Studio Wildcard has announced that the PS4 release of ARK: Survival Evolved, dubbed the ARK Survivor’s Pack will deliver not only an up-to-date version of the original ARK: Survival Evolved, including all previously released content, but also the Scorched Earth Expansion Pack to North American PS4 gamers next week! Now if only I could secure a more regular supply of cementing paste…
The Survivor’s Pack will also include exclusive PS4 content including a Bionic Giganotosaurus skin, and an entire Manticore armor set. Much like the early access game on PC, PS4 ARK players will also receive a constant stream of major updates packed with new dinosaurs, weapons, armor, mechanics, and lifestyle improvements, until it releases as a final product in Spring 2017.
For those not familiar with ARK, let me tell you that I sunk an ungodly number of hours into the game in a persistent online world with several friends. Between multiplayer tribal co-operation/competition, exploring, taming dinosaurs, building massive bases, resource gathering, and crafting, ARK: Survival Evolved is such a fantastic vehicle for emergent narrative that it successfully managed to double my total Skyrim play time (with all DLC), and I’m still going back for more.
In ARK: Survival Evolved, survivors wake up stranded, naked, freezing, and starving on a mysterious and massive island where they must hunt, harvest, craft items, grow crops, and build shelters to survive in every climate type. Survivors will tame, train, and ride more than 100 stunning dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts, including gargantuan creatures the size of skyscrapers. In Jungle, Snow, Swamp, Redwood, and Desert areas, danger lurks everywhere. Tame a Pteranodon or a Quetzal to fly over snow-capped mountains, race through a thick jungle with your pack of trained Raptors, turn a herbivorous Brontosaurus into a living engine of destruction and demolish enemy bases, or go for classic terror by hunting prey on the back of a raging T-Rex.
Key Features of ARK: Survival Evolved:
- TAME, TRAIN, RIDE, and BREED DINOSAURS: Command the most amazing creatures from throughout Earth’s biological history, with more than 100 dinosaurs and creatures planned for full launch. Use cunning strategy and tactics to tame and ride the many dinosaurs and other primeval creatures roaming the dynamic, persistent ecosystems across land, sea, air, and even underground.
- CRAFT AND BUILD: Using any means necessary to survive, players will craft weapons, clothes, and items, and build shelters. Plant, harvest, build, level-up, and customize everything visually and functionally, including procedurally-generated RPG statistics for creatures, characters, resources, clothing, gear, and weapons, both primitive and modern.
- DISCOVER: Explore a massive living ecosystem and find the means to survive, thrive, and possibly escape the ARK Island.
- TEAM UP TO SURVIVE: Start a tribe with other players in a large-scale multiplayer online first person environment to survive and dominate competing tribes, and to ultimately discover ARK’s true purpose.
- JOIN A TRIBE: The ‘Tribe’ system encourages cooperation, by supporting dynamic parties to share resources, XP, and re-spawn points. Other players are organizing rebel tribes to accumulate resources, experience, re-spawn points, and to construct sprawling villages and cities, with technology spanning the primitive stone-age to the modern electric-powered era and beyond. And they will fight to destroy anything they see as a threat.
- A LARGER UNIVERSE: Travel between Online ARKs to meet new players, face new threats, and discover new civilizations.
And to add to the wealth of features in the base game, in the Scorched Earth Expansion Pack, players will wake up in a new, fiery, drought-ridden desert world, where they must immediately seek water, hunt for food, harvest new flora, craft new items, and build shelter from the extreme heat.
Use skills honed on ARK‘s faraway Island to kill, tame, breed, and ride the fantastical new creatures that have evolved to survive the Desert’s ultra harsh conditions, including dragons.
Key features of the Scorched Earth Expansion Pack:
- Where’s the Water? Players must re-learn what it means to survive and thrive in a harsh desert environment depleted of water resources.
- Explore a New World: Scorched Earth is an entirely new map, composed of seven unique, desert-themed biomes – dunes, high desert, mountains, canyons, badlands, oasis and the ever-dangerous dragon trench – each with their own aesthetics, resources & ecosystems, and littered with ruins, geysers, and intricate ancient cave systems.
- Craft More Than 50 New Items: Discover new outfits and structures to protect from the heat, and new tools to help survive in the harsh environment. Carry temporary shelter with you using tents, employ whips, boomerangs and flamethrowers for ‘defense’, wind turbines to generate clean power, and water wells & oil refineries to harvest scarce resources, among many new mechanics!
- Tame New Creatures: The desert’s biomes are filled with fantastical new creatures, many of which can be tamed. Lead a caravan of the camel-like Morellatops, or rain fire down on your enemies from the back of a Wyvern. Just mind your step in the vast desert, or you might attract a Death Worm!
- Conquer New Challenges: Prepare yourself for dangerous electrical storms, blinding sandstorms, befuddling heat stroke, and unleash the power of the Obelisks to come face-to-face with ARK’s deadliest boss creature to date – the ferocious Manticore!
- Travel Back to the Island: Take characters, favorite creatures and items from Scorched Earth back to the Island, standing out from the crowd and making your Island-dwelling friends jealous with all of the amazing new goodies and secrets you find in the Desert.
Now more than ever, it is a great time to jump into ARK. There is never a lack of things to do, only a lack of cementing paste to do them.
ARK: Survivor’s Pack is coming to PlayStation 4 on December 6, 2016, including ARK: Survival Evolved, and the desert-themed expansion, ARK: Scorched Earth together for $54.99 USD.
Jack McBastard is a contributor for AYBOnline. His opinions are his own. For example, he really did spend double the amount of time on ARK that he did on Skyrim. To the tune of… seriously? 848.6 hours at the time of this writing?! He finds that number sobering now that he’s done the research.
