Ark - Our Big, Fat Alpha Ascension

So, 'member how I said we were preparing to fight the dragon 'n shit? Here's how that went down:

We packed all of our strongest dinos and a spino (they're horseshit) into pokéballs and battled the last of the three titans on THEISLAND. Basically, all we had to do was to cram the fucker right in the middle of our 20 tames, beat the crap out of him and stuff a pig with all the food in the world in order to out-heal some of the dragon's nasty DoT effects. My pants broke, because Ark is stupid and somehow all bosses and dinosaurs in general always go for the ass. They're always my first piece of equipment to break. I've never finished a single goddamn boss battle with my pants on.

Beating the dragon was a pretty big deal for us, because it meant we could finally craft a full set of tek gear. And it's pretty insane.
Partial tek was pretty impressive already. We had tek helmets after the spider boss battle, which allowed us to breathe underwater. We had boots, which absorbed fall damage. Gloves with a pointless super punch, because why punch shit when you have a shotgun? Now we have full tek armor and we're basically Iron Man. Iron Men? People? We're Iron People.

We're also pretty damn sexy now.

We can fly without argies or pteranodons now, sprint so fast we can literally walk on water, fall from just about any height without taking damage and hang around under the sea with zero risk of drowning. The tek helmets even clear up all water distortion and sight limitations. Beating the dragon also unlocked tek sharks, so now our fishy friends can look awesome while they sit around and rot, never to be used again.

That's really my one small complaint with this whole thing. Yes, Tek is amazing, game-changing, a massive reward when you actually beat the game instead of just spawning it all in via console commands. It also means you're so stupidly fast, agile and basically unstoppable, it makes using most dinos pointless. Basically the thing that ruined Saints Row IV - that game made you a superhero with godlike abilities from the very beginning, meaning you never had to steal a vehicle or use any of the countless guns, because what's the point when you can fucking fly, run faster than light and destroy everything with one punch?

Saits Row The Third was basically GTA with more wrestling moves and a giant dildo.

In Ark's defense, you're pretty much at the end of the game by the time you unlock it, if you do it the legit way. Continue to the next ark (read: map, level) and you'll be back to sticks and stones until you find the resources required to get all of your tek back. So I suppose it can be forgiven that players get to be completely overpowered as they tie up some final loose ends, hunt down their last few explorer notes and prepare for ascension. That's the thing where you face the ark's overseer and learn a little more about what these arks actually are. We've ascended and there's a little video, but mind the thpoilerth that lurk within:

Next stop: Scorched Earth. Not sure how to feel about that. Leave Camp Nova behind, get used to a whole new place, build up another base, decide which dinos we want to take on our next journey. THEISLAND is a shithole, but it's pretty and it's been our virtual home since late 2018. There's also the fact that Ark has suddenly weirdly exploded on Steam, so we're now supposed to play and review Genesis. Not entirely sure how to squeeze that in. Maybe move from THEISLAND straight to Genesis, finish that first for our review, then play the rest of the DLC in its intended order. Or create alts for Genesis and cheat them up to endgame level. We'll see. I guess Ark's gonna be my job a little while longer. Life could be worse, I guess.