I'm a simple person: I see a game where you can be friends with a T-Rex, I play the game where you can be friends with a T-Rex. Unfortunately, the joy that comes with riding on your very own prehistoric creature is negated by the inevitable encroachment of their untimely death - they WILL die and you WILL be devastated that the hours and hours of IRL time it takes to hatch a single stupid egg were for NOTHING.
This game lacks any tutorials, guides, or consistency. New players have to rely on veteran players to show them the ropes - this might work if you have nice friends with private servers, but the public servers are filled with the meanest teenagers you'll ever encounter who can't wait to stomp all over the tiny straw hut you just spent hours lovingly building for yourself and your dodo bird, killing you both in the process. (R.I.P. Kevin. You were taken from me too soon.)
If you're like me and decide to simply play alone, you'll find that eventually... you run out of things to do. There are no quests, objectives, or NPC's, so the maps feel incredibly empty and lifeless, even with all the dinosaurs roaming around. I built a base in every biome on the map and made it my mission to tame one of every creature. I collected the journals that I would occasionally stumble across - the only hints of anything resembling a narrative - but I was never actually encouraged to do anything with them. Eventually, even the dinosaur-riding mechanic wasn't enough to keep me engaged, and I abandoned the game and left my big prehistoric friends to fend for themselves.
If you like survival games that don't teach you how to play, the idea of becoming attached to a dinosaur that will probably die and break your heart, or are a teenager looking to terrorize peaceful newcomers and their innocent birds, you'll like ARK: Survival Evolved.
