Evolve Reviews
Evolve is a game that perpetuates and demonstrates the fun of online cooperative gameplay. Whether it's the A.I. combatants or online friends there's excitement to be found. Since the game relies on its multiplayer as its bread and butter, it's going to have to do a lot more in the long run should it hope to sustain any longevity.
Yes, Turtle Rock has a proven track record with Left 4 Dead, and I do enjoy a good player vs. player game every so often, what I can't quite decide on is if Evolve is going to live up to its heritage and grow on people enough to still be relevant in a few months or if it will succumb to the Titanfall effect: Hot out of the gate, but assuming room temperature not long afterwards. My head hurts.
Evolve is a novel take on the cooperative and competitive multiplayer genre. The game is packed with interesting ideas but some work better than others. The fact that characters are locked at the beginning weighs it down by a wide margin and the erratic matchmaking also puts a damper on the whole thing.
Evolve has rare highs hidden amongst tedious lows. When the title hits its stride, it is easy to see why it was designed in this way. Hunting down and killing a Monster or successfully overwhelming Hunters through clever hit-and-run attacks is amazing. Unfortunately, far too often, the game devolves into long, boring periods of wandering around followed by brief, intense moments of excitement. It might be a realistic depiction of hunting, but it doesn't make for engaging multiplayer gameplay. Playing with friends helps alleviate some of that, but it also means Evolve isn't something you can pick up and casually play. Add in some balance issues and a general lack of content, and Evolve is a difficult game to recommend. There's a very fun core game here, but it's so buried that most players won't find it.
Finally the 4v1 multiplayer shooter Evolve is here! With the game being primarily developed for online play, just how much fun and life is there to be had in the game from the team that brought us the awesome Left 4 Dead series.
Evolve can be good fun. But between those moments of entertainment, the experience is often interrupted by unbalanced mechanics and matches that are over before they begin.
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.
Evolve is fun when it works but has a habit of being hurt by its own ambition. Play with friends to get the best out of this game.
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.
A great idea in theory, but in practise the novelty wears out extremely quickly, with a serious lack of variety in game modes, maps, and tactics.
Evolve is somewhat difficult to recommend outside of a fairly limited context. The core gameplay is great, but everything surrounding it is problematic. As Bob says in his second opinion, hunting a monster with a group of friends really is sublime. But its attempts to add value outside of that core mostly fall flat, and its lasting appeal is hurt by the inherently problematic nature of random co-op and the rather shallow pool of available monsters (unless you're willing to shell out the extra money for a Behemoth). It may have been beyond Turtle Rock's resources, but Evolve really could have used a single-player campaign. Without it, it feels unfortunately limited—a single great idea buried under matchmaking queues, unbalanced A.I., and underwhelming tertiary modes. It may eventually be a lot more; but for now, Evolve's weaknesses outweigh its strengths.
If you can find four people who are willing to sign a blood pact to convene for a ritual night of Evolve once or twice a week, then by all means enjoy the hunt (and where do I sign?). If not, you have to ask yourself if you are really prepared to deal with the peaks and frequent valleys of the experience. Personally, I think there are better ways to spend your time than gambling on a decent match, hoping one or two of your friends can make it on sometime over the weekend.
Evolve convolutes its simple idea with too many mechanics, dulling what should have been a great experience.
As an overall game, it offers a basic shooter with a nice gimmick, and I do think you can gather some friends together to get an afternoon's worth of laughs out of it. I don't believe there's enough mileage to have those laughs regularly, though, and certainly not enough to where I'd recommend rushing out and getting it so soon after launch.
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.
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.
As it stands, it's a game that could really benefit from some additional content if it's to evolve into the next must-have multiplayer shooter.
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 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.
[I]n the end, that [amazing] moment felt like lighting that Evolve can't quite figure out how to get into the bottle.