It's one of the most infamous Digital Foundry stories of all-time. The original version of Ark: Survival Evolved arrived with a mixture of shock, horror, befuddlement and amusement owing to its incredibly bad visuals, ultra-low resolution, lack of detail, LOD popping issues, slow loading and the fact that often, textures did not seem to load at all. However, a couple of months ago, we were approached by representatives of the studio, saying that an all-new Switch version was coming - and they were eager for Digital Foundry to check it out.
Let's be clear here, while we're not exactly big fans of the Ark concept, the new version of the game is completely transformative. It's one of the biggest improvements we've ever seen, turning the game from a hideous, unplayable mess into one of the more impressive Unreal Engine 4 titles we've seen on Nintendo Switch. It's been rebuilt from the ground up and addresses virtually every criticism we had of the original game.
Nothing of the original version has been brought over to this new edition. In fact, it's based on a relatively recent Xbox codebase running on Unreal Engine 4.26 - a more modern, mature version of the Epic technology. First impressions are very positive: the extremely low resolution of the original release gives way to a pleasing presentation. Developer Grove Street Games targets 1080p and 720p for docked and portable play respectively, with dynamic resolution working in combination with TAA upscaling to deliver a clean look. The DRS window varies from 55 percent to 100 percent of output resolution, but typically what I saw seemed to operate at around the 70 percent mid-point. Either way, it holds up well.