Evolve
The Defence
The Prosecution
AMD A8 3.0 GHz
AMD Radeon R9 280
The Case
Coming to us from Turtle Rock Studios, the developer behind the celebrated multiplayer game Left 4 Dead, comes a new entry into the crowded genre of online multiplayer shooters simply titled...Evolve. The game focuses on a seemingly simple premise. Four players will play the role of hunter while a 5th player plays the role of the gigantic fearsome monster. Each “team” will compete on various maps either to complete a set of objectives...or to just eliminate the other team.
The Trial
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, before we begin let me get one thing out of the way. There has been a LOT said about the day one DLC in this title. I will not be commenting on the day one cosmetic packs for the game nor will I be reviewing the game based on its financial model. This will be a no-BS review about the game itself.
Let’s begin. So what is Evolve? In essence, it’s an online multiplayer game where 4 players will compete against a 5th player. The team of 4 will be hunters, with each being from one of 4 classes. The 5th player will get to choose one of several massive, strong, and deceptively quick at times monsters.
Let’s start with the technical side of things. This game is running on the 4th generation of the CryEngine. Now I know just by saying that some people with modest or underpowered PC’s/laptops are already sweating. My PC consists of an overclocked i7 4770k @4.3GHz, 16GB RAM, and a GTX 780Ti graphics card and I can run this game at 1080p with all settings maxed and the lowest frame rate I saw during my play was 57 for a moment. Playing with Vsync on. I experienced no crashes. Nor did my friends who assisted me in my numerous sessions for hours at a time. The game is scalable and playable on a variety of machines. Even budget conscious cards like the 750Ti were playable and rock solid stable during our play. Moving on from technical performance, the game has the PC standards of several adjustable graphics settings and rebindable keys. However, one thing I did not see was an FOV slider. Let’s talk graphics. Evolve, even on the lower settings looks really good. The maps are densely packed with vegetation, wildlife and various weather effects and biomes. The animations are solid, the texture quality is good (though you can see a few corners were cut in places) and the details are packed in. I really really like how atmospheric the various maps are. I’ve played a bunch of games in the last 30 years where I’m supposed to be on an alien world but the game still “feels” like I’m just playing in a forest or desert on Earth. In Evolve, it felt like I’m on a different planet. One of the players I tested the game with commented that she felt like she was on Pandora from the James Cameron’s Avatar movie where everything that moves wants to kill you. How about the audio? Evolve’s audio drew me in. The dialogue between the characters is genuinely amusing...until it gets repetitive which happens amazingly fast in a long session. The various creatures make different sounds that if you’re versed in them you know WHAT it is that’s nearby and more importantly if it’s aware of you and/or if it’s hostile to you. So Evolve looks good and it sounds good...but does it play good? I’ve already mentioned the basics 4 hunters vs. 1 monster. Simple but deceptively complex. To get players started there are two playable tutorials. One to teach monster basics, the other to teach hunter basics. Also included are two tutorial videos, a basic and an advanced for each of the twelve hunter characters and three monsters currently available. There are also tutorial videos on each of the game types. At this time there are 4 classes, three hunters per class and each team must have one player from each class. There will be a medic, an assault, a trapper and a support on every team. The three hunters in a given class aren’t just skins or palate swaps. They each will have access to one shared class ability and then three abilities/weapons which are unique to them within their given class. For example, the starting assault character Markov will be able to place up to 5 mines anywhere on the map that detonate when the monster or any wildlife approach it, whereas the unlockable Hyde character in the assault class will have poison gas grenades instead. Each of the classes plays differently as well as each character within each class. In total there are 12 hunter characters to play...once you unlock them all. Players will start the game with access to 1 hunter in each class and through completing weapon-based objectives with these characters will unlock the next available character in the respective class. Once that’s done the newly unlocked character will have their own set of objectives which must be completed to unlock the final character in the given class. Each class has its own defined role and matches will be won or lost based on the players playing their role. The assault class is generally the primary damage dealer and the meat shield of the team. Their job is to shoot the monster and to take the hits. The medic is in charge of keeping the team healed/alive but also can damage the monster. The trapper is in charge of both finding the monster and temporarily locking the monster down so the team can kill it. The support is in charge of supporting the team in a variety of ways. Depending on the particular character chosen, support players have things such as team cloaking, shielding other players, tracking assistance, etc. On the monster side of things players will start with access to the Goliath. Goliath is a land based monster that is reasonably quick and agile, packs several powerful attacks and has a boatload of health and armor. It is mostly a melee monster with one ranged ability. After completing Goliath’s objectives players will be granted access to the Kraken which sacrifices some of the health and armor of the Goliath for having the ability to fly along with several powerful ranged and area of effect abilities. After completing the Kraken’s objectives players will get access to the Wraith which has even lower armor and health in exchange for the ability to create decoys and turn invisible to hunt the hunters.
Case Review
- Good Audio: The audio is both entertaining to hear AND useful to the gameplay.
- Atmospheric: The maps “feel” like being on a different world. The flora and fauna along with the weather effects really add to this.
- Balanced: Everyone has a chance. It largely comes down to player skill though some random things like weather can tip the scales a bit in favor of the monster.
- Scalable and Stable: Evolve runs stable and playable on everything from PC’s built this year using high-end GPU’s to laptops from 3 years ago equipped with what were mid-range GPU’s then.
- Fun and Thoughtful: This game is just fun, more so when playing with people who talk, and coordinate actions. It’s mentally engaging while also being visceral.
- Solo Mode and Bots: Some players might not care for bot support or solo modes. Others like to be able to play custom matches alone, or to practice offline. I prefer my MP games to have offline solo options as well. When the servers go down I still want a game. You may not feel the same way.
- Repetitive Banter: It did not take long for the banter between teammates to start repeating itself, not long at all.
- Matchmaking: The system can and will matchmake you into games in progress where any hope of winning was lost long before you logged in. That’s unfortunate. Also the matchmaking seems to be experience level based (grindable) versus skill based (non-grindable).
- All it Takes is One: A single bad player can ruin the entire match for the hunter team, particularly if it’s the healer or trapper.
Appeal
Evolve is a pretty simple game, at its core. You and three other hunters team up to defeat an enormous monster controlled by a fifth player. Or, you control the monster yourself, starting off relatively weak but through eating local wildlife and staying out of the hunters’ path, you evolve to two more powerful stages. Reach the third one, and you become a nigh unstoppable killing machine. Though there are multiple game modes and each of the four hunter classes have three different characters with a unique loadout, every round of the game plays pretty much exactly the same. And that’s where the problems start to pile up. You see, Evolve is a bare bones experience to put it mildly. There are only a few maps, and all play the same. There are only two modes of play. The main mode is Hunt, which has the hunters searching for the monster which tries to evolve to a powerful enough stage so that it can kill the hunters or destroy an important building. And then there’s the “campaign” mode called Evacuation, which is five random matches loosely tied together by some well-produced but hollow and meaningless cinematics. The matches themselves are played in three different game modes - all of which are slight modifications to the Hunt-mode, all playing the same.
After some time, you’ll come to realize that you had seen the entire game already within the first few hours of play. Sure, playing with a different hunter or monster gives you other abilities, but you still do the exact same thing every match; escape and evolve as the monster, search and hunt as the hunter. And the way you do it isn’t even altered either. Every match either ends within a couple of minutes in which the monster player is trapped and killed early - and likely rage-quits as a result - or the monster eventually reaches stage three. By this point, the hunters have been running around the entire map for fifteen minutes, uneventfully sniffing at tracks and looking at birds. It might sound like some sort of intense “quiet before the storm” build-up, but it really only is exciting like that the first few rounds. After that, the distinct feeling of monotony sets in. Evolve is extremely repetitive, and the flawed progression system that’s supposed to have you coming back for more, does a piss poor job at doing so. It even goes so far as to force players to use ineffective methods that can lead to a match loss, just so that you can level up and unlock the next character for a class. And if you don’t have any friends who play the game - or God forbid, you live in Europe where nobody uses voice chat in public play - then you are out of luck. Playing Evolve will feel like playing the lottery. You’ll rarely find a match where people talk in a friendly manner, work together and try to enjoy the game without ruining everybody else’s day.
Evolve is, if anything, a solid backbone to what could’ve been an amazing game. Evolve would have been an amazing free-to-play shooter. The groundwork is there, and it’s solid. The controls are responsive and the mechanics are streamlined to the max. It’s a concept that is clearly thought out, and apart from a few frustrating bugs and balancing issues, the overall impression is extremely polished. But with the lackluster amount of content that you get for the asking price, the inherent monotony of the gameplay and the downright offensive DLC strategy that asks $15 - the equivalent of an overpriced map pack - just for a single new monster-character, I doubt that a couple of paid DLCs offering new monsters and hunters will be enough to keep the player count strong for more than a couple of months at best. And that is just sad because it’s evident that the developers knew what they were doing, but it seems the publisher got in their way at every junction. Cut this out, save it for later. DLC this, DLC that. When you pay this much from the get-go, and then are expected to keep paying in order to actually get a slight semblance of variety out of the damn thing, then it honestly isn’t worth it in my book. If you’re going to get Evolve, then get it cheap. Very cheap. And because there aren’t any dedicated servers, you’ll be wise to check if the game actually has an actively playing community at all when you first decide to plunk down the dough.
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