ARK Survival Ascended preview: A fresh and familiar survival game experience

ARK Survival Ascended is a brand new remake of the popular survival sandbox game called Survival Evolved. Developed by Studio Wildcard, this game made its way to PCs in October 2023 and was launched on consoles later in November. There’s not much difference between the two titles in terms of gameplay, but it has some serious visual upgrades.

Considering the game has no active missions, you can enjoy it at your own pace. That said, here’s my take on ARK Survival Ascended.

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ARK Survival Ascended takes Survival Evolved to new heights

I’ve been a huge fan of Survival Evolved for a while now, and I’ve invested an unhealthy number of hours building bases and taming dinosaurs. When ARK Survival Ascended went live, it was only a matter of time before I was hunting down dinosaurs on the island once again.

When you start off Survival Ascended, you will only be able to play on The Island, which was the very first map that went live in Survival Evolved. The other DLCs+ that you’ve had in the previous game will be a part of this one too. But those maps will be released over the next two years. What’s more interesting is that each and every map will introduce a brand new creature that wasn’t a part of the game before.

Unlike the previous game, when you launch ARK Survival Ascended, you’ll see a brand new option in the start menu called “Mods”. This menu will allow you to explore and download mods made by the community. The previous game had a lot of mods available in the market, and the developers are looking to capitalize on that by providing proper mod support at this point in time.

It all begins here, with the smallest of animals and crude weapons. (Image via Studio Wildcard)

Although ARK Survival Ascended is still in its early access stages, the game is more or less complete in terms of the gameplay and the mechanics. There are, however, a lot of bugs that still plague the game, both on console and PC, but that’s something that the developers are working on sorting out bit by bit.

If you’re looking for a storyline in this game, then you will be disappointed. Just like its predecessor, ARK Survival Ascended does not have a storyline. Despite the game having a single-player mode, there is no story for you to follow.

You’re just an individual who’s stranded on an island. And now your goal is to survive by any means necessary. Throughout your journey, you will come across a lot of prehistoric creatures, most of which will be hostile towards you.

You can either kill these creatures and eliminate the immediate threat to your life, or you can tame them and turn them into pets that will aid you in battle. You will also need to build bases for yourself because the creatures aren’t the only enemy that you will face. The environment does not take kindly to any survivors at all.

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ARK Survival Ascended introduces new gameplay features

You can even capture babies to build your dinosaur army. (Image via Studio Wildcard)

In Survival Evolved, you could tame dinosaurs passively by feeding them food they liked or by taming them after knocking them out. You could also imprint on dinosaurs that hatched from eggs. In Survival Ascended, Studio Wildcard introduced a brand new method of taming dinosaurs, and that’s by capturing babies.

This feature was available in the previous game through a mod, but the developers chose to incorporate it in the new game as a feature that was available by default. It completely changes the way you look at taming in the game and adds a different layer of challenge to it.

The overall UI has also received a massive overhaul, but the graphics, in turn, has become a tad bit demanding. So, you must have a strong system to run it without any hiccups. To sum it up, in short, ARK Survival Ascended looks better than its predecessor, both in terms of gameplay and visuals.

ARK Survival Ascended is a gorgeous game, that's for sure. (Image via Studio Wildcard)

The soundtrack, as usual, is amazing and manages to capture the overall environment beautifully. This is one feature that has remained a constant across both games. It will be interesting to see if the developers add new soundtracks once the remaining maps go live in the game.

The inventory menu looks and feels the same, so if you’ve played Survival Evolved, you won’t have much difficulty navigating your way across Survival Ascended. The only difference is that the item icons look better and more vibrant than before.

To conclude, considering that ARK Survival Ascended is still in its early access stages, there’s still a little bit of work left for the developers. The game is still a little rough around the edges, and there are issues and bugs that need to be fixed. However, if you overlook those issues, this is a solid title that almost every fan of survival games will enjoy.