ARK: Aberration Review

Ark is a fun game that mixes a player’s idea of their own life on a deserted island, but the island itself would have a mix of dinosaurs, people and tribes who all want to kill you. This is a bad thing, unless you have a friend or tribe with which to play with, or play in a private game to learn its mechanics before you start participating in the public arena.

The game has a range of downloadable content that the user can buy and will add more creatures to the islands that you and the other players inhabit. The creatures can range from dire wolves to wyverns and most of these the player will be able to tame and ride with. They will protect and fight with the player when you are in combat with another player or in a tribe vs. tribe battle.

Ark survival Aberration was released across all consoles on December 12, 2017. This made it available for all users that have bought the base game. Players are also able to access this downloadable content if they have bought the season pass, this will also include Arks’ other downloadable content such as Scorched Earth and Ragnarok and add more wild dinosaurs to your world that you can transfer between each world once they have been tamed.

Aberrations’ new map is based underground and will allow the player to craft new equipment. This can give players the ability to climb rocks using a climbing pick or fly in the sky with a gliding wingsuit. The player can also craft glow sticks to help with swimming underwater or travelling into a cave with a hand to spare.

The game’s scenery is very beautiful as it is based on a world that is prehistoric. This will lead the player into building their home out of wood and stone and their weapons out of metal. This can be a lot of fun, as for the first couple of times, you need to watch the surrounding area as there is always a player or a dinosaur waiting to kill you, so it’s always a good idea to have a friend watching your back. With this new installation of Ark, the player may want to explore more rather than build, as there are caves all around the map that are home to powerful dinosaurs that the player can tame or kill, but if the player reaches the end of the cave they will receive items that are useful to them, such as a zip wire or if a player is lucky, there may be an orb that the user needs to collect in order to fight the end boss that will beat the game.

Aberration’s game style is similar to that of Ark as it has all the core features of the original game; the only slight differences are that Ark was based above ground, Aberrations is not, as the game places the player in a vast cavernous system in which there is a way to reach the surface, but upon doing so, the player’s character will become extremely hot which isn’t ideal. There is also the slight change to the drop boxes where, in Ark they were a big diamond shape, but now in Aberrations, they are much smaller and harder to notice except for their lights. The boxes themselves have only the base of their Diamond that will land in the caverns, whereas upon the surface they will land as normal.

In my opinion the game is a good buy for anyone that enjoys the ark survival games and has a small tribe that they like to move from server to server with when there is a new one like Scorched Earth, Ragnarok and now, Aberrations. With each of the different servers posing different challenges, it’s hard to see why anyone would dislike the game. The only downside that there would have to be, is the Player vs Player aspect of the game, as when you are off-line, your base and character can still be attacked and killed by a rival tribe, or a dinosaur that comes across you and that will have you lose all the items that you were carrying, which can include some rare items or materials that a player is using for their base.

REVIEW CODE: A Playstation 4 code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk

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