ARK: Survival Evolved (Nintendo Switch) Review

Those who dare to venture into the heart of Ark: Survival Evolved will first be met with a formidable barrier. This barrier is the initial loading screen that generates the game's environment, which is comically long. When most people make a joke about how long a load time is, they usually hyperbolically remark "go make a sandwich." Ark's load time is so long that a person actually can go make a sandwich, eat it, and probably even digest it before it is done. It would be easy to assume that this might have crashed because it takes what feels like an eternity starring at the screen, feeling the sweet warm embrace of entropy.

Anyone who manages to live long enough to see past the load time, will then be confronted with an appalling UI, and an extremely low resolution, character generator. At this point, moving the cursor around will be noticeably laggy and sluggish, so any interest in fiddling around with these esoteric metrics and options will be easily lost. Jumping into the game and actually trying to play it is where the nightmare truly begins. Like waking from a nightmare that felt so real only to discover reality is far worse, Ark: Survival Evolved is pure torment... yet slightly interesting.

Survival Evolved is a survival game… naturally. Set in what appears to be a pre-alpha build version of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter for the Nintendo 64, these ugly wastelands are festooned with dinosaurs, and rocks that are in a constant state of low level detail loading. The first thing anyone will do when playing the first time is to die a hilarious death while naked. The fifth or sixth time will roll by, and then some people might discover that almost any piece of nature can be looted or broken down into components for crafting. Suddenly Ark becomes much easier as players will likely start running through the hideous environments grabbing anything, and everything at 20 frames per second, while crafting various accoutrements to endure the limbo. Then the nightmare compounds on itself because this is the entire game's cycle.

The idea of constantly being surrounded by resources and dangerous large prehistoric threats is a sound concept. The problem with Ark: Survival Evolved on Switch is that it is a dysfunctional technical disaster. Pterodactyls fly into the ground, Triceratops (which are not real) can chase avatars high up steep hills at full speed, and basically everything just feels like one big glitch. Along with The Missing, this might be one of the most poorly optimised Switch games. There is no real plot or story to give anything context. This begins very abruptly with no goal or rules set in place to guide users. Playing with others online is a fruitless endeavour since nobody is actually playing it. There is a kernel of potential somewhere deep inside, but not without some substantial changes.