ARK: SURVIVAL EVOLVED BLAZES NEW GROUND WITH SCORCHED EARTH EXPANSION PACK FOR STEAM PC/MAC/LINUX AND XBOX ONE
Fiery Desert Wasteland Where Finding Precious Water is Essential; Replete With New Creatures, 50+ New Items to Craft, Ultra Harsh Weather Conditions and Wyverns!
Plus, Xbox One Version Gets Update v739 Featuring New Dinos, New Official Mod ‘Primitive+’, and HD Resolution Upgrade to Full 720p Gameplay with 1080p UIs
Seattle, WA – September 1, 2016 – Studio Wildcard unveiled today the single biggest update in its 14-month development cycle with the first ARK: Survival Evolved expansion pack entitled Scorched Earth. Available starting today on Steam Early Access and Xbox One Game Preview, Scorched Earth is an entirely new desert-themed ARK filled with new biomes, creatures, gameplay mechanics, and challenges that will push players’ survival skills to the limit.
- Watch the Scorched Earth Gameplay Trailer on YouTube HERE: youtube.com/watch?v=Ot_NIoBE0j8
Stranded naked, dehydrated and starving on a fiery, drought-ridden desert world, players must immediately seek water, hunt for food, harvest new flora, craft new items, and build shelter from the extreme heat. Players who survive the harsh arid conditions can travel back and forth from the Scorched Earth map to the ARK: Survival Evolved main game, taking with them newly collected tools, weapons, and their new tamed creatures to impress their friends and dazzle their combatants.
ARK: Scorched Earth is a completely finished, polished new expansion pack, which retails for $19.99 on Steam PC/Mac/Linux/SteamOS and Xbox One. To play Scorched Earth, players already must own ARK: Survival Evolved, on sale this week at 40% off the retail price for both Steam and Xbox One.
“All of us at Wildcard are tremendously excited to see how these new features alter the dynamics of the long-term ARK ‘metagame,’” said Studio Wildcard lead designer and co-founder, Jeremy Stieglitz. “While we’ve had Scorched Earth and future ARKs in the planning stages since the project’s inception, establishing its inter-ARK travel technology was the essential reason for making this content available to players right now. We encourage everyone to grab some trustworthy tribemates, don your safari hats, layer on the SPF-1000 sunscreen, and head into the great blazing desert!”
ARK: Survival Evolved and its Scorched Earth Expansion Pack now include support for NVIDIA Ansel — a revolutionary new way to capture in-game shots. Compose a shot from any position, adjust with post-process filters, capture HDR images in high fidelity formats, and share the screenshots in 360 via a smartphone, PC or VR headset. Learn more about these features in the Ansel Technology page and the NVIDIA blog.
Scorched Earth Key Features:
- 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 and 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 and 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 sand storms, 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.
Xbox One Players Also Get Update v739…
Xbox One owners will also receive today a content-rich update which PC gamers received last month, as well as an HD resolution upgrade to fully support 720p gameplay with 1080p UI’s. The player-created Mod entitled ‘Primitive+’ is now an official part of ARK: Survival Evolved on Xbox One, which features more than 100 new items, weapons, structures, and survival mechanics oriented towards “primitive” style living — effectively doubling the amount of content within ARK! In addition, as part of the v739 update, Studio Wildcard also has brought to life two new creatures, the versatile Pelagornis and the pack-minded Allosaurus, along with a new Fishing Rod and fishing mechanic, and a flurry of additional gameplay features!
ARK Official Mods
Newly available as part of the ‘ARK Official Mods Program’ today on Xbox One, Primitive+ is a functionality mod playable on official ARK maps, challenging players to use weapons and tools only made of wood and stone, without the benefit of advanced metals to create weapons such as guns. It’s a whole new set of items and detailed mechanics focused on ‘primitive’ survival, which fits snugly in the world of ARK.
Two New Creatures
Pelagornis (Species Pelagornis miocaenus): This creature is instantly recognizable from the more common Icthyornis by its size. With a wingspan rivaling Argentavis, it also possesses a beak filled with tooth-like projections for snagging fish and webbed feet for paddling upon the ocean surface. Because of its ability to fly, walk, and surface-swim, a tamed Pelagornis is one of the island’s most versatile mounts, though this comes at a cost. The same webbed feet that allow Pelagornis to serenely maneuver along the ocean’s surface prevent it from snatching prey from the ground, which may limit its appeal to some survivors.
Allosaurus (Species Allosaurus therotribus): Smaller but faster than Tyrannosaurus, larger but slower than Carnotaurus, Allosaurus is the island’s resident pack-hunting theropod. While most aggressive theropods are relatively solitary creatures, Allosaurus lives in groups of three. One Allosaurus is the Pack Leader, while the others are its mates or a beta male. The Allosaurus has evolved to hunt in packs. Its saw-shaped teeth leave its prey bleeding and maimed, making escape difficult. Once an Allosaurus slows a creature with its cutting bite, the rest of its pack quickly close in for the kill…
Additional Update v739 Content Includes:
- New Item: Fishing Rod and Fishing Mechanic! Be a pro fisherman as you apply varied bait, cast the line, wait for a fish to become ensnared, and then succeed at a mini-game to reel the fish and claim copious rewards!
- New Structure: Industrial Grinder that grinds items into a portion of their crafting resources, then converts resources into simpler resources
- New Structure: Spiral Staircase (Stone/Wood/Metal)
- New Mechanic: Optional Hitmarkers for ranged attacks (server can toggle them, as well as client if the server allows it)
- Building Attack/Destruction TribeLogs
Feel like riding a dinosaur? Join the ARK community forums HERE: survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/
ARK: Survival Evolved is in development for Xbox One via the ID@Xbox program, PlayStation®4 with VR support, and Steam PC. The game is currently playable in Microsoft’s Game Preview on Xbox One and Steam’s Early Access program, which includes Oculus Rift VR support and an integration of Steam community features such as Steam Economy and Steam Workshop for custom maps and mods. Players can host private/LAN servers and have access to a custom-built version of the Unreal Engine 4 Editor for creating mods. The world of ARK is designed to be modder-friendly and ever-expanding!
To join our growing band of survivors, journey to Steam or Microsoft’s Game Preview on Xbox One to download the game. For the latest updates follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, subscribe to us on YouTube, visit the Website at playark.com and watch us tame and train leviathan dinosaurs on Twitch.TV.
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ABOUT STUDIO WILDCARD
Studio Wildcard was co-founded in 2014 by Jesse Rapczak, former Technical Art Director at Microsoft Game Studios, and industry veteran Jeremy Stieglitz with the mission of bringing AAA quality to ambitious indie productions that are designed for core gamers. With combined 25 years of industry experience across multiple independent and studio-backed titles, Jeremy and Jesse have teamed up with other veteran developers for Seattle, WA-based and Gainesville, FL-based development studios that also include distributed team members across multiple continents. Wherever talented, driven developers may reside, Studio Wildcard intends to seek out and work with them!
ABOUT INSTINCT GAMES
Instinct Games is Egypt’s leading game development studio. Started in 2011 by former Timeline Interactive co-founders, the Instinct Games team develops and produces video games on all major platforms utilizing its competent technical team. Its mission is to collaborate with world class partners to foster Egypt’s video game development ecosystem and set a precedent of high quality, low cost, entertaining indie games with worldwide appeal.
For unknown reasons, Hatsune Miku and her friends have lost their ability to broadcast their music to their fans and without their fans, they can no longer sing and generate power. As such they need the player’s help to bring their music to the world once again and unlock “Clouds” by completing performances. Each cloud has a little story snippet presented as a visual novel that only lasts probably for a few minutes per cloud and generally doesn’t reveal or develop much but does add a little something extra that otherwise has been completely lacking.
The real difference in this title comes in the way everything progresses. You see, unlike previous entries in the series where songs can be unlocked by completing other songs and, while doing so, the already completed songs can be played on the hardest difficulties, Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X instead limits this unlocking nature. Until players clear every single cloud in the game and unlock the songs available they are only able to play on Easy or Normal difficulty and that means that veterans will likely find the game extremely easy and a bit of a grind to start with unless they switch to free play mode and find themselves with more freedom of choice but also a lack of progression.
Speaking of unlocking Modules, players will now find that costumes come at a much easier but far more random rate in this game. Rather than purchasing them using in-game currency, if the player can clear the Chance Time mode, rather than triggering an on-stage special effect they will now trigger a costume change that will award the player with a random Module that will then be unlocked for use from then on. The problem here is that players do have a chance of obtaining repeat modules while also unlocking costumes they might not actually need for a given set of songs.
These medley songs make for some of the best performances in the game and thankfully players are given a way they can craft their own as, once you manage to reach a certain point in the game, you can create Festivals of three songs of your choice featuring complete freedom for character and costume choice as well, though only a few stages are available for this mode. It is worth noting that the Concert Editor that allows players to create your own performances is still available for the game but needs to be downloaded as a free piece of DLC.
The actual performances still very impressive looking and feature a wide variety of stages and dance moves but unfortunately almost every performance is designed to be a stage performance meaning that there are no longer any music video style sequences that were found in previous entries though it is worth noting that more than a few of these performances are still quite extravagant looking. That being said, the company has continued their translations of every song’s lyrics which is a perfect addition for fans.
The only problem is, that if he doesn’t find a true love by the end of the day, the arrow’s effects will wear off and with it his entire life’s supply of potential love, meaning he will be forever alone and shunned even by animals. With only a day to try and find love, and thanks to the convenient return of a childhood friend as well as her elder sister beginning tos peak with Houdai again, there are already two potential love interests in sight.
If players opt to simply rush through the game they will find that Gal*Gun: Double Peace’s basic story mode can be completed fairly quickly but that is partially the design for this title. I say this because this title implements the visual novel style of route unlocking by making it so players can, at least at the start, only pursue certain endings (even these endings have variations depending on dialogue choices and affection levels) and then once they have managed to clear these endings can opt for a different route. These multiple routes help extend an already highly replayable title that players will want to run through more than once simply to try and get better scores or unlock items by adding additional storyline options and new content that is specific to certain routes.
To do this players must make use of their “pheromone” shot that is provided to them by Ekoro and provide any girl confessing to them with euphoria and cause them to fall to the ground in satisfaction. The girls take on various methods of confessing their love such as handing love letters, shouting out kanji that can be shot out of the air, grabbing and hugging you, or simply kissing the player while other girls who are infected by the demon Kurona will take a bit more violent approach and often stomp on the player in a dominatrix fashion.
As you make your way through a stage players will fill up a meter that allows them to trigger “Doki-Doki Mode” where up to three girls can be targeted at a time and brought into a separate mini-game. In this mode players must target (or on the Vita use the touch screen) various weak points on girls while the camera spins around them slowly in order to fill up a meter and give them a “climax” finish before a certain amount of time passes. While a great mode for the more perverted aspect of the game, this is also very useful at times as successfully clearing this mode detonates a euphoria explosion that subdues every girl on the screen and can help the player out of a tight spot.
It is worth noting that while multiple difficulties are available, those looking for a bit of challenge to go with their light-hearted fan-service heavy fun will want to play on the harder option as the standard difficulty is fairly easy. Along those lines players can purchase various upgrades in-between stages from a school shop where they can buff various stats that allow them to make certain dialogue choices, increase their health or amount of damage dealt by shots, purchase items that allow them to avoid or diminish damage from certain attacks, or even add more camera angles to the Doki-Doki mode.
Of course the various moaning when girls are struck with ecstasy shots or when the camera pans around in Doki-Doki mode might be a bit much for some but those looking forward to the fan-service will be right at home. The actual dialogue in the game is handled with well-translated English subtitles paired with the Japanese voice acting but it is a bit unfortunate that there isn’t more variety when it comes to the game’s soundtrack that quickly becomes repetitive and environments as most of the areas in the game are sparsely detailed and generic for a school setting.