The jungle atmosphere of Toronto’s Evolve launch event was a welcome contrast to the intense cold outside. Leafy plants lined the entrance, camo screens hung from the walls, and the staff looked like cooler versions of the guides on Disney’s Jungle Cruise . 2K and EB Games certainly wanted to bring this co-op monster hunting shooter to us, but did the game itself deliver?
I jumped into the action with a team of other attendees as we pitted ourselves against a staff-controlled monster. At the start of a match, you’re asked to rank the roles you’d prefer to play. I went with Trapper-Assault-Support-Medic because I’m a sneaky type of player, and believe me, nobody wants me playing the healer. I was assigned Assault and stepped into the shoes of the gigantic walking Russian stereotype, Markov. He’s apparently got a death wish, which seems like an excellent reason to go after dangerous monsters.
After a bit of banter, our crew jumped out of the drop ship and were given instructions on how to track down the monster. It’s not too difficult to get oriented, and the game’s UI clearly indicates what to do without treating players like total idiots. The jungle planet on which we were tracking down our prey was lush but deadly, with small raptors charging around and huge carnivorous plants, one of which promptly swallowed me as I was experimenting with the movement controls. “Not zee plant!” Markov exclaimed. Luckily, our trapper noticed and freed me, and the offending plant soon had a taste of my big-ass lightning gun.
Finding the real monster involved following Daisy, the trapper’s faithful dino-hound. Once we caught up to it, we all skillfully used our individual skills and worked as a team to kick the behemoth’s leathery hide. Or that’s what we would have done if we weren’t all still figuring out how to play, if our mics had worked so we could communicate, and if our trapper’s demo station hadn’t gone on the fritz, leaving both her and Daisy performing an endless reenactment of the Running Man.
This only showed how important it is for the monster hunters to work as a full team. Without our trapper, we had to watch for disturbed birds or manage to find monster tracks in order to locate our prey. When we finally found the brute, our healer wasn’t quite experienced enough to heal and tranq it at the same time, while I wasn’t yet good enough at jetboot-propelled dodging to keep from getting wedged against a cliff and wailed on by the angry beast. Without a full, skilled team, we were easy pickings for the monster, who fully evolved and wiped us out.
Pummeling hapless hunters sure looked fun, so I decided to take a turn as the monster myself. I found a demo station on which I could play the monster against a team of bot hunters. I ended up playing an extraction match, in which my goal was to kill six escaping settlers before the hunters could successfully evacuate them. I first chomped on some of the local wildlife until I was able to evolve. Then I had to follow the on-screen prompts and try to chow down on some tasty settler meat before the hunters fried my hide.
Bots are a fair bit more efficient than humans who are playing the game for the first time, so I faced the business end of all the hunter abilities we should have been using during my first match. The worst was the medic’s tranq gun, which slowed down my already lumbering form during a mission that required speed on my part. I was able to counteract it somewhat with my beast’s charge ability, and managed to kill several settlers before the bots took me down.
Overall, I had fun with my introduction to Evolve . I particularly liked the jetboots worn by all the hunters, allowing them height and dexterity that you don’t see in a lot of shooters these days. I’m always happy to reenact the bouncy fun I used to have in Quake deathmatch LAN parties. I’d definitely recommend playing the game with friends, so you can concentrate on having fun instead of herding whichever random teammates you draw from the Internet’s questionable gene pool.
My biggest gripe about the experience is that we could only play as one of the three monsters because the other two hadn’t been unlocked. I agree with Angelo’s review of the game here at CheatCC, in which he notes that the game’s character and monster unlocking system feels more like busywork than a reward for mastering the game. I saw a lot of progress bars to fill in order to earn unlocks, and I don’t feel like that kind of RPG mechanic is well-suited to a quick-match multiplayer game like Evolve . All the monsters should be available from the start, and properly balanced so that each has advantages and disadvantages.
Still, the game itself is a solid shooter that stands out from the crowd with its focus on teamwork and its variety of modes. If you can stomach the overabundant DLC offerings, Evolve certainly seems like a good choice for fans of team-based online gaming.