Evolve Preview

Evolve is one of the main games that myself and a group of friends have been keeping an eye on this year. We were quite sad when it got delayed to 2015 but after attending a preview event from 2K, I can see why Turtle Rock Studios decided to perfect this product.

Evolve pits four users all playing as different classed Hunters against one Monster. Throughout the maps, the Monster will evolve into stronger versions and soon, the Hunters will become the hunted. During the Big Alpha a few months ago, a handful of maps were available, eight different hunters, two monsters and one game mode. Well, let me tell you, there’s a lot more on it’s way!

To kick things off, there is a brand new Monster, the Wraith - a much more stealthy and burst-damage creature. Personally, the Wraith is my current favourite to play out of the three available (the other two being the Goliath and Kraken), and her move set seems to fit my playstyle very well. Her four abilities are Abduction - the Wraith teleports forward, grabs your target (Hunter or creature) and then teleports back, bringing the captive with her; Warp Blast - a powerful ranged attack; Decoy - the Wraith goes invisible for a few seconds whilst a decoy spawns and attacks the Hunters; and lastly, Supernova - the Wraith glows white and gains increased basic attack damage and speed. She can also warp forward instead of using a jump.

Her entire kit is focused around confusion and burst damage. You can easily split up the team of Hunters and burst them down to nothing before vanishing into the wilderness. Every game that I played with her at the preview event, I slaughtered my enemies. On multiple occasions, I saw the Hunter players physically jump as I Abducted them from across a ravine.

I was also introduced to four new hunters joining the fray, one of each class. First up was Parnell, an Assault class. Equipped with a “multifire” rocket launcher as a primary weapon, a combat shotgun as a secondary, and a special ability that makes him a “Super Soldier”, Parnell is a force to be reckoned with. He has huge damage potential with his primary and secondary weapon, but it’s his Super Soldier Serum that gives Monster’s nightmares. When activated, he does everything faster - run, shoot, reload, switch weapons; everything. The drawback to this ability is that, when activated, Parnell starts to lose health. This means that he needs to work together with his Medic to stay alive a lot more than he usually would.

The next Hunter I was shown was Abe, the third Tracker. Abe has a “Custom” shotgun as a primary, tracking darts as secondary, and a Statis grenade for his special ability. The shotgun can fire as fast or slow as you can pull the trigger. The downside is, the faster you shoot, the worse your accuracy. His tracking darts can be placed in any creature across the map and, if the Monster then eats that creature, they will become visible to the Hunters for a certain amount of time. His Statis grenade creates a small radius in which the Monster becomes a lot “heavier”. This means that it basically slows them down.

Next up is Caira, the newest Medic. She has a Napalm grenade launcher as a primary, a Healing grenade launcher as a secondary, and her special ability is “Acceleration Field”. The primary and secondary weapon are actually one in the same. The primary firing method is Napalm and, as the name would suggest, sets the world ablaze around you. The secondary firing method, again as the name would suggest, creates an area of temporary Healing. Because of this secondary, Caira is the first and only Medic who can heal herself and her team with her primary healing method. Her special ability makes yourself and anybody in a short area of effect faster at running, reloading, and shooting.

The final new Hunter is Cabot, the Support class. His primary is a Rail Cannon, secondary is called “Damage Amplifier”, and his special ability is “Dust Tagging”. The Rail Cannon is a single shot weapon and can fire through objects (albeit with a slightly decreased damage when fired through a wall), the Damage Amplifier shoots a beam and attaches to the Monster. When linked, your team does a lot more damage to the Monster. Finally, the Dust Tagging brings down an airstrike which will drop a barrage of bombs filled with radioactive dust that will tag the Monster, allowing you to see them on your HUD.

Hunters and Monsters isn’t all that’s new here though, oh no. There’s another four new game modes. So first up is Hunt, which we all know and love. Everyone spawns in, the Monster has to escape whilst the Hunters track him down. Once the Monster reaches Level 3, they can attack the Power Relay. We all played it in the Big Alpha, jobs a good’en.

The second game mode is Nest. In Nest, there are six eggs placed around the map. Hunters are called in to destroy the eggs whilst the Monster must protect them, whilst still evolving to Level 3. The Monster can see all six eggs (including their health) on their HUD at any time whilst the Hunters can see the two closest to them. To help the Hunters out, the Monster cannot use their smell ability to see the Hunters. To help the Monster out, they can hatch one of eggs at any point and spawn in a mini-Goliath minion to fight on their side. Only one minion can be spawned in at any one time and it’s life counts as one egg. Once it dies, that egg is also marked as gone. Either the Monster waits out the clock or kills the Hunters to win. The Hunters have to destroy all the eggs, or kill the Monster, to win the game.

Next up is Rescue. Similar to Nest but with the roles reversed. Both parties are spawned in (with the Monster at Level 1) and, after a set amount of time, Survivors will appear on both team’s HUD. If the Monster gets there first, they must kill the Survivors to win that round. If the Hunters get there first, they must rescue and then escort to an evacuation zone to win that round. Once rescued, they can both fight and be killed like any other Hunter. There are three rounds in this game mode: the first and second spawn in two Survivors whilst the third spawns in five. At the end of the match, if both parties have survived, whoever has the best out of the nine Survivors wins.

The fourth game mode is Defend. In this game mode, the Hunters must protect a structure from the Monster. The Monster spawns in at Level 3 already and, every set amount of time, two Goliath minions spawn in to assist the Monster. The Monster is then given a set amount of time to destroy the structure before losing the match. If they manage to find and kill the Hunters before this allotted time, the Hunters will just respawn and the time will continue to decrease. The structure must be destroyed to win. Once the first structure is destroyed by the Monster, another one will spawn further back. Once this one is destroyed, one final structure will spawn further back still. When each one is destroyed, extra time is added to the countdown.

The fifth and final game mode brings all of these other game types together in Evacuation, the campaign mode for Evolve. This game mode still has four Hunters and one Monster, but has more than 800,000 possible outcomes. The campaign will always start on a Hunt gamemode on a randomly selected map. After the first level is over, you will be shown a “World Map” with different areas. Two of these areas will be highlighted (the ones adjacent to the one you just played), each with their own game mode. Each player gets to vote for which map they’d like to go to next.

Depending on who wins each game mode, in the next game mode, the losing team will be given both a handicap to make it easier for them, and a dynamic event to make it harder. The handicap will increase their health, for instance. The dynamic event can range from stronger Goliath minions on Nest, to less animals for the Monster to feed on. These dynamic events are completely random, and there’s no way to control them other than with who wins each game.

Every Evacuation will also end with a Defend map. At the end of this, whoever wins the Defend map will win the entire campaign overall. This means that, even if you win the first four matches, you could lose the campaign on the fifth. Winning the campaign will give you a large amount of experience for your Hunters or Monster, but not as much as winning the previous four would.

After every game mode and map, you can switch your selected Hunter or Monster, so you don’t have to continue to play the same one through all five maps. Throughout the Evacuation campaign you will play with the same five people and, to my knowledge, the Monster cannot switch to a Hunter and vise versa. If a player disconnects during the Evacuation, it is currently not clear if you can get a new player in via Matchmaking. That same player can however, rejoin the game if invited.

There is a lot of content coming to Evolve for it’s release date of February 10, 2015 (on PC, Xbox One and PS4) and personally, I both can not wait for it and want it to be further away. Cannot wait because I’m excited to play it. Want it further away because I know how much time I’m going to spend on it.