


There’s hunting them and harvesting their meat and hides, but when you tame them then they can help you hunt instead. One of the games big draw cards is the ability to tame Dinosaurs, keeping them as your pet or riding them around the world. As you build up more engrams and have access to better equipment, leaving the beach area is less daunting and you explore the different biomes of ARK. It doesn’t take more than a hit from a pickaxe to have a giant spiky tortoise (Carbonemys) from messing you and your hut up (if they aren’t busily glitching out caught up on a tree trunk). Early on you learn to avoid most living creatures. Although you will be chopping a lot more down with axes, especially to build the most basic hut with a bed and storage. Fortunately, you’re not stuck punching trees for long. The more you can craft the more you can do, and the more resources you need. This is what allows you to upgrade your stats and to spend points on unlocking more ‘engrams’ or crafting recipes. Eventually, you work out what you’re doing, and you level up at a fairly decent rate. In fact, there’s a lot ARK won’t tell you. ARK is all about survival and exploration, at the outset you won’t be told where berries can be found, or that you have to pick up rocks and can’t harvest them the same way you can wood. Then you’ll notice you can quickly starve without food to eat. Initially, you’ll find yourself starting to freeze or burn under the extreme beach conditions. You unceremoniously wake up on a beach, a mysterious device embedded in your wrist. But to my surprise we were also getting the full ARK experience, now would be my chance to make a life for myself amongst the Dinosaurs. I figured given how graphics-intensive ARK can be on a PC, that the Switch would never get the main game. Initially, PixARK was announced for the Switch, a game that looked more like Minecraft with ARK creatures and elements.

An open world full of Dinosaurs? Sign me up! When I did finally get it on the PC I never really got a chance to delve into it. ARK: Survival Evolved has always been a game I’ve kept my eye on.
