Evolve

It's Evolution!

Most team based FPS games are based around balanced teams, with many auto balancing the teams if too many from one team leave. This is not the case with Evolve, the newest game from the creators of Left 4 Dead, Turtle Rock Studios. In fact, the game is built around the concept of 4 Hunters fighting against 1 very large Monster.

As a concept, this is awesome, and in practice, I think it comes across quite well. The fact that it takes 4 Hunters to take down a single Monster gives you a better idea of how powerful these monsters really are. And the ability of the Monsters to evolve and become more powerful throughout the matches means that if you are a Hunter, you really have to coordinate and work together as a team.

At launch, there are 12 Hunters and 3 Monsters that you can play as. That being said, you only have access to the first Monster and the first tier of Hunters from the get-go, as you must level up your abilities to unlock the next tier. While this isn't a new concept by any means, it is handled extremely well in my opinion.

Meet the Hunters

When playing as a Hunter, you have 4 different classes to choose from: Assault, Medic, Support and Trapper. Each class has its own responsibilities and special abilities to help in their fight against the Monster. To mitigate possible games with multiple copies of the same class, Turtle Rock has implemented a class priority option. Before you hop into matchmaking, you get to order your choices of class and the matchmaking servers will do their best to give you your #1 choice. This also applies to the Monster as well.

As you play, you level up your various abilities. The higher the level, the more effective these skills become. You also unlock new Hunters/Monsters as you play (if you haven't already). As far as the level requirements go, most are reasonable. Others require a serious grind to attain, but once you do get to them, you'll notice a difference.

Don't have time to play the game for long periods of time to level up that next ability? Don't worry, Turtle Rock thought of that too. Enter Hunter's Quest, the free-to-play match 3 game available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. As you play this mini game of sorts, you can boost your Hunter's abilities on the go, allowing you to level up and enhance your game later. No benefit to the Monsters at this time, unfortunately.

Much like the Hunters, the Monsters all have unique abilities. Whether it be Goliath's fire breath, Kraken's banshee mines or Wraith's decoy, they all make for a different experience, both to play as, and against. The same applies to the Monsters for leveling up, the more (or better) you play as a character, the better your abilities will become.

This kind of system is great as it allows just enough of a challenge for lower level characters to push them, and makes it fun to just wreck everything as a higher level. There are you out there that are probably worried about higher level players completely destroying lower level opponents. Don't worry, while this does happen on occasion, the converse also applies. I've personally destroyed a group of higher level Hunters as a measly Stage 1 Monster.

The Goliath, Kraken and Wraith, ready to wreak havoc.

And while I'm talking about Stages, I better explain them. As the Monster, you start at Stage 1. Here you are weak, and don't have access to all your abilities. As you eat the local wildlife (and sometimes Hunters you kill), you gain armor and become more powerful. Once you have eaten a sufficient amount, you can evolve to the next stage, gaining more health, armor and more abilities. Stage 3 is the highest you can go, and it is work to survive that long, but if you can, not much can stop you.

Evolve is blessed with several different game types. While most people will only play the Hunt game type, the variety does make for a better experience. In Hunt, the Monster must reach Stage 3 and destroy a power generator before the Hunters can track him/her down and kill them. Depending on the Monster/Hunters chosen, many different tactics can apply, increasing replayability immensely.

There also exists a game mode called Evacuation. Evacuation is a 5 round game type where all other game types are played, with the ultimate goal being to emerge victorious after the 5th round. Two such game types are Rescue (objective is to rescue/kill survivors) and Nest (destroy/protect Monster eggs), with each win giving that team a slight edge in the next round. Naturally, this being a 5 round game, will take a fair bit more time than simply playing one round of Hunt, but the experience rewards are much greater.

A Stage 2 Goliath facing off against the Hunters

Now, to play any of these game types, you'll of course need people to play with (unless you want to mess around with AI players in Solo), and that means matchmaking. The matchmaking mechanics in Evolve are much like any other game with a matchmaking lobby, though as mentioned before, there exists the ability to choose your character through the ranking system. You can almost always find a group of people to play with, and most of the time, they are great to play with.

I have come across a couple major bugs, that while not game-breaking, is the source of many an annoyance for me. Keep in mind that these are based on my experience with the PC version of the game, so I don't know if they exist in the console version at all. First off, when I initially played the game, I clicked on the Multiplayer menu to find a match. This caused my game to freeze for a minute or two before it said that a multiplayer party could not be created. I clicked on it again, and it said my network connection was bad and I needed to be signed in to play. The third time is the charm however, and allows me to get into a game with no issues further. Like I said, annoying, but definitely not game-breaking.

The second bug however, is slightly more of an issue. Like most people, I leave push-to-talk on. There's nothing worse than having to hear every small sound coming through someone else's mic while trying to hunt down a Monster. Well, if I did this, any time I would be faced with unbearable lag, sometimes even to the point that it froze and subsequently crashed the game. Not ideal at all. But, turning off push-to-talk fixed the issue, so not completely game-breaking, but highly problematic if you don't know about it.

8½ stars is amazing considering Evolve changes everything

For a game that completely changes the way you think about competitive multiplayer, Evolve does a great job of it. It's fresh, inventive, and a whole heck of a lot of fun. OK, yes, there are bugs, but what game doesn't have them when launched? All things considered, I think Evolve more than deserves the 8½ star rating I give it. Want to try it out yourself? I highly recommend it. You can get it on PC (which will require Steam, though you don't have to purchase through it), as well as Playstation 4 and XBox One for you console minded gamers out there. And in the meantime, take a look at my favorite trailer for the game below.

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