Evolve Reviews
In any event, I do think Turtle Rock is on to something. And although I don't think the game's balance is tuned where it should be, they are rather close.
Evolve offers players a chance to tame the wilds of an alien landscape. Only it's never really quite clear just who is the hunter and who is being hunted.
We're still in the early days of Evolve. There are still free characters, weapons and abilities to unlock for most of us. While the lack of a real story mode may upset some, most people who purchase this game are doing so for the multiplayer, plain and simple. On that front, Evolve impresses when things go as planned. Get a group together, work as a cohesive unit, and have fun blasting those ugly aliens to hell and back. Or play as a Monster, alone but oh so badass. Evolve has a hint of greatness, but a lack of content at launch and a jarring amount of premium launch and planned DLC hold it back. What we have here is an evolution of the Left 4 Dead formula, not a revolution.
Endless jogs through and hiding in forests and combat that wasn't satisfying for all its vagaries made Evolve palatable for me only in small doses. It was nothing I wanted to play for extended sessions.
Evolve is really good fun. With its four-player co-op matches sharing so much base DNA with Left 4 Dead, it's great that it feels like something completely different. It still shares that pace - extended moments of quiet followed by massive bursts of excitement - but provides it in a very different manner. There's not a huge amount of content in Evolve compared to many unlock-led games, but by keeping things tight the game always stays focussed on what's important: the thrill of the hunt. The almost absence of variety in the map design may well hack down Evolve's lasting appeal, but what's here in the main game is perfect for many great hours.
At its best, Evolve is tense, thrilling and what pundits like to call a game changer, with periods of frantic hunting/fleeing punctuated by explosive confrontations. At its worst, nothing comes together and it all feels strangely flat. With time and experience, we're seeing more of the former than the latter, and all the parts are falling into place. Our only concern is that the core Hunt mode could eventually grow stale with repetition, and that games mixing in the other modes are harder to find than they should be.
There's an ambitious and wonderfully tense multiplayer game hidden somewhere deep inside of Evolve, and on the rare occasions you can coax it out with perfectly balanced teams and a little luck, you'll understand exactly what Turtle Rock was aiming for. More often than not, however, you'll find yourself stuck in another dull and lengthy traipse through the jungle with an unsatisfying and lopsided payoff, made all the worse by a lack of substance or long-term appeal.
Though its long-term ability to survive has yet to be seen, in the short run that this first-person shooter has been out in the wild, it's already proven itself as a beast of a different color, and one that certainly will provide thrills and the joy of the hunt for anyone looking to stare right back at it.
Evolve is easy to recommend to anyone looking for something different in the world of big-budget shooting games. Though the game is at its best when you can play it with friends, it also has plenty to offer for single-player gamers. You need to be ready to lose a half-dozen matches while you figure out how Evolve works, but this is a game which will absolutely reward your patience with hours and hours of fun.
While the game is most fun when played with friends or a team with communication in the strength column, it's just as enjoyable to get into a solo match and hunt, be it a monster, or hunters.
When it all comes together, Evolve is the finest vehicle for the player-driven narratives developer Turtle Rock covets, but inevitably pacing can be an issue.
In emphasizing level progression, skill growth, and unlockable characters, Turtle Rock smothers Evolve's premise.
Evolve can flourish when you have a team of dedicated friends ready to play, but those rare moments of brilliance spent fighting against the monster are simply outnumbered by the moments you spend fighting the actual game.
That is of course, if the community remains active. Reviewing games that focus themselves so centrally on a mutliplayer environment is difficult.
Some interesting new approaches to classes that are now familiar, the DLC brings some cool things to the table. While it can't fix the core issues with the game, it adds some fresh content for those who are still playing and looking for something new.
The class-based rewards, compendium of achievements, and the adrenaline of capturing and killing a trophy monster makes for a compelling game.
In sporadic bursts, Evolve can be outstanding. But its design depends upon uniting players of idealistically equivalent skill levels, and it struggles to consistently do so. The game's gated progression system is superfluous and, at times, actively harmful to positive team-play.
Evolve offers an excellent mix of competitive and cooperative gameplay but it is buried behind a muddled progression system and lengthy matchmaking / loading times.
For all its promise of revolution, Evolve seems to consistently trip where its spiritual predecessor – Left 4 Dead – seemed to excel. The balancing is actually too good, causing it to fall apart when someone doesn't play correctly. The monster gameplay is pleasantly the best aspect, but feels undercooked anywhere else but Hunt mode. This is surely a game that'll only improve as its community stabilises, but right now it's hard to recommend unless you've got a group of willing friends.
If you have a solid group of five you can count on to play with at all times, Evolve might be worth a look. With some balancing, I could even see Evolve becoming quite popular among the hardcore e-sports types. For the rest of us who just want to jump in and have some fun, I'd recommend looking elsewhere.