ARK: Survival Of The Fittest

There’s certainly no shortage of survival games out there, because you can have your pick from dozens of titles that feature zombies, the wilderness, mutants, or a variety of other such elements. However, it’s always nice to see something original in the genre, even if it’s just in the gameplay mechanics department. Thankfully, there are plenty of creative people out there to think of something new every now and again.

ARK: Survival Of The Fittest is a multiplayer arena game focused on survival and the freedom to approach each match in a different manner. In case the name sounds familiar, that’s because it’s almost the same product as ARK: Survival Evolved, except that it’s multiplayer-only and free-to-play. As the developers put it, this is to be regarded as an eSports version of the original game, although there’s a long way to go until that can become reality.

To begin with, the servers are quite large, since they can usually hold up to 72 people at once. The goal is for only one man or tribe to remain alive when the timer runs out, which can take anywhere from 30 minutes to three whole hours. There’s a whole island to explore and capture, but there’s also a death ring that shrinks periodically in order to force players toward the center as the timer begins to approach zero.

Dinosaurs can be both a friend and a foe, since you’ll often have to fight them in order to survive, yet you need to tame them in order to raise an army and win the game. On top of it all, there are special creatures that can be tamed as well, and they have the power to turn the tide of an entire match. Hence, huge dragons and spiders can be brought onto the battlefield to lay waste left and right.

The graphics are very nice as well, courtesy of the powerful engine used to render it all. However, while the level design and the dinosaurs are very nicely modeled and animated respectively, there are some clipping issues and awkward player animations, such as when you have to carry something around. There are also quite a few bugs you might run into, but that’s to be expected in Early Access.

All things considered, ARK: Survival Of The Fittest certainly has a bright future ahead, but it needs more polish to get there. Thus, if you are aching for a bit of prehistoric action and you do not mind waiting a while until a server gets full, you should certainly give this a try.