Verdict

Pros

• Huge scale
• Great monster design
• Depth and attention to detail
• Strong tutorials and evacuation mode

Cons

• Requires good players to work
• Could grow repetitive

Available on Xbox One (reviewed), PS4, PC

Update – Four new hunters and the fourth monster reviewed

Evolve’s new hunters

Torvald – Assault
Torvald is a half hunk half robot Assault hunter with a pretty impressive beard. Armed with an automatic shotgun and a shrapnel grenade, he’s definitely the easiest of the new Evolve hunters to get to grips with.

Unlike Parnell’s auto shotgun, you’re looking at a weapon that can unleash a full clip into a monster with a single trigger press. Up close, this can be absolutely devastating to a monster, but just be careful you don’t get taken out.

From range, tossing one of Torvald’s shrapnel grenades is a seriously impressive tactic. The grenades create a selection of weak points in the monster’s armour that you can attack with great success.

But it’s Torvald third weapon, a mortar cannon, that’s easily the best of the bunch. Simply point and shoot to deploy a barrage of artillery shells that deal heavy damage from above. It’s a lot faster to reload than Hank’s orbital strike too.

Compared to the other Assault hunters, Torvald is definitely our favourite. He may lack a little flexibility, but his raw damage is unrivalled.


Crow – Trapper
The newest Trapper is probably our least favourite of the new hunters for Evolve. Crow uses his pet batray – Gobi – to track the monster. But it is limited, as it’ll only pick up the monster if you happen to fling the batray in the exact direction of the rambling beast. The little bat will pick up any creatures along the 200 metre trajectory though, which may give you a hint as to which direction the monster is lurking.

Crow’s statis gun is a lot more useful as it slows the monster’s movement down a little with every hit you land. That’s just for regular fire too. If you hold down the trigger you can charge up the statis gun to unleash a bigger statis orb to slow the monster for longer.

This hunter primarily uses a kinetic long rifle though. It’s semi-automatic at range, but if you charge it up it penetrates the monster’s armour and goes straight for its health bar.

Slim – Medic
Evolve’s newest Medic is Slim, a strange bug man who lacks any major offensive weapons. All he has to protect himself is a Leach Gun, which will shave off a little of the monster’s health, but won’t be useful if Slim’s the last man standing.

It does have the perk of shorting the healing burst’s cooldown though, meaning you can heal your pals quicker the more shots you land.

If your teammates are a little further away for the health burst radius, you can use Slim’s healing drone. This little bug can be sent out to heal any of Slim’s fellow hunters to full health over time. It’ll be interrupted if they take damage, but it’s a great way of strategically healing your entire team.

Slim’s spore cloud launcher is quite unusual and does come in handy when you remember to use it. The cloud prevents the monster from sniffing out you and your team within a 40 metre radius of the spores.

Sunny – Support
Finally, you’ve got Sunny, a new female Support hunter. We absolutely love her mini-nuke grenade, but you’ll need to compensate for the slight delay on the explosions in order to hit your target.

The more unique features of Sunny’s arsenal will take a little getting used to but they can be invaluable. For example, she has a stationary shield drone that automatically projects a shield onto a single hunter who wanders into its radius and is currently under monster attack.

Sunny also has a jetpack booster, which she can use to give one of her fellow hunters virtually unlimited jetpack juice with double the movement speed too. Well, as long as she stays locked onto them anyway.

We used it a few times to get our buddy out of a corner when Behemoth had them pinned.

Behemoth
Evolve’s fourth monster, Behemoth, is a huge, hulking, flaming ball of a monster. And he’s an absolute blast to play.

Now, before you think size is all Behemoth has to offer you’d be wrong – although that is one of his great strengths. He has higher health and armour bars than the other monsters, but you’ll need to use that additional armour wisely.

Behemoth’s power is in controlling the space he is in. His lava bomb attack covers a large area with fire for around 15 seconds, making that patch inaccessible to the hunters unless they’ve got lots of jetpack fuel or a deathwish.

Then Behemoth’s got his tongue attack that snares in a single hunter for a punishing attack – complete with grab and ground pound combo.

You can also use Behemoth’s fissure attack to create a damaging earthquake that whips out from him in a line, taking a tonne of damage from any hunter caught in its wake.

But the rock wall ability is one that can totally change the dynamics of a match, as it create an impenetrable barrier wherever you place it. Hunters can be cornered in this way, giving you either room to escape or time to take some of them out.

We particularly love the fact that Behemoth has some seriously powerful melee attacks and you can use his flaming ball traversal skills for additional attack power. He can climb, but can’t jump, so you’ll need to get used to rumbling along as a ball – and it’s a powerful skill when used well.

He’s definitely our favourite monster of the lot.

Update – February 18 2015
A week on from release, our feelings haven’t changed much about Turtle Rock’s four vs one online shooter. Players have now had time to get to grips with the characters and the monsters, and your chances of getting a decent match rather than a damp squib walkover have improved dramatically. Evolve can still be a frustrating game when players don’t get it right, but dynamite when they do. If we have any major concerns going on, they’re more about the way Turtle Rock has handled the game’s secondary modes, and about how this affects its long-term appeal.

We’ll say it again: a good monster is absolutely crucial to Evolve. Not everyone can do it, and some of us here have had our share of humiliating stage one defeats on the first encounter – few things are more depressing than hearing voices and watching for force dome go up while your poor little monstie is trying to snack its way up to the next level. Focus on a monster and take time to learn its strengths, its weaknesses and how to move with it, however, and you’ll find that games become a tight cat-and-mouse affair, as you work to kill and feed while avoiding the hunters, confronting them when you have to, then slipping off to lick your wounds once you’ve done some damage.

Play as a hunter with a smart, imaginative monster player, and Evolve really comes alive. Some matches play out in a series of confrontations and crescendos, and we’ve seen monsters recover in what seemed like their final seconds to wipe out a group of hunters, and hunters rescue victory from the jaws (or claws and tentacles) of defeat through brilliant timing and cooperative play. If you’re a Destiny player, you’ll know how handling respawn times is a vital skill – if you’re the last man standing, then your focus is to stay alive. The same is true in Evolve, and many a group of hunters fails because the last hunter living wades into battle when they should be heading for the hills and waiting for the dropship to arrive.

This is also where more interesting strategies are beginning to emerge. Brighter monster players are beginning to get a sense for when the hunters are weak, and when a wipeout can be orchestrated. Hunters are getting better at using the abilities of the support and medic classes to keep the assault and trapper classes fighting, or win some breathing room when the fight goes horribly wrong. The more you play it, the more you realise that Evolve is a game of tactics – part Left4Dead, part Counter-Strike, part Streetfighter. It helps to specialise, because you’ll learn your chosen characters/monster inside out.

Not enough has been said about the movement, either. For the hunters, the jetpack is a crucial tool; the only way to access certain areas quickly, and often the best way to launch an attack or defend against one. For the monsters, mastering the full arsenal of jumping, gliding, climbing, sneaking and pouncing manoeuvres is critical, because only a moronic monster runs around leaving footprints on the map, and because chaining moves together will get you into or out of trouble that much faster. Evolve handles all this stuff brilliantly, and only Titanfall beats it on high-speed traversal.

The biggest problem we’re having with Evolve is that – frankly – hour after hour of Skirmish/Hunt mode gets a bit dull eventually, as matches start to take a familiar shape. Evacuation mode, which mixes maps and game modes, does a better job of keeping things fresh and exciting, but it’s often a struggle to find enough players to fill the roster. You can set up custom games, of course, but Evolve could really do with a matchmaking mode that cycles game types and gets you playing more Nest, Defence and Rescue games. It would just mix up the flow.

Final Verdict
At its best, Evolve is tense, thrilling and what pundits like to call a game changer, with periods of frantic hunting/fleeing punctuated by explosive confrontations. At its worst, nothing comes together and it all feels strangely flat. With time and experience, we’re seeing more of the former than the latter, and all the parts are falling into place. Our only concern is that the core Hunt mode could eventually grow stale with repetition, and that games mixing in the other modes are harder to find than they should be.

See also: Best Wii U Games 2015

Original review – February 11 2015
The idea behind Evolve is fantastic; an asynchronous online multiplayer FPS that pits four hunters against a hulking monster, it’s like all the best bits of Kong Kong, Jurassic Park, Godzilla and Predator rolled into one. The way that the idea is executed isn’t too shabby, either. This is a smart, thoughtfully constructed, carefully balanced game that does its best to deal with a reasonably challenging learning curve, and doesn’t stint on choice or depth. Evolve’s only real weakness is the one faced by so many online games before: it’s only as good as its players.

On the side of the hunters, that means knowing and playing your role. In each round, four players take on one of four classes – Assault, Trapper, Medic and Support – with each class offering a choice of four characters. Assault class characters work as your basic tanks, with a shield to soak up the worst of the monster’s attacks and a good selection of close-range, long-range and explosive weaponry. Trappers don’t have the same defences or the same firepower, but they have a range of tools with which they can spot and then pin down the monster. Medics, well, you can probably guess where the medics fit in, while Support class characters have abilities to weaken or distract the monster and buff their fellow hunters.

See also: Evolve Tips and Tricks

With a good team, each round of Evolve is a tense sci-fi thriller, as you track the monster using tracks, sounds and startled birds, then attempt to close them down. With jetpacks strapped on you speed through the jungle and over rocky outcrops, avoiding the hostile indigenous fauna and searching for signs of the beast.

When you find them, it’s a question of mastering the panic and trying to think tactically in the middle of chaos. The trapper traps the monster in the area in a glowing energy dome, then slows them down with harpoons or stasis grenade, or simply tags them  so the team can find them more easily. The support class exposes weak points and uses heavy weapons and automated defences to wear the monster down, all the while giving the hunters vital boosts. The medic takes potshots while healing and reviving downed comrades. The assault guy gets up close and personal, blasting the hulking varmint with a lightning gun or flamethrower, trying to tear down its armour so that permanent damage can be done.

See also: PS4 vs Xbox One

On a good round, there may be three or four exhilarating encounters, the hunters doing their best to tear chunks out of the monster’s health, the monster doing its best to deal as much damage as it can before fleeing to fight another day. Each time the monster returns, it’s stronger, able to dish out more pain to the hunters, and better equipped to cope with the incoming attacks. At the end of a match, either the monster or the hunters could triumph in one last bombastic smash-up, go down in a blaze of glory, or pull out an unlikely win just when everything appears to be lost. At its best, Evolve is a taut, unpredictable and hugely exciting game.

Of course, that also requires a great monster. If Evolve is as much a group performance as a game, then the monster has the leading role. It spends the early part of the game killing and feeding on the local wildlife, each critter eaten bringing the beastie one step close to its next state of evolution. Fill the circular meter, move somewhere quiet, and you mutate into a bigger, more heavily armoured version, with points to spend on beefier attacks and special moves. At this point, playing the monster becomes more tactical. Do you try and sneak up on the players and harass them, push for an all hunters in a bodybag win, or simply marshal your strength, evolve again, the mount an all-out attack on the map’s now vulnerable reactor?

See also: Far Cry 4 Tips and Tricks

We have three monsters to play with so far. Firstly, we have the fire-breathing, rock-chucking, in-your-face monstrosity that’s Goliath – King Kong meets Godzilla in one ugly brute. Then we have Kraken, a Lovecraft nightmare of a monster, who glides through the air with a disturbing grace and speed, coming down to dispense a range of lightning-based attacks. Finally, we have the Wraith; a stealthy, viciously aggressive beast that can come in fast, invisible and brutal, then move out of trouble just as quickly.

Whichever monster you play, you need to play smart. Sneaking makes it easier for the hunters to catch up with you, but it also means you don’t leave tracks or scare up birds. You can jump and climb to cover ground or gain advantage, and use your abilities to ambush or escape. Most of all, you need to keep feeding, choosing your moments to harvest lesser creatures and prepare for your next evolution. Dumb, overly-aggressive monsters don’t last long. Sneaky fiends that play to the strengths of each monster come out best.

See also: Xbox One vs Xbox 360

Without a great monster, Evolve can be a walkover for the hunters. In fact, despite some excellent tutorials and videos, some of your first attempts may well end in a humiliating battering, possibly before your first evolution. It’s not much fun for the hunters, and it’s even less fun for you. Without good hunters, meanwhile, Evolve is just a mess. We’ve seen hunters getting too obsessed with blasting the wildlife to even start tracking the monster, teams of lone-wolf players where everyone ends up as monster meat, and teams where everyone plays assault, even if they’re playing the medic or the tracker. Unless the monster is as hopeless as the players, the big guy with the claws inevitably wins.

Evolve’s matchmaking does its best to match players of the same capabilities, but in the end there’s only so much that can be done. At the moment, Evolve can be awesome and deeply disappointing within the same two-hour stretch, and that won’t change until everyone understands their role.

See also: PS4 vs PS3

There’s no shortage of potential here once that happens. While it’s spoilt by occasional texture pop-in and the odd bit of lag, it’s mostly a deeply impressive game, with huge maps that offer plenty of opportunity for combat, trapping and traversal, and some lovely verdant jungle scenery. It uses Crytek’s CryEngine 3, and if you’ve seen Crysis 3 on a decent gaming PC, then you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect, though on a much larger scale. And if the characters might appear to be the usual Dudebro clichés, but they’re more thoughtfully designed than you might think, with brilliant visual touches, great voicework and a decent script. Sure, you’ll have heard every phrase within the first ten hours or so, but that doesn’t mean they’re not entertaining.

Though Evolve has us feeling concerned about the long-term appeal of the central Hunt mode – there are only so many ways that a hunt can go down – the game expands outwards with additional modes for custom matches, and an Evacuation campaign mode which cycles through them over five chapters, with the outcome of each chapter having consequences for the next.

See also: Best Games 2015

Despite all the talk of millions of possible combinations, Evacuation won’t be endlessly replayable, but it will be fun for a long time to come. There’s a mode where hunters attack eggs while the monster defends them, another where the hunters try to rescue people while the monster tries to eat them, and a mode were the monster and some AI-controlled minions do their best to destroy a series of generators, and the hunters try to stop them. Evacuation is playable solo or co-op against an AI beast, and it’s a great way to acclimatise yourself to the game, particularly as the AI plays better than many human players – though sometimes to a fault when you’re the monster.

Like most big shooters, Evolve has an experience system, with a persistent level for the player plus individual Masteries for each character or monster which result in new perks as you progress. There’s some risk here that perks might unbalance the game later on, but the biggest issue is that you won’t gain your Mastery unless you use all the character-specific capabilities, whether you find them effective or not. At times we’ve been torn over whether to use grenades, for example, because while they weren’t the best tool for the current situation, not using them was holding us back. It adds long-term objectives and a considerable amount of depth to the experience, but we still suspect that some players might find the mastery system a grind.

See also: Upcoming Xbox One Games

As far as stability goes, there’s little to complain about so far. We’ve had a couple of moments where matches locked up before starting or we were stuck on the matchmaking screen, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed by quitting and restarting the game. Overall, it doesn’t appear to be another troubled launch.

By now it’s probably clear why slapping a score and a verdict on Evolve in its current state is at best a challenge and at worst a Kraken-sized nightmare. On the one hand, we love the game for its scale, its attention to detail, the way that each role seems essential, and the way it feels when you’re having a cracking game with a great bunch of players. Good hunters and monsters are emerging, and it’s a pleasure to fight with or against them, and learn from the way they play.

On the other hand, it’s just as possible – and often easier – to find a game where nobody knows what they’re doing, or where you simply get swamped. That’s not necessarily a criticism of the game, but you have to bear in mind that it’s not always going to be brilliant.

We’ve been here before. Battlefield and Battlefield 2 had the potential to be great, but fell flat with rubbish players. Left4Dead and PayDay were a nightmare when players either messed around or failed to understand what the game is all about. That hasn’t stopped any of these games becoming awesome. The same might soon be true of Evolve.

Verdict
At its best, Evolve is tense, thrilling and what pundits like to call a game changer, with periods of frantic hunting/fleeing punctuated by explosive confrontations. At its worst, nothing comes together and it all feels strangely flat. We suspect that, with time and experience, we’ll see more of the first than the second, and the game will reveal its true potential. We just hope that this resolves any remaining doubts about long-term appeal.

Trusted Score