Sometimes you want to eat your friends. Co-op games often further compound that and Evolve is no different.
Maybe the medic always seems to be off having a coffee whilst your limbs are being chewed on by playful jungle critters, or maybe the support keeps calling in an airstike at either the other end of the map or a millimetre above your head. Maybe the assault guy just hasn’t worked out that he needs to shoot at the giant house-sized monster as opposed to just running towards it and getting swiped.
A surprisingly agile monster leaping towards your face is also going to ruin your day.
Thankfully, Evolve has an excellent method of dealing with this. You can decide that what you really want to do is play as a giant house-sized monster that will eat your friends.
Evolve is a 4v1 competitive and cooperative multiplayer title which drops four players into the power boots and jetpacks of specialised monster hunters and one player into the bulbous clawed paws of a monster.
The game itself feels like it has run around and eaten a few other games, taking their powers in the process. The obvious comparison is the classic co-op zombie-apocalypse-with-friends sim Left 4 Dead, which was the first thing Evolve developer Turtle Rock became famous for. There are also elements of the team based competitive shooter Team Fortress and playing as the monster you’ll even find yourself playing a micro-MOBA along the lines of DOTA 2.
There is a lot to love with Evolve, but let’s get one thing out of the way first. It does feel a little bit light on the content front. A handful of maps, some basic character progression and then the usual by-now expected unlocks leaves you wanting just a little bit more.
Keeping track of a large monster can be surprisingly difficult in the chaos of the fighting.
It’s tempting to bemoan the lack of a single player mode but that’s a different issue. Although you can play everything on your own with some semi-competent AI companions, you’re not however going to be getting the most out of Evolve if you’re a bit of a lonely gamer like me. The content can all be soloed, but it feels like you’re cheating and missing out on the whole point of the exercise.
The lonely gamer issue is partly mitigated if you predominantly get to play as the monster. One of my first matches might very well be one of my favourite gaming moments ever as I steered my monster through the level, had an extremely close fight with the hunters that I somehow won, and when I was deposited back into the lobby was greeted by four excited northerners already mid conversation about what a ‘cracking’ fight that was. The word mint was uttered.
Evolve is far more intuitive than expected. When you first fire up the game, you are thrown into a tutorial that starts with a lengthy video going through all of the mechanics. This feels daunting until you spend five minutes getting the hang of it and discover it is all remarkably simple. There are a fair few moving parts and some of those parts can be customised and tailored to how you prefer playing, but none of them get too awkward or fiddly.
Unfortunately, the fun chaos of the fights can often devolve into a particle effect mess like this.
The way that a match plays in the headline Hunt mode is sublime. This is a self contained monster movie where both sides oscillate between hunter and hunted in what feels like a mash up between the first two Alien films. The ebb and flow is fantastic with a chase kicking things off and the whole thing culminating in a race to either destroy or save a facility at a key point in the map.
The other modes are far less engaging and almost tacked on. Rescuing survivors, destroying eggs or trying to evacuate the planet all make sense with the theme and the way they are strung together in a mini campaign is a really nice touch, but they just don’t inspire anything.
The biggest problem that Evolve has is that it doesn’t really engage. There’s something off about the design which makes this apparently rich, dangerous and vibrant world come across as muddy and dull. If you’ve been thinking that some of these screenshots in this review are a bit dark and gloomy, then you’ll know what I mean. This is a game based around an excellent idea, but the execution feels like it has just fallen a little short.
The other inhabitants of the jungle world are equally happy to see you. They are also mainly rendered in shades of brown.
When I first put some time into Evolve, I enjoyed it. Running around as a monster messing up the day of four other people made me grin, I’ll admit. After a very short period of time however I found that I was not interested in starting another match and having put the game down for a while now, I have very little inclination to go back to it.
Evolve review verdict: Should you pick up Evolve?
If you’re going to give Evolve a go, I think one of two things needs to happen:
- You have three or four other friends who already have it or also want to pick it up and all play on the same system.
- It has to have come down in price significantly
I can only really recommend Evolve if you are really hurting for some co-op multiplayer games and you’ve utterly rinsed and repeated Left 4 Dead already. This isn’t a bad game, there’s fun to be had and my initial reaction to it was overwhelmingly positive. Ultimately though, Evolve is a bit on the shallow side.
Evolve is available on the Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.