ARK's Survival Of The Fittest Makes Crafting Tense
Walking (and dying) With Dinosaurs
Ark: Survival Evolved [official site] has found a huge audience as a long-term, surprisingly friendly crafting and survival game, but the approaching Survival Of The Fittest mode is aiming for something different. It drops a group of players into the world with few supplies and a re-balanced progression curve and challenges them to be the last person standing. In other words, it's Battle Royale with dinosaurs.
We were invited to try the mode before release, and although server problems cut the experience short, there's a video below of intrepid RPS freelancers Andro Dars and Steven Messner eating berries, collecting wood and dying heroically in the cold.
[If 720p isn't available, it's because the video hasn't finished processing just yet - give it a few minutes and come back!]
Survival of the Fittest is designed to offer a portion of the Ark experience in quicker rounds, by pushing players towards combat with one another through in-game events (loot drops, dinosaur drops, etc) and by announcing deaths in the sky with dramatic fanfare. It's also specifically designed to make the normally sedate, long Ark game a better viewer experience - although you can judge whether it succeeds for yourself by watching above.
Apologies for the abrupt ending!
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