Ark: Survival Ascended is a striking upgrade but old problems set alarm bells ringing

It's not something I brag about very often - mainly because remembering you once invested nearly 2,000 hours of your life into a single game does tend to trigger a degree of introspection - but Ark: Survival Evolved is easily the most played game in my Steam library. I eventually wrenched myself away shortly after its 1.0 release in 2017, but even today I look back on its early access years with a mixture of fondness and vague PTSD.

There's a lot to love about Ark; it's a wildly immersive survival adventure with the kind of premise - live alongside the dinosaurs! - that would have made child-me dizzy with excitement, and it's stuffed with an intoxicating number of ways to turn its vicious corner of unreality into an odd little home. But it's also a game I remember being deeply disrespectful of players' time, perpetually dancing on the edge of dysfunction and requiring intense amounts of upkeep and dedication to prevent hours upon hours of progress from instantly vanishing in a puff of air.

Broken promises and a dubious disregard for the community were ultimately the things that drove me away from Ark, so it wasn't entirely surprising to watch a new controversy unfold when developer Studio Wildcard suddenly announced Ark: Survival Ascended, an Unreal Engine 5 "next-geneartion remake" of the original game, earlier this year.

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