It’s been two years in the making, but after a few delays, Ark: Survival Evolved has finally come out of Early Access. Since I’ve been following this game’s development from the beginning, I think I’ve been on an interesting journey. Now it’s available on PC and consoles, which gives it a wide audience. Included in this release is the new $60 price tag. Luckily, I paid about half of that during Early Access, but I still think it’s worth it. There is a season pass available, too, which seems to be $30 at the moment.
Ark has always had something to look forward to, especially monthly content updates. Last year, Studio Wildcard announced Ark’s first DLC, Scorched Earth, for about $20. This drew criticism because the core game was still in Early Access. Ark was originally supposed to exit Early Access last year, about the time of Scorched Earth’s release, but it got delayed.
This year, Stuido Wildcard has announced the second DLC, Aberration. It will cost about $20, without the season pass. Apparently, you’re on a faulty Ark in space and have to survive in extreme environmental hazards such as radiation. There are mutated creatures on this Ark. One such creature is show in the trailer that can fly and camouflage itself, it’s like a flying chameleon. There seems to be a vast underground and caverns. It looks interesting and is due to come out next month.
I’ve spent over 2,300 hours playing Ark. I started out on my own, then got invited to an official server. I met friends in the tribe and enjoyed my time there, but I ended up coming back to the single player game. I’ve been loving it since the beginning and more content is definitely something I look forward to. I remember how exciting it was to get all those new content updates, which were more frequent early on, but slowed down to once a month.
One of the things I’ve been looking forward to most is the game’s optimization. This game helped me learn more about my graphics card, the GTX 690. I learned that it was a dual-GPU card that worked by using SLI. Unfortunately some games are only able to use one of those GPUs, until they become SLI compatible. So, I had to research the game’s various video settings and figure out what would work best. I had to downgrade DirectX to double my frame rate and get some sense of stability, which came at a huge cost to image quality. In the end, I decided to buy a GTX 980 Ti and I finally got to experience those high quality graphics for myself. Optimizations have come, even GeForce Experience has updated and can now optimize the game’s settings based on your hardware. Those settings work well for me, although I had to make a slight adjustment.
Part of what I love most about this game is that it shares some aspects of games I’ve enjoyed in recent years, such as Terraria and Minecraft. You can craft a lot of items, upgrade armor, build, and tame creatures to help you. It can be scary and fun. There is lore or a story, but it’s not extremely apparent or in your face. You can find out about it by finding the various Explorer Notes left around the maps.
If you play online on an official server, it can take a long time to build up and tame creatures, which is why being part of a bigger tribe can be important. But, if you play on an unofficial server or single player mode, you can customize a huge variety of options that can help make your game play more pleasant.
Aberration news source:
https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/articles.html/ark-aberration-expansion-pack-announced-r542/
Ark official launch trailer:
https://youtu.be/5fIAPcVdZO8
Ark has always had something to look forward to, especially monthly content updates. Last year, Studio Wildcard announced Ark’s first DLC, Scorched Earth, for about $20. This drew criticism because the core game was still in Early Access. Ark was originally supposed to exit Early Access last year, about the time of Scorched Earth’s release, but it got delayed.
This year, Stuido Wildcard has announced the second DLC, Aberration. It will cost about $20, without the season pass. Apparently, you’re on a faulty Ark in space and have to survive in extreme environmental hazards such as radiation. There are mutated creatures on this Ark. One such creature is show in the trailer that can fly and camouflage itself, it’s like a flying chameleon. There seems to be a vast underground and caverns. It looks interesting and is due to come out next month.
I’ve spent over 2,300 hours playing Ark. I started out on my own, then got invited to an official server. I met friends in the tribe and enjoyed my time there, but I ended up coming back to the single player game. I’ve been loving it since the beginning and more content is definitely something I look forward to. I remember how exciting it was to get all those new content updates, which were more frequent early on, but slowed down to once a month.
One of the things I’ve been looking forward to most is the game’s optimization. This game helped me learn more about my graphics card, the GTX 690. I learned that it was a dual-GPU card that worked by using SLI. Unfortunately some games are only able to use one of those GPUs, until they become SLI compatible. So, I had to research the game’s various video settings and figure out what would work best. I had to downgrade DirectX to double my frame rate and get some sense of stability, which came at a huge cost to image quality. In the end, I decided to buy a GTX 980 Ti and I finally got to experience those high quality graphics for myself. Optimizations have come, even GeForce Experience has updated and can now optimize the game’s settings based on your hardware. Those settings work well for me, although I had to make a slight adjustment.
Part of what I love most about this game is that it shares some aspects of games I’ve enjoyed in recent years, such as Terraria and Minecraft. You can craft a lot of items, upgrade armor, build, and tame creatures to help you. It can be scary and fun. There is lore or a story, but it’s not extremely apparent or in your face. You can find out about it by finding the various Explorer Notes left around the maps.
If you play online on an official server, it can take a long time to build up and tame creatures, which is why being part of a bigger tribe can be important. But, if you play on an unofficial server or single player mode, you can customize a huge variety of options that can help make your game play more pleasant.
Aberration news source:
https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/articles.html/ark-aberration-expansion-pack-announced-r542/
Ark official launch trailer:
https://youtu.be/5fIAPcVdZO8
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That trailer looks sick. Does the base game look as good as that? It's beautiful.
2,200 hours is a impressive amount of time in Ark! Seems like you really got a great $30 value! The only game I might have played as much time is Hearthstone and Blizzard doesn't tell you how many hours you spend playing it.
The trailer embedded of Aberration or the official launch trailer (link at the end of the post)? It does look very beautiful!
Abberation trailer.