ARK: Survival Evolved is a game with a lot of potential, but until more balancing is done I can not give this game a good review. Individuals who have played this game for 500+ hours make the game unplayable as they roam the official servers raiding and destroying player's bases that took hours and even days to build in a matter of less than an hour. If you are a low level on one of these official servers you have almost no chance to rise to the top or even slightly advanced due to your dinos that took 10 hours to tame dying in 30 seconds to a level 120 argentavis or all your resources being taken by high levels with guns while all you have is pikes (being in a tribe wont help as they can 1vsInfinity with those birds). No matter what official server you join it will happen because the high levels believe they own the server and do these things just for sport.

Now you might ask, why not just join a private server or create your own private server to play with your friends without constant harrassment by the people willing or with the time to put hundreds of more hours into this game than you? First of all, unless your computer has a lot of RAM you are not hosting your own server and even then one person might have to have two computers with one of them being able to host the server and the other being able to run the game (both take a lot of RAM and CPU so for many people this isn't practical). You could also join another private server hosted by a third party but there is no gaurantee that it will actually be any better than the official servers and they are less reliable than either a public or private server your friends are hosting. Regardless, resorting to a privite server should not be necessary to enjoy a PvP experiance on ARK as the official servers should provide that.

Now, throughout this review you might be wondering why I haven't mentioned PvE as an option, as in PvE players can't kill eachother. That's because PvE itself has another set of issues relating to trolls who build in places inconvienent to you with the knowledge that there is little you can do to stop them. Higher levels might even troll by building around your small thatch base as you are just starting out. Also, sometimes you want to just enjoy a legimate PvP experiance with other players where the fights seem fair and losing them is a result of your tribes inability to properly strategize or engage rather than fights that were doomed at the start due to a huge level discrepancy between the players in each tribe.

Overall, I think ARK: Survival Evolved has good mechanics and great features that give it a lot of potential, but until more balancing is done with regards to players I can not recommend this game to someone who just wants to have some fun in a short amount of time. Accomplishing anything in this game takes way too much time in proportion to how quickly everything can be killed and destroyed that it just isn't worth playing this game if you can't play it for more than 8 hours a day. I hope by full release next year the game is more balanced, but until then I am not recommending this game as a practical game to play.

ARK: Survival Evolved is a game with a lot of potential, but until more balancing is done I can not give this game a good review. Individuals who have played this game for 500+ hours make the game unplayable as they roam the official servers raiding and destroying player's bases that took hours and even days to build in a matter of less than an hour. If you are a low level on one of these official servers you have almost no chance to rise to the top or even slightly advanced due to your dinos that took 10 hours to tame dying in 30 seconds to a level 120 argentavis or all your resources being taken by high levels with guns while all you have is pikes (being in a tribe wont help as they can 1vsInfinity with those birds). No matter what official server you join it will happen because the high levels believe they own the server and do these things just for sport. Now you might ask, why not just join a private server or create your own private server to play with your friends without constant harrassment by the people willing or with the time to put hundreds of more hours into this game than you? First of all, unless your computer has a lot of RAM you are not hosting your own server and even then one person might have to have two computers with one of them being able to host the server and the other being able to run the game (both take a lot of RAM and CPU so for many people this isn't practical). You could also join another private server hosted by a third party but there is no gaurantee that it will actually be any better than the official servers and they are less reliable than either a public or private server your friends are hosting. Regardless, resorting to a privite server should not be necessary to enjoy a PvP experiance on ARK as the official servers should provide that. Now, throughout this review you might be wondering why I haven't mentioned PvE as an option, as in PvE players can't kill eachother. That's because PvE itself has another set of issues relating to trolls who build in places inconvienent to you with the knowledge that there is little you can do to stop them. Higher levels might even troll by building around your small thatch base as you are just starting out. Also, sometimes you want to just enjoy a legimate PvP experiance with other players where the fights seem fair and losing them is a result of your tribes inability to properly strategize or engage rather than fights that were doomed at the start due to a huge level discrepancy between the players in each tribe. Overall, I think ARK: Survival Evolved has good mechanics and great features that give it a lot of potential, but until more balancing is done with regards to players I can not recommend this game to someone who just wants to have some fun in a short amount of time. Accomplishing anything in this game takes way too much time in proportion to how quickly everything can be killed and destroyed that it just isn't worth playing this game if you can't play it for more than 8 hours a day. I hope by full release next year the game is more balanced, but until then I am not recommending this game as a practical game to play.