Recent reviews by gr33nm44n

watch the little man go, spin that cog, watch stuff grow, leave it on your second screen while you work.

Just wait, wait for a year or so for it to stabilise (if we're lucky).

You know what you're getting, it's Ark 2015 alpha/early access build with a few QoL in a new engine and graphical upgrade. Which lets not forget was promised to be bundled free with Ark 2 for around £45-50.
Oh, the drama behind it all....
*crash*

Anyhow here's the Pros and Cons.

Positives:
-It's pretty (not wildcards doing, that's the Unreal 5 engine doing it's thing).
-New map POIs are a nice touch.

Negatives: (sigh)

-We're in alpha/early access again, last one took 8 years.
-The crashes, Dave we're looking your way.
-It's a buggy mess, *the crashes*, with each update breaks something or deletes players storage, items or dinos.
-Caves teleporting players in to lava on jumps or out of it above it, creature over spawning in caves.
-Dinos flying off into the sky box, to 50,50 or the abyss never to be seen again.
-The inside of the volcano extends to the outside, making you load the inside while the outside depopulates (sometimes causing the game to crash), *the crashes*, random borked geometry getting players stuck, *the crashes*.
-Still not optimised for any PC or console, *the crashes*, players tweaking their hardware via changing regedits, downloading software to unlock cores, changing RAM timings, under or over volting CPUs and GPUs to run it, some breaking it in the process of doing so. You shouldn't be having to do this, stop and wait a while.

Current players:
Go back and play Evolved for a bit to wait it out, if you're having issues.
Maybe one with mods you've not seen before, or ones with eco's mods (chefs kiss).
Even, play single player with looooads of mods you like or find another game to pass the time lots out there to chose from.

New player to Ark?
Buy Evolved in a sale and explore the cornucopia of dinosaurs, maps, and free mods on the workshop . Before hoping in to this hot dog**** of a mess.
(hot topic you'll be having to pay for some mods in Ascended at some point)

I'm still going to play it.... it's Ark.
- The Island didn't need such an OP new dino on the first map.

EDIT:
So it's been a while and it's still a no.

All the DLC is pay to win in PvP offering benefits to players that got it, making playing hell for those that haven't.
All said DLC is baked in and reminds you constantly, you don't have it.
ie in the engrams Bob's tails is there always, no way of turning it off in solo/offline play.

On top of paid DLCs we now have pay to win dinos.
Dinos roaming around the map you can do nothing with because, you guessed it, you need to pay for them. And they can be OP AF. All you can do it kill them while someone using them deletes you from the map.

More paid stuff on top of more paid stuff.
Next thing you know they'll introduce gacha machines, needing in game currency costing real money.

Want to be a cat with a robot travelling companion, discovering what happened to the world?
Here you go.
Movement and interaction is simple, button prompts all the way, you can turn them off if you wish.
Great visuals, sound and story telling.

Fun and sometimes infuriating Rube Goldburg style puzzles

Fun, enjoyable and sometimes headbanging infuriating.
Make sure to explore, there's plenty to do.

Just fork over the money, start playing and enjoy.
3rd time I've played through, and it's still not boring.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.
No, wait, wrong millennium.
Wrong game!
I can't help it, it's the hat man.

Look just buy it, and play you won't be disappointed.
Grab that tasty DLC too, for the extra classes and loot space in your bags and vaults.

Really good game, recommend single offline play.
Letting it down monumentally is Co-op.
I want to play this with friends, it's a reason it has co-op.
67 hours in and I've managed 1 hour if that playing co-op.
Continuously crashing out before loading or part way in session, having to sit through that noisy assed loading scren time after time, it's like watching your fav show on TV cranking the volume up to her it, comercial break and waking up half the neigbourhood with a tampax advert, while your trying to take that quick ♥♥♥♥ you so deapratly needed an hour ago, but the remotes in the living room, not that it would do you any good from the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, the dogs the next town over are now howling as the birdseye comercial with the wolves howling is on and your just sat there head in your hands, crying into the toilet paper you just realised you wipped your ass with seconds before.

I'll be pushing to finish it with out 100% completion then uninstalling it, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fuming now, done with it.
Just like that ♥♥♥♥ I was taking.

edit: Thanks to Steams buffoonery the Steam version of the game is bricked on startup after playing on a custom map, you now have to run a regedit (recommended by the devs) from a guy called Steve64b (https://steve.farcry.eu/) every time you want to play it, as devs/ubisoft can't do squat about it and Steam couldn't care less they bricked it.

Cracking good fun.

Kane & Lynce, GTA, JC2, Saints Row all rolled into one free to play.