Evolve is a boss fight, pure and simple. Four gun-toting players with different abilities find themselves on a savage alien planet, pitted against a fifth participant controlling a massive creature composed mainly of teeth, claws and a bad attitude. When they meet, they battle to the death. Even though the action is split unevenly in terms of numbers, the game is constructed in such a way as to give either side a chance of winning. Evolve is the progeny of an illicit love affair between Shadow Of The Colossus and Left 4 Dead.
Indeed, Valve’s zombie shooter is a good starting point here, because the same studio – Turtle Rock Studios – is responsible for both titles. While the developer may have traded the undead apocalypse for sci-fi hunting grounds, the key consideration in co-op play remains the same: act as a team or you won’t survive.
Well, that at least applies to the players controlling the hunters. The player who is controlling their feral prey is all alone. The alien’s job is to avoid the other players until it has evolved sufficiently to give itself a fighting chance – hence the title of the game. In a way, Evolve satisfies just about every sort of taste in an online fragfest; if you’re a team player, you opt for a hunter and if you’re more the lone wolf type, you can plump for the prey.
The four players working together each pick a specific character boasting a unique set of powers and weaponry. There’s a Trapper, whose job is to track and contain the group’s quarry. To that end they’re armed with a set of Sound Spikes – beacons that ping a signal whenever the beast passes them – and a portable arena – a forcefield that contains the monster, but that the hunters can move in and out of.
There’s a Support class soldier, who can shield other members of the party and call down an aerial strike on the monster. There’s an Assault class solider, who can deploy mines and a personal shield. Finally, there’s a Medic, who can heal other members of the group and fire tranquilisers at the monster, make it sluggish in its movements.
Turtle Rock says it has a vast menagerie of beasts planned for Evolve, but in the game’s first outing, only one was available to play with: a bi-pedal monstrosity called Goliath. At the beginning of the round, players can select a perk for the creature – in Goliath’s case they can choose between an armour boost and the ability to feed quickly – and then they’re set loose while the hunter players drop into the map behind them.
The one environment showcased at the preview I attended looked like it had been pulled out of James Cameron’s Avatar. For the most part, it was lush jungle filled with towering trees and rock outcroppings, but there was also a massive military base in the centre of it. The jungle also contained alien wildlife, some of which Goliath could consume in order to earn ‘Evolve’ points and a couple of vicious quadra-peds and one giant, bad-tempered amphibian, which attacked anything that came near. Useful, if the player controlling Goliath needed the AI to run interference.
Evolution in action
Once the player controlling the monster earns enough Evolve points they have the option of sealing themselves in a cocoon and adding another ability to their arsenal once they emerge. While there’s a pay-off in doing this – Goliath exits with the ability to charge down his pursuers and breathe fire on them – the monster is at its most vulnerable while in its transformative home. To that end, it’s worth putting some distance between the monster and the players hunting it before evolving, or doing so in close proximity to some beasts that will attack the other four players.
When the monster is fully evolved, the fight becomes a lot more even-handed, which is why it’s important for the four hunters to dish out as much damage as possible before this happens. Once their quarry is powered up, they have to become a lot more tactical in their approach, since, if their opponent has any sense, they’ll target the Medic player first and then rip their way through the rest of the group.
In order to avoid this happening, the four hunters have to be able to work as a cohesive unit. The Support class player needs to safeguard the Medic, who in turn, needs to keep the Assault player healthy as they attempt to bring a world of hurt down on the group’s quarry. The Trapper, for their part, needs to time the deployment of their portable arena to trap the monster. They can also use a harpoon gun to limit the monster’s scope of movement within the arena.
For the hunters, success lies in teamwork. For the monster, it hinges on being able to pick out the most valuable targets quickly and then eliminating them. This, at least, was the rubric that emerged during my hands-on time with Evolve, during which I was only allowed to play one match type on one map.
However, according to Turtle Rock, this brief run through only represents the tip of Evolve’s proverbial iceberg. More maps, monsters, match types, weapons and hunter accouterments are planned for the final release and who knows what affect these variable will have on the final build? If Evolve is to remain as meticulously balanced as Left 4 Dead, Turtle Rock has its work cut out. Let’s just hope the studio doesn’t decide to make the monsters in its game as sympathetic as those of Shadow Of The Colossus. That’d be a real downer.
• Evolve is released on PC, PS4 and Xbox One in the autumn
