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The ARK Survival Ascended reimagining is now out for everyone to enjoy in early access format. Unfortunately, as an early access launch, the product is far from perfect and is suffering significant performance issues. This has resulted in lots of negative reviews for ARK Survival Ascended on Steam, with gripes about horrid FPS and constant game crashes to blame.
ARK Survival Evolved was massively popular. The original experience sold 2 million copies back when it was in early access, and the game became a huge phenomenon in the video games industry. There is an ARK 2 in development, and its first trailer revealed that it stars Vin Diesel. Unfortunately, ARK 2 has been delayed to the end of 2024, so we will not get our hands on it for another year.
ARK Survival Ascended is out to bridge the gap to the ARK sequel, but, in its current state, the new game is in terrible shape.
ARK Survival Ascended gets negative Steam reviews over performance issues
ARK Survival Ascended is available on Steam at £37.99/$44.99. The game is currently in early access format, and the reception on Valve’s store is mixed following over 1,500 reviews. There are dozens of negative reviews with even the positive ones fake praise. A negative review from one user says they are ‘Getting 30-45 FPS with an RTX 4090 and i9 13900K at 1440p,’ meanwhile, another user bemoans the fact they are on an ‘RTX 3080 and can only get 50fps on LOW settings’.
Another review says the developers succeeded in reimagining the game by going retro and embracing all ‘the bugs and crashes from the beginning of Ark Survival Evolved’. This user claims their ‘RTX3070 ti + Ryzen 5600X can’t even handle full low specs’. At least users were able to play, one backhanded positive says the ‘game crashes every time I get to character creation’. Another backhanded thumbs up says it ‘feels like 2015 all over again’ with the ‘single digit frame rates and bodies disappearing into the ground geometry’. This review renamed ARK Survival Ascended as ARK PowerPoint.
Over on the ARK subreddit, the community isn’t pleased with the early-access product either. Fans are similarly complaining about low FPS performance. One fan on Reddit says they’re refunding ASA because ‘they could run ASE near max settings and be totally fine,’ but for ASA they have to lower all of the new features resulting in a game that only looks marginally better than ASE.
Again, it is in early access, and hopefully, patches and fixes will be delivered. As for how long it will remain in early access, the Steam page says the full release isn’t planned until at least the end of 2024. The full release will come with the following modes remade in UE5:
- Survival of the Fittest (Battle Royale)
- Scorched Earth
- Aberration
- Extinction
- Genesis Part 1
- Genesis Part 2
In other gaming news, the next Fortnite season will have a massive live event with big gameplay leaks pointing to a return to the OG map with zip lines.
