Originally due in October, Ark's Aberration expansion lands today—bringing with it an new underground biome, dozens of alien-like dinos and over 50 new craftable items.  Despite not being much of a cave guy, Chris appeared to enjoy his hands-on time with Aberration last month, as he traversed its inhabitable and hazardous underground world where sunlight is apparently deadly. In turn, you should expect earthquakes, environmental pitfalls, ziplines, wingsuits, climbing gear, and, obviously, a cast of fantastically terrifying creatures.  Here's a look at some of that in video form:  And if that wasn't enough to contend with, developer Studio Wildcard warns we should "Beware the ‘Nameless’: unrelenting, Element-infused humanoids, which have evolved into vicious light-hating creatures, and the Reapers, massive alien monstrosities which can impregnate foes to spawn their offspring." Chris bills the latter process as a "rather messy chest-birth to a squirming worm grub" that's equally gross and fun. I'll take his word for it.    With new challenges and over 50 new craftable items to tinker with, Aberration provides plenty to get on with. Speaking

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I recently got a chance to play around in an early build of Ark's second expansion, Aberration, which takes place in a series of underground biomes and introduces new movement systems like wingsuit gliding, rock-climbing, and ziplines. Originally planned for an October release, Studio Wildcard has announced that Aberration will now arrive on December 12. Along with the new environments, and the new tools to get around in them, Aberration will of course arrive with new dinosaurs (or are they aliens?) such as the Rock Drake, which can glide, stick to walls, and become nearly invisible. There's also a hideous queen monster that can lay eggs inside you, causing you to give a rather messy chest-birth to a squirming worm grub. Gross! But fun. The Aberration expansion will be priced at $20, and can also be purchased as part of the Ark season pass, which includes Scorched Earth and an as-yet unspecified third expansion. Ark itself is currently 50% off in the Steam store.

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Yesterday I had the chance to speak with Doug Kennedy, CEO of Studio Wildcard, the company responsible for Ark: Survival Evolved . Needless to say, that game’s heady brew of dinosaur riding and tree punching has been a remarkable success–and ranks among the few survival games to leave its stint in Early Access.  But it hasn’t been without controversy. The release of Scorched Earth, Ark’s first major expansion before the game had launched proper, was a sticking point among its playerbase, as were other factors such as the game’s price increase when it finally hit 1.0. But generally speaking the game is being played and enjoyed–it’s sold a whopping 11 million units across all platforms, which can hardly be attributed to player ambivalence. On Early Access With all that in mind, would Studio Wildcard use Early Access again? With the notable exception of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds , Early Access projects have struggled to meet the profile and success of titles like Ark–as well as others such as DayZ and Rust, which

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The dinosaur-riding survival game Ark: Survival Evolved is chugging along nicely, with about 40,000 people playing it at this moment (a daily peak of 56,000, according to Steam Charts) and a big new expansion called Aberration set to come out later this month. But nothing is forever, and creative director Jesse Rapczak told DualShockers recently that in the relatively near future, Studio Wildcard is going to start looking ahead to a sequel.  The developers aren't actually working on a followup yet, to be clear: Rapczak said Studio Wildcard has "a bunch of great ideas" for Ark, and it's currently in pre-production on a new expansion that's expect to be out sometime in 2018. But beyond that, it's harder to say.  "I think, you know, as we get down the line, over the next year or two, Ark needs to have a sequel at some point," Rapczak said. "It’s definitely gonna be on our minds about when it’s the right time to something like that."  It will be interesting to see how that prediction holds up. The game industry is heavily dependent on sequels, there's no doubt, but the real

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I've been a bit skeptical about stepping into the world of Aberration—the next expansion for dino-survival game Ark: Survival Evolved, due out this month. Aberration takes place in a different world, one where the only inhabitable spaces are underground due to the extremely hazardous conditions on the surface, where there's no atmosphere and even sunlight itself is deadly. As a sci-fi concept it sounds cool, but the thing is: I'm just not much of a cave guy. I think caves in games can be nice places to visit, but the thought of spending all my time underground in a game isn't really appealing to me. It's not a claustrophobia thing, I just like being outside (virtually, I mean—in real life, not that much). One of the joys of Ark is soaring above mountains and forests on a winged dino, enjoying the blue skies and shimmering sunlight off the water. The base game has several of its own caves and caverns, and they're cool to visit from time to time. But the idea of playing Ark underground around the clock felt like it could be a bit stifling. I got a chance to try a build of Aberration last week, and I'm definitely feeling much more optimistic about the expansion. Aberration

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Ark represents some of the best and worst aspects of Early Access. After more than two years spent in Early Access, Ark has finally hit the retail milestone. Poor performance and glitches were somewhat excusable during the extended 'beta' period, since the game wasn't officially released—it was early and many assumed optimizations would be coming in future updates. But the retail launch has now come and gone, so there are no more excuses. Let's just get this out of the way right here: Ark's system requirements are steep, and it's perhaps telling that there's no official word on the minimum and recommended system specs for the game. While the visuals can be impressive at times, animations could be better, and clipping is a major issue. I also encountered various graphical glitches, depending on settings and hardware. In short, Ark isn't running anywhere near as smoothly as the Destiny 2 beta. If you're using anything less than a high-end graphics card, be prepared to dial down the settings quite a bit. The epic preset is brutally punishing, taking down even the fastest current graphics cards. Let's start with the features checklist: Given its PC and EA roots, it's

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