Evolve Review

When Evolve’s 4 vs. 1 multiplayer was first revealed, it seemed like a fairly original idea. In a world where the online competitive scene is dominated by acronyms (CoD, FPS, LoL, Dota, MOBA) and sports games, Evolve’s asymmetrical design threatened to usher in a new kind of game. The team at Turtle Rock Studios – perhaps most famous for their zombie shooter, Left 4 Dead – challenges the conventions of multiplayer in ways which few games have done, truly honing in on the idea of 4 vs. 1 so vigorously that it’s evident in the very title of the game. Evolve treads a new path for online multiplayer in video games, but it definitely does so with some major stumbles along the way.

The game is set on the planet Shear where giant monsters are currently at the top of the planet’s ecosystem. One player assumes control of the monster, the other four control a group of hunters who have been sent to take the monster down. The monster is controlled in a third-person view, while the hunters are controller in first-person. As the game progresses the monster grows in power, putting pressure on the hunters to track and kill the monster as quickly as possible.

Evolve begins with a small tutorial which allows players to get a handle on how to play as the four characters available at the outset. Each of the four classes (Assault, Medic, Support, and Trapper) have three different characters, with more to be unlocked at later stages in the game. Initially, the tutorial is appreciated as the game tries to impose upon the player how important it is to work together as hunters, and how important it is to keep moving as the monster. But there is so much going on in Evolve that a tutorial can only cover the basics. Soon you are out in the wild, desperately trying to grasp the nuances. As you unlock new characters, it seems the game wants you to practice your skills in solo mode before using them with human teammates or enemies. The problem is that the AI in the solo version of the game is incredibly boring. They each carry out their roles in robotic fashion, failing to adapt to the characters they play with and the monster they play against. It’s like playing any other multiplayer shooter against only bots – what’s the point? It feels like there is no advantage to playing alone, just simply the promise of getting better.

Once you have spent time with the tutorials and sampled your character in solo play, you can get into what Evolve is really about and join up with people online. There are two different versions of Evolve – Skirmish mode (where you play the Hunt Mode of the game on repeat) or Evacuation (a campaign-like string of matches where the modes change and variable conditions come into play). Joining a match can take a while – I had varied experiences with the servers during my time with Evolve. At times it would take minutes to find a game, other times I’d be playing in a matter of seconds. Some of this depends on the way you ranked your roles. Evolve allows players to rank what class they would like to play and will try to fit you into a match based on that preference. People who are looking to play monster should find a game quickly, whereas people looking to play as Medic might have a longer wait. If your first choice is highly contested, you might find yourself stuck in your third or even fourth choice. I had the monster listed as my third choice for a while, and got stuck playing the role for ten games in a row.

The role selection screen leads to a loading screen, which leads to a load out screen, which leads to another loading screen. Needless to say, hopping into a match takes a while. This is particularly frustrating when you’re loaded into the very end of the match – when a monster already is caught and down to its last stand, or a Trapper is one of two teammates left alive. Furthermore, Evolve’s matchmaking is wildly erratic, pairing up lower class hunters with high class monsters and vice versa. Matchmaking has long been a finicky part of online video games, but if you’re playing on a bad team in other games, you can focus on your kill-death ratio or wait as more players shuffle in and out and the teams change. In Evolve there’s no K/D to improve upon and when someone is dominating as the monster there’s no hope that lower ranked teammates will balance them out. It makes you want to logout and log back in with the hope of a better team or a more even match, but the threat of sitting in a lobby for five minutes, waiting for a game, pushes you into one more masochistic attempt.

After the tutorials, the waiting, and the matchmaking you are finally ready to play Evolve as Turtle Rock Studios envisioned. The monster will begin the match shortly before the hunters. Its main focus is to stay on the run, leading hunters on a merry chase while feeding and evolving until it reaches its most powerful stage and attacks the power generator which the hunters need to defend.

The cat-and-mouse relationship between monster and hunters can be a lot of fun. A support named Bucket is a robot that can use a UAV device to fly through the jungles of Shear quickly and track the monster for his teammates, but most of these tracking skills are saved for the Trappers of the group. Trappers have special abilities to help them detect the monster and lead their teammates to the beast. Once they have found it, they can use a mobile arena to trap the monster for a short period of time. Ideally, the hunters want to catch the monster as quickly as possible – killing it before it has a chance to grow into a real challenge. The issue with this stage of the match is the balance between Trappers and monsters. If you have a monster who isn’t good at hiding, you’ll find them in seconds and kill them before the game gets off its feet. No one will get much experience for the effort and the match is mostly a waste of time. If you have a Trapper who isn’t good at tracking the monster, you are in for ten minutes of staring off into the darkness while the monster grows into its largest form before coming back and wrecking your squad. You would hope these previously mentioned scenarios were rare, but they are common.

The best part of the game is when the monster gets trapped late 2nd stage or early 3rd and the hunters have an even fight on their hands. The Assault characters are critical here as they act as the damage dealers. With their shields and heavy weaponry, they are responsible for actually hurting the monster. Support can usually use certain skills to amplify damage or protect teammates from harm. Medics are critical in healing characters and reviving them. Meanwhile, the monster attempts to hide or separate the hunters to more easily kill them. Once one hunter falls, it’s only a matter of time before the others follow suit.

If the monster is killed, the match of Hunt mode is over. If a hunter’s life is depleted, they go into a downed state where all they can do is fire a pistol. If they remain in this state for too long, they will die and must wait to re-enter the game from the dropship. While in the downed state, any player can revive a friend, but Medics have the most helpful tools for this. The monster must kill all four hunters for the game to end, so a lone hunter or even two remaining hunters are better off running for their lives, hiding, and waiting to be rejoined by their crew, rather than taking the monster on mono e mono.

Balance issues appear throughout the game. Each hunter has a specific role to fulfill during combat and when players are outside of their depth, things fall apart quickly. Even the miniscule things, like using a flamethrower at the right time instead of a minigun can be devastating to your efforts. These nuanced moments include using the cloak at the right time, knowing when to turn-tail and run, knowing to wait for Bucket to use his UAV instead of running ahead, knowing that when Cabot uses his damage amplifier everyone has to attack, knowing to cloak as Lazarus so you can save teammates – all of these details can completely change the flow of your match. It’s not even just a case of a player understanding their abilities, but teammates understanding these abilities and reacting appropriately. Evolve tries to help you out with video tutorials, but if you aren’t interested in the Support class, you might not be aware of the ways they can help or how they best compliment the skills of your Assault character. There are also cues to listen for, but sometimes they are drowned out the chaos of battle. You can see Turtle Rock trying to help players, but if you got a squad who doesn’t pick up on these cues, you’re in for a massacre.

Then there’s the Wraith. The most overpowered aspect of Evolve. The Wraith is death incarnate, it is instant doom. It is hard to simply track the Wraith, let alone kill the thing. It moves too fast, blends in with its surroundings too well, and kills too quickly. Even when you do manage to tie it down, the monster is still hard to hit. When the Wraith inevitably hits its max level, it can quickly tear your team apart. I think we beat one Wraith the entire time I played Evolve, and numerous people told me they had never beaten one. It’s not like video games have never had weapons or classes which were overpowered before – everyone remembers the pistol from Halo. But again, the 4 vs. 1 multiplayer makes it so that only one person enjoys the buffs, while four other players are almost guaranteed a loss before the match even starts. I don’t know if Evolve is more unbalanced than other online multiplayer games, but its issues are so much more obvious because of the intimate nature of the game, where every player is crucial to the outcome of a match.

The other monsters of Evolve are a little more evenly matched with the hunters. The first monster available is the Goliath. This creature walks upright, but can travel quickly by using his powerful jumps and excellent climbing abilities. The Goliath is one of the weakest monsters in the early game, but as he Evolves he becomes a worthy foe. His size makes him easy to spot, but his movements are easiest to control, and between his fire breath, rock throws, charge attacks, and leaping attacks, he’s good at tossing players about the map.

There is also the Kraken, the flying squid-like creature with electric attacks and powerful vortexes that send players flying backwards. The Kraken is a less-traditional monster and requires more planning. He’s one of the few who can lay traps for unsuspecting hunters. These monsters are both more balanced than the Wraith and represent two different aspects of the monster class: one is a bulky brawler and the other is strategic and ranged.

The maps where matches take place are usually a mix of an industrial hub and the wild environments of Shear. These maps have the unenviable task of making sure the monster has enough room to always remain elusive of its human pursuers, while always in danger of being discovered. Here, Turtle Rock strikes a good balance. As the monster you always feel like the humans are one step behind you and as hunters you always feel your foe is one step ahead of you. Watching match replays demonstrates this as you can always see the player controlling the monster trying to stay ahead of the hunters. The maps are also filled with wildlife which serves two purposes: Feeding the monster and waylaying hunters. With giant creatures grazing, laying in the water, or even just strolling about the many trails of the map, you never know when a teammate will be taken down by nature – another reason to make sure players are sticking together. These random encounters can also turn against the monster, but pose less of a threat.

After the match is over, you are brought to a screen where you can see your contributions to the team and level up to earn more characters. You earn characters by completing three individual challenges based on the special abilities of your class. So if you play as Val, you’ll have to heal people a certain amount with your medgun and snipe the monster a certain amount with your tranquilizer gun. This is another factor which plays into the poor balance of Evolve. If there is an ability that you’re not good with or that isn’t great to use, you must still use it in order to level up, or risk never unlocking more characters. Certain skills are highly situational, making it difficult to level them up. Here you also get experience points to unlock levels and gain better bonuses which can be equipped in your loadout screen. But matches where you’re getting blown out – or dominating your competition – stifle your experience, so you can only gain any worthwhile XP when you are well matched against your opponent.

The moment-to-moment gameplay in Evolve is pretty well constructed. The shooting feels tight for the hunters. The monsters are fun to maneuver around the environment. When all of Evolve’s variables work out – the skill levels of participants, the AI environment, the characters picked, the boosts employed, the player objectives, the stage the monster confronts the players, the mindset of the hunters – the game has wonderful moments of excitement. It’s a thrill to see players – strangers or friends – work together as a team. Even better is when you are part of a skilled team that understands the game through and through. Being part of the seamless chemistry working against a monster is a blast. The flipside, being a monster that breaks apart the hunters and destroys them is also a ton of fun. There are hiccups in the traversal – sometimes players get stuck on the terrain while using jetpacks – but for the most part, the mechanics of Evolve’s traversal and combat are well designed. It’s just rare you get to see all of it on display and working together as it’s supposed to.

If you want a longer, more story-driven experience, Evolve offers Evacuation mode. Here is where the story of Evolve – as barebones as it is – is told. Humans have colonized the planet Shear, but the settlements have come under attack by the gigantic monsters. Thus people are evacuating the colonies. This evacuation is protected by the hunters.

Evacuation campaign charts the story of this mass exodus over five rounds. The first round is always Hunt Mode, then the next three are a mix of Nest, Rescue, and another Hunt. In Nest mode the hunters seek out eggs laid by the monster and must destroy all six. Meanwhile the monster can hatch these eggs into minions that join in the fight against the humans. Rescue mode makes the hunters search for pockets of survivors before the monster finds them. Three different groups of survivors make up a total of nine; the hunters win if they rescue five. Each Evacuation campaign ends with a Defend mode, where the monster starts at level three and must destroy three power relays to prevent the human ship from escaping. These different modes provide a nice change of pace, but they don’t make good use of the hunters’ skills; for example Trapper skills that involve finding the monster are unnecessary, as both hunters and monsters will converge on the objectives.

Each win in Evacuation leads to more bonuses in future rounds. If a monster wins the first round they might get the help of a minion in the next round. If the hunters win, they will get turret guns to aid them in their next fight. While this provides incentive to win these individual matches, it also gives the losing team an even bigger mountain to climb in the next game. To counter this, Evolve puts up a graphic during the loading screen to show you that it is balancing the game, however this never felt like it actually helped. Rarely did Evacuations tend to be back and forth battles; they often were dominated by one side or the other – the exception being Defend mode, which always seemed difficult for the monster to win. Throughout Evacuation mode, the results of the matches will tally the deaths vs survivors; this number will add to your experience at the end of the campaign.

If you like the variety of game modes in Evacuation, but don’t want the campaign commitment, Evolve gives you the tools to build your own custom matches. You can choose from any of the games modes, choosing which of maps you want to play on. Then you can add elements from the Evacuation mode you want (clear skies to better see the monster, or carnivorous wildlife to add dangers for the hunters). You can add time limits, use the auto balance feature from Evacuation mode, and make the map you think is best. Then invite your friends to play in the mode with you.

Playing with friends is an important part of Evolve when playing as a hunter. Turtle Rock tries to help with communication by allowing players to mark important things – if you mark the monster the yellow icon will become red – but there’s no substitute for actually talking to someone and plotting out your moves. When you have friends to talk to over headset, you can remind someone that giving chase to the monster leaves them vulnerable, or warn them if a Medic can’t make it to a downed hunter. When you get to play this way, Evolve feels like a much more cohesive experience. You might still be unable to take down the Wraith, but you can coordinate strategies to use teammates as bait to lure the monster into a trap or decide the best place to make your last stand at the power generator. The more people you have, the tougher it can be to find the match where everyone gets their choice of role, but it’s an incredibly worthwhile trade.

It is hard to get a moment to appreciate the technical aspects of Evolve. While you hear the hum-drum soundtrack ad nauseum while waiting to load into a game, there are other interesting elements that you might miss in your search for the monster or flight from the hunters. The world of Shear is rendered in stunning beauty, even if its jungles, rivers, and plateaus tend to get a bit repetitive. The characters are all well designed and have unique personalities you can become familiar with as they banter back and forth with each other. There clearly wasn’t a lot of time to flesh out the world and people of Shear as the game’s multiplayer mayhem takes center stage, but the bits and pieces which make up the background are appreciated.

Unfortunately, on the whole Evolve is pretty unimpressive. The ideas and questions about asymmetric gameplay that the game raises are interesting and merit exploration. But Evolve proves that when creating competitive online experiences of such an intimate nature, the balance needs to be fine-tuned beyond reproach – and Evolve’s doesn’t hold up under the scrutiny. The matchmaking and its learning curve often betray the promise of fun which lives deep within the game. It’s easy to see that Turtle Rock imagined groups of four players, each with their own headset, chatting back and forth while coming up with strategies to battle the lone monster they faced. But in the real landscape of gaming, you’re often playing with strangers, and when a game demands such precise understanding and teamwork, players will find themselves frustrated more often than not.