There’s no ‘I’ in team, but there’s a whole lot of swearing
Hell is other people. You hear me, Godzilla_70991? Running your Medic off to god knows where while I’m bleeding out? Or how about you, Trapperwho-hasn’t-used-a-single-Trapper-ability-this-round? And cooldude69, what are you doing all the way over there? You’re ultimately diminishing the value of what occasionally reveals itself to be a tremendous co-op multiplayer experience, that’s what. Harumph. If you’re looking for the monster in Evolve, look in the direction of your teammates.
Turtle Rock, a studio whose name is built on the firm foundations of the Left 4 Dead series, has been characteristically ambitious with this asymmetrical, five-player co-op shooter. Essentially, Evolve is about turning the traditional videogame boss fight into a roundlong multiplayer experience, enabling you to team up with three others and combine your very specific skills to prevail, or – the really progressive part – letting you be the boss…
Host to these 4v1 standoffs is the hostile planet of Shear, represented across four modes and 11 maps of dense jungle, boulders and wildlife. If you’re playing as the monster the latter is food used to evolve, gaining new power and abilities. If you’re a hunter they’re secondary predators who can ambush the unsuspecting and create stat buffs once killed. Shear has been partially colonised so there are industrial buildings here and there, but no roads; jetpacks are essential for traversing its densely vegetated expanses. While online behemoths such as COD are still ironing out the creases in the ‘soldiers killing soldiers with guns’ formula, Turtle Rock’s trying something different. The studio deserves recognition for its audacity at the very least.
But Evolve isn’t a satisfying L4D alternative on PlayStation, despite its pedigree and pioneering spirit. It is, to quote our hallowed review score guide, a great concept unfulfilled. And I don’t think it’s Turtle Rock’s fault. It’s our fault, you and me, the teammates who won’t work together, the monsters who don’t learn the subtleties of our abilities. In short: Turtle Rock grossly overestimated us.
The modes aren’t revolutionary in themselves. On offer are Hunt (pure 4v1 deathmatch), Rescue (hunters escort colonists to safety, monster kills them), Nest (hunters have to destroy eggs before they hatch into monster minions) or Defend (monsters must frazzle power generators, starting fully evolved and with minion hordes, hunters must stop ’em). These can be played as single round skirmishes or as part of a five-round dynamic campaign in which the winner of each match gets environmentals advantage in the next.
Cling Kong
More than any other PS4 multiplayer game, Evolve is class-based. The Assault, Support, Trapper and Medic each has four weapons and abilities, all incredibly specialised. So much so that only the Assault need concern himself with shooting the monster for any length of time.
Here’s how a monster fight goes when a team’s working in perfect sync: Medic spots monster using sniper scope, hits it with a tranq dart to slow it. Trapper seizes the opportunity to contain it, deploying mobile battle arena to keep it within a forcefield.
Assault uses their secondary weapon to deal damage while moving in on the monster, switching to the more powerful and shorter range primary weapon before deploying a personal shield. While he soaks up the brunt of the monster’s attacks, Trapper fires a harpoon gun to slow it, working in sync with Medic, whose tranq darts also limit movement speed.
That gives Support a golden opportunity to call in an orbital strike, giving others a heads-up to clear the area via headset before dealing massive health damage. Meanwhile, Assault’s switched to laying mines at the monster’s feet, and Medic’s using their sniper rifle to create weak spots that deal increased damage when others shoot them. While Support buffs everyone’s shield levels, Assault goes to town on those weak spots with his primary. The monster’s nearly dead now so everyone deals as much damage as they can bar Medic, who keeps dishing out health.
And here’s how that same monster fight goes in the real world: the Trapper doesn’t deploy the mobile arena in time, so the monster gets away. A good job, too, because the Assault is off at the other end of the map, shooting local wildlife. A good 15 minutes later the monster emerges, fully evolved and kills everyone.
There’s a caveat here, of course. The frustrations I’m describing are those of the launch period, when everyone’s scrabbling to grasp their abilities, level up and unlock new characters (there are three monsters in the base game, and three hunters in each class, each with unique weapons and skills for more group ability permutations). L4Dead placed you in a familiar zombie setup and thus your objectives were instantly clear, but the rules of Evolve are harder to grasp. Its systems are impressive in their complexity, but it takes time to make the most of them.
Creature Teacher
It could do a better job of explaining the imperative of teamwork. If you were determined to blame Turtle Rock, you’d suggest Evolve asks you to fight with the battlehardened tactical understanding of an MMO raid party, instantly and with strangers who might not even have headsets.
But given the magnificent online battles the game is capable of – with increasing frequency as you clear the initial gear-gating and find a regular group to play with – I think that argument’s a bit harsh. You could also argue that AI when playing solo is either utterly ruthless or completely benign, offering you little opportunity to learn either way, and you’d be bang on.
If you’re prepared to persevere through Evolve’s initial confusion, the game at the other end is such a fine platform for tactical depth and longevity, it’s already a dead cert for cult status. Currently it’s lacking the clever map design, environmental variation and breadth of modes to earn anything beyond that, but has more than enough B-movie kitsch and demanding team play to keep a small, devoted following interested for at least as long as its complicated DLC plan doles out fresh maps. Phil Iwaniuk
Verdict
An online experience of wildly fluctuating highs and lows that demands a lot but explains little. The payoff can be big, but it’s always dependent on keeping good company.