Recent reviews by Siegward

The game is obviously not 100% polished but that is what you should expect when buying into an alpha game. There will be bugs, optimization issues and server problems. What you do get is a glimpse of an amazing engine (one of the first games with Unreal 4) with the survivor element that includes many differernt types of dinosaurs.

My experience with the game was only on a private server because coming from the software development world and playing day 1 release of popular MMO's, you sure as hell can't count on playing the game on an official server.

Server hosting was fairly simple after the devs communicated instructions with a few hiccups. For some reason there is region locking on private servers which makes it a little difficult for friends to join unless they use http://arkservers.net/server.

As for the game, I was fairly impressed with the amount of content and quality for a day 1 alpha release. We did not run into many game breaking bugs other than graphic laggyness with some options. As long as the developers continue to update and support the game, I can see this becoming a terrific game in the future.

Pros

• Huge world
  
• Wide variety of dinosaurs, some extremely massive
  
• Animal AI (running up the beach to see a gigantic alligator take down some the raptors chasing us was pretty epic)
  
• Leveling system with stats
  
• Exploration elements with various landmarks and missions
  
• Graphics, even though not fully optimized
  
• In-game proxmity voice works great along with mouth movement
  
• Map system allows you to chart out your exploration while also not showing you where you are to make you learn the landscape to create immersion

Cons

• Low framerate which is expected
  
• Spear durability randomness
  
• Character models - too lenient in creation makes it unrealistic and heights dont always fit the buildings
  
• No manipulation of land ie digging into the ground
  
• Harvesting system can be improved
  
• In-game font and UI
  
• Server region locking
  
• Crates use inventory by weight instead of slots/nuimber of items which doesn't make much sense