feel to it. There was some ruins and platforms that you could build on to make your base which made building really enjoyable and a challenge.
The building in ark is quite difficult to get a hang of when you first start. Once you understand how to do certain stuff with the building materials it opens up so much opportunities and some amazing looking designs. Once I had got to grips with building I started to really enjoy testing out new designs and practising with defences for PvP.
There are two game modes: PvP and PvE. PvE (Player vs Environment) Was really good to learn the mechanics of the game like taming, building and surviving mother nature. PvP at times was infuriating because you would sign off for the night and by the time you log in the next day you’re dead, your loot is gone and the thief has destroyed your base in the process.
This was especially hard when you was joining a server and the other players have been on that server for over 2,000 in game days. However, you quickly learn where some good hiding spots are are when you get friends involved to build a tribe and an army of creatures so you can go and take your revenge.
Each map has their own specific creatures which could make one map easier for you and others more difficult. I found the Aberration map very difficult because it quite dark due to the theme being bioluminescent creatures. There were also creatures called Ravengers who were relentless but I found the Island quite easy.
The one thing that made PvP quite difficult with the creatures was that there are map specific creatures but you can also move your tamed creatures to a different map. This makes raiding and defending a bit more tactical because their creatures may be from many maps and have different abilities.
Overall I really enjoyed this game mostly because of the building and the information involved about the creatures but it was a really hard play through as well. The amount of maps, which will be increasing, is a good selection and fun to play through each.
GameCritUK 