If all you’ve ever wanted to do is head into a prehistoric landscape to find, capture, and tame dinosaurs, then Ark Survival Ascended is the game for you. Although there have been some performance issues since launch, the survival game remaster is currently at its lowest ever price on Steam, making it the perfect time to pick it up and get in the mood for Ark 2 – if it ever arrives, that is.
Launched in 2023, Ark Survival Ascended is a re-release of Ark Survival Evolved, made in Unreal Engine 5 this time around. The fresh lick of paint gives the survival game beautiful visuals, which serve to highlight the wonders and the terrors of Ark’s world.
Like a blend of Monster Hunter and Far Cry, it’s an open-world game about foraging, forming a tribe, and gathering enough weapons and resources to tame big dinos and other beasts. Across the game, which is still growing as past Survival Evolved expansions are recreated and added to it, there’s a diverse ecosystem to explore, with all manner of creatures living within. Your quest is to put yourself safely atop the food chain, taming and breeding as many of the biggest threats out there so they’re no longer as dangerous.
Survival Ascended comes with everything included in Survival Evolved, including Aberration, Scorched Earth, Genesis, and the other disparate worlds. Each offers its own challenges, rewards, and animals and plant-life to catalogue and figure out.
The re-release didn’t have the smoothest of launches. There were performance problems and bugs, which were compounded by some frustration within the community at a glorified remaster arriving before its ambitious-sounding sequel. Nonetheless, if you’ve never tried this dinosaur game, its current price may motivate you to change that.
Ark: Survival Ascended is on sale on Steam for $24.74 / £20.89 until Monday, February 17. This is the lowest the game’s price has ever been on Valve’s storefront, coming in at 45% off. The discount is part of Steam Couch Co-Op Fest, where, as you might have guessed, a range of co-op games are available at lower prices.
It’s especially worth picking up Survival Ascended because we still don’t know when the Ark 2 release date will be. Studio Wildcard had planned to have the follow-up out by 2024, but that hasn’t happened and there’s been no word of a new release window either.
We’ll keep our eyes peeled, but until then, consult our guides to the best Ark servers and the best Ark Survival Ascended mods for ways to make your dino-hunting as smooth and custom as possible.
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