ARK: Survival Evolved is a video game that was released in full to the public in 2017. It was in early access for two years before being completed and officially released. The game focuses on a fantasy world where you as the player can explore and uncover the story hidden away within the map. But the land is infested with dinosaurs, both friendly and not. And as you explore this game, you can either befriend and tame these dinosaurs, or you can do your best to hunt them down or avoid them. The game has received a lot of positive reviews and has a 9/10 on Steam. And its success led it to having multiple purchasable additions, as well as a second game, which is still being created.

There are many things that make the game a true masterpiece.

The first is the graphics. A lot of games nowadays look amazing, and it more often than not takes years to perfect a game to that degree. ARK was in development for about a year before its early access was released, and then continued to be in the works for 2 years before it got released officially. To this day, the game continues to be updated with new additions and bug fixes. In this way, the game continues to be made better as time goes on. Models for each dinosaur are carefully crafted to put unique spins on the real-life versions of dinosaurs that most people understand. Fur and feathers are layered to add more realism, and the environment as well holds a lot of power visually. No game is truly perfected from glitches and bugs, however the ones in this game are few and far between. Studio Wildcard, the development studio behind this game, took their time and continues to do everything to make the game as enjoyable as possible.

The second thing that makes it a true masterpiece is the story. ARK is pretty unique in its story, and how it goes about portraying it. To those who do not wish to play the game for its story but instead simply for the gameplay, then there is no requirement to do so. The game allows its players to enjoy it without having to focus on the story. But it adds a new challenge. You can roam the land in search for notes and artifacts left behind by the humans who inhabited it before the player, and each newfound object allows you to piece together the story. (To find out more about it, you can play the game yourself! Or you can watch video analyses of it).

The final reason for it being amazing is the amount of options the game gives you. You can customize your player characters, as well as the dinosaurs in the game. ARK gives you a wide variety of options to mess with the worlds you spawn into. You can curate your own world to your liking. And there are multiple worlds you can choose from. Only a select few of them provide more for the story, but all of them find new ways to add unfamiliar terrain and dinosaurs to them. You can choose to survive on The Island, which is the base world that the game starts you on. Or you can try out Scorched Earth, which is a giant desert with limited water and new dangers to survive. There are far more options past that, all of which are exciting and creative.

ARK is a game that has been crafted uniquely and with a lot of care. There are a lot of expectations set for ARK 2, which is set to release sometime in 2024. The game can be bought on virtually any modern console, and provides a lot to its players to allow for a fun and enjoyable experience.