It’s literally hunt or be hunted in Evolve. You either play as a giant monster struggling to survive or the team of hunters tasked with taking the beast down. It’s a fresh take on multiplayer which is rare these days so I was keen to get involved.
As usual getting stuck in and playing games is the best way to learn. But there is a simple tutorial that explains the basic ideas. There are also a basic and advanced videos showing tactics for each character buried in the menu. It’s well worth checking out and to my surprise the advanced videos actually showed decent tactics worthy of any YouTube tutorial.
The hunters have four different classes available Assault, Trapper, Medic and Support. Assault is in charge of dealing damage plain and simple. The Trapper is charged with finding the monster and keeping it from escaping while the team gets to work trying to kill it. The Medic is required for the team to stay healthy, and living. Support does just that providing shields and the like for the rest of the team although they serve as good secondary damage dealers too.
Each class has three characters to choose from and each has a unique set of equipment and a class dependant ability. But even considering the unique loadouts there isn’t really much to play with. The Assault gets a personal shield to sponge damage, the Trapper gets the mobile arena which creates a barrier so you can actually fight the monster, the medic has an AOE healing mist and the support gets an area effect cloaking field.
Other than that load outs are absolutely unique and varied which is cool but they offer zero customization or freedom. Beyond picking a character there are no decisions to make other than a single alternate skin for each character. Honestly I don’t care all that much about the way I look. I’d far rather have had scopes and other equipment to make a class unique. It’s very restricting to select a character which chooses all three pieces of equipment and have no combinations or alternatives at all.
It won’t take long to unlock all the characters which would be a bonus except there’s not much else to unlock in Evolve. Once you’ve picked your character and got them unlocked that’s really it. Each piece of equipment has three upgrades but they do such a small amount, like 2% range or 2% damage, they really don’t matter. And the character perks aren’t enough to change gameplay noticeably. I didn’t find the sense of progression satisfying for long and without it the only reason to keep coming back is for the gameplay itself.
It also doesn’t help that the game has self described ‘key classes’ which are the Trapper and Medic classes. Given that your task as the hunters is to track, catch and kill the monster the Trapper is undisputedly the most important class. With a bad Trapper you will not find the monster. You will not catch it and therefore cannot deal any damage to it. A close second to that is the medic who is very much necessary to keep everyone alive in a battle. A bad medic will get the team killed quickly. The other two classes are far less important and primarily act as damage dealers.
It’s a shame that as Assault or Support you spend almost all your time following a Trapper, who’s doing all the work, deal some damage and then begin following again. The Trapper is definitely the key and there’s very little to do when you play as anyone else. Your Assault could be running on the spot in a corner all day and nobody would notice. If your Trapper doesn’t find and catch the target before it evolves you’re much more likely to lose.
Which leads me nicely onto playing as the monster. There are three monsters to choose from and each one has four unique abilities. Goliath is Godzilla like with fire breath and physical attacks. Kraken can fly to a limited degree and has some really devastating ranged electricity attacks. Finally Wraith plays as an assassin class using evasion and stealth techniques to win. Your job as monster is to basically play as a jungler and kill as many AI animals as you can so that you can evolve. All the time evading capture from the hunters.
In your first stage your pretty vulnerable and whilst you can probably survive a round in the mobile arena with the hunters it’s best avoided at this stage. At evolution 2 you have much more chance of standing up to the hunters and can give them a pretty rough time so really your goal is to reach the second evolution as soon as possible. Should you make it to the third evolution you can easily take on the Hunters. Even a Goliath’s fire breath becomes a ridiculously devastating AOE attack that can quickly end the game.
They key to success with the monster is strangely to run. So many times I’ve seen people stand and fight in the first evolution when running away would have let them fight back later when they’re almost unstoppable. And that’s where Evolve’s gameplay falls down for me.
If the monster runs and evolves quickly there’s very little chance of the Hunters winning. If you die and find that your medic is running around shooting a dead animal on the floor while your team dies you’re going to lose. If your Trapper can’t find the monster you’re going to lose. All you can hope is your team is good and your foe doesn’t know he/she should run away at the start. And that you don’t get surprised by a man eating plant that completely disables you without any chance of escape other than help from a team mate. How fun it is when you track the monster and a hidden plant grabs you only to reveal that your teammates are too far away to help and you can do nothing but sit and wait to die.
Evolve would definitely benefit from a more considered approach to tracking rather than the ‘never quite enough sprint’ approach it opted for. Tracking damaged foliage, animal corpses and disturbed birds are all well implemented ideas but are pointless in practice because you spend too much time running just to keep up. Even when trapped in an arena dome the best players will hide behind rocks and obstacles leading to a ridiculous looking game of hide and seek with a giant beast holding a thin branch in front its face as a disguise.
It’s easy for hunters at evolution one and almost impossible for them at three. There’s a forcibly rushed feeling to the tracking which stops any sense of tension or atmosphere from forming. A lack of meaningful upgrades and general lack of options in how to play result in a very short life span for Evolve. Unbalanced gameplay can lead to frustrating experiences and with nothing to look forward to in the future there’s very little to keep you interested in Evolve beyond the initial premise.
But I’m a sucker for originality and Turtle Rock Studios have done something new. There is definitely co-op fun to be had in Evolve, provided you’re not playing with complete lemons, which is often not your choice. Ultimately though Evolve is a great idea that has been poorly realised and frankly that’s a damn shame.
