Ark: Survival Evolved is the survival game du jour, and not without cause. While others have tried to create games that combine dinosaurs and the crafting, progression, and violent encounters typical of the genre, ARK’s early access release seems to come the closest to pulling it off. To explore it a little more, we asked Andro Dars to make a video playthrough to show what works and what doesn’t. Part two is below. …

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As a wise man once said, “Life, uh, finds a way.” In Ark: Survival Evolved , you can now help life along: the survival game’s latest Early Access update adds the ability to breed two dinosaurs, creating a cute new baby dino with a mix of traits from its parents. Also, an underwater dinosaur with a floating platform on its back, which looks like a battleship. You can find a video below. …

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A tree fell in the distance, lumberjack style, and I knew I would have to investigate. A second tree fell as I approached, then a third. By the time the man in red armour turned and saw me, I had already resolved to die in whatever mundane or horrible fashion he deemed appropriate. Hours of DayZ and Rust had instilled in me an understanding of survival gaming s harsh realities. Yet, for some reason, all that time spent respawning had never eroded my essential curiousity for the human beings who inhabit these deadly environments. I said hello to the man in red. He held his axe aloft for a moment and stood eerily still. Hello, he said. Then he did something entirely unexpected. He took me into his home. Ark: Survival Evolved has been straddling the Steam bestsellers list for months since its release. Like the many survival games before it, the dinosaur infested island of Ark has been attracting PC gamers non-stop, as if they really were arriving to its pristine beaches by the boatload. And yet the response of the games media, outside of the YouTube dimension, has been kind of muted. You can understand why. It is another survival game. …

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