Recent reviews by Saomatic

While I definitely got my money's worth from this title, I find it very difficult to recommend.

* Official servers are (for the most part) not worth playing on due to exploiting running rampant.

* The steamworkshop does a good job of saving the game from it's short comings, but sadly the game doesn't seem to be able to stand on it's own without them.

* A.I. of all the creatures leaves something to be desired, while there are some minor interesting interactions (like with the torch interacting with aggro) It ultimately doesn't feel very well explored. Once something is tamed it's a mindless zombie that will charge in and face ♥♥♥♥ anything that so much as breaths on it. (I know you can encumber tamed wyverns to act as sentries but that ironically is rather encumbersome.)

* Progression doesn't feel very balanced, not going to pretend like I'm an expert on the matter but many of my friends (myself included) always seem to start fresh, destroy everything with just fabricated weapons/metal weapons and never progress further than that because we have no reason to.

* Survival elements are a bit lacking, while there are some interesting interactions like "swamp fever" it feels more like an after thought than a feature. Temperture interactions only affect how fast your water and hunger bar deminish (or if severe enough, your hp). To go further on this topic- your tames are unaffected by the temperture, which feels out of place at best.

* RPG mechanics are also very lacking, it's just stat inflating without any other interesting interactions... unless you think leveling up your breath having the secondary effect of making you swim slightly faster is interesting.

* Hit boxes can also be incredibly frustrating, when you have five thrown spears sticking into the face of a raptor and only two of the spears did damage, It's going to break your immersion- I know a lot of the time this is caused by server desync but the problem happens in single player as well .

Overall I feel like Ark: Survival Evolved spread itself too thin trying to be a survival game and an rpg game while being completely mediocre at both. It definitely still has potential to be fun with the right friends- but that can be said about anything. I can not recommend the game at it's full price, grab it at 50% off if you have to.

This is probably the best online pc fighting game hands down; and arguable the best Western fighting game ever made. Skullgirls also receives a nice flow of updates and is very well polished (It's rare to see this much love and passion go into a game) This is a must have for anyone even slightly into fighting games; buy it now and learn what true salt is all about.