ARK: Survival Ascended Review (PlayStation 5)

by Jim Smale · Published December 11, 2023 · Updated December 12, 2023

For this ARK: Survival Ascended Review, we play a reimagined from the ground up into the next generation of video game technology with Unreal Engine 5! Form a tribe, tame & breed hundreds of unique dinosaurs and primeval creatures, and explore, craft, build, and fight your way to the top of the food chain. Your new world awaits!

ARK: Survival Ascended Review Pros:

Beautiful high-quality graphics.
70.64GB download size.
Platinum trophy.
Action survival gameplay.
Full controller speaker support.
Graphics settings – motion blur film grain, color grading, light bloom, and light shafts.
Ui settings let you change the size and color of the Crosshair, what notifications you get, the chat window and how it shows, and transitional effects.
Camera settings – Invert Y axis, sensitivity sliders, camera view Bob, third-person camera offset, TPV camera lateral offset, disable third-person camera interpolation, player camera mode (off/tight/mid/loose), Dino camera mode (same as before), FOV slider, camera shake scale, and first-person riding (on/off).
Full mod support with search, filter, and featured.
Create and join the game option.
Advanced settings – network bandwidth (low/medium/high/epic), console access, disable menu music, blood visuals, voice chat channels, disable loading screen music, and more.
Shows a mouse and keyboard as a supported controller.
Three difficulties – Easy, medium, and hard.
Create game options – single-player or nondedicated, mod settings, game rules (such as damage/resistance/food drain, etc) for player/creature/structure/world and rules, advanced settings for – PVE, PvP, world, wild Dino, tamed Dino, player, exp multipliers, and miscellaneous. Engrams round it off and this is crafting recipes and their behaviour.
First and third-person camera view.
You have a lot of control over how your game world plays out and character progression.
Character creator – name, voice, body composition, overall height, skin color, body template, head, torso, arms, and legs.
You choose your spawn and respawn point by region with each region showing the Dino population and difficulty on the world map.
Fast loading times.
Cutscenes are a mix of in-game and FMV.
Goes with the traditional survival mechanic of punching trees to get wood and then building tools to make it faster and easier.
Tool types dictate what resources you get from them.
It’s a living world full of deadly dinosaurs.
Earn exp from doing everything and level up to increase stats and unlock new engrams (recipes).
A beautiful-looking island with many memorable places.
Play how you want.
The map fills in as you play.
Upon death you drop everything but can get it back, your death spot shows on the map.
Full day and night cycle with weather effects such as rain.
On-screen icons to show hunger and drink levels.
Character load out for clothing is – head, torso, legs, hands, offhand, and feet.
Armour and clothing can affect stats.
You can see objectives and personal markers on the map along with the Coordinates showing.
The engram unlocks are dictated by your level and your choices, you earn points and use them.
In Single Player, you can actually pause the game.
Pop-up text over dinosaurs and other players.
You can see the Corpse of your previous body.
Dinosaurs will attack each other, you can kite them into each other, and attacking one dinosaur usually has the rest of the pack hunting you down.
Save when you want.
You can craft weapons and items to hunt the many animals.
Basic tools, weapons, and clothing can be crafted in the inventory menu whilst bigger things require a crafting table.
You can just hold down the action button for swinging axes and using weapons etc.
Very addictive for those who like to craft and explore.
Territory flags help keep structures and items together but you can get raided in PvP.
Weapons and tools degrade with use and eventually break.

ARK: Survival Ascended Review Cons:

So many options everywhere it’s almost overwhelming.
Cannot rebind controls.
Animals don’t move and react that well.
A lot of the performance can be up and down.
A big undertaking.
Griefing can get out of hand quickly.
Building and surviving on the PvP side of things is really tough.
Few hit detection and building detection issues.
Shows a survival of the fittest mode but it’s coming soon.
Using the stick as a mouse cursor is not ideal in the menus.
The game has small text and I couldn’t find an option.
When changing any settings with a slider it always brings up the screen keyboard and puts the slider at zero.
Combat is very button-mashy.
You can completely break the game with the settings.
Uses so much from the first game that you can be forgiven for thinking you bought the same game again.
Using the menus overall is just clunky and slow, even the engram unlocks requires too many clicks.
No tutorials.
Just chucks you straight into the game.
So much to take in.
It takes a really long time to unlock and progress to a point where you can actually survive and progress.