I’m sure most of your reading this know the gist, but for the sake of clarity, here goes: Evolve is an online 1st/3rd person action game. The camera perspective depends on the side of the battle in which you’re participating. If you are fulfilling a role as one of the four human Hunters, the game is essentially a first person shooter where observance of character class is critical to your team’s success. The game goes “over-the-shoulder” when you play as the Monster. Huge, hulking, powerful, and terrifying, an intelligent and thoughtful player has all the tools at its disposal to not make the disparity in numbers be that much of a detriment. The point of each match is rather straight forward. The Hunters needs to kill the Monster, and the Monster needs to kill the Hunters. To ensure matches don’t go on indefinitely, there is a end goal under the umbrella of a 20 minute timer. The Monster is tasked with ravaging other “animals” on the map and eating them to gain enough strength to evolve, which enhances abilities and eventually allows it to destroy the Power Relay on the map. If the Hunters aren’t dead, or the Relay isn’t destroyed in 20 minutes, the Hunters win. This forces the Monster to eventually engage with the humans, and not just rely on playing ring around the rosie for the match victory. This basic outline of rules works well to entice each side to “push,” but is also open ended enough for the game to play out how the five players determine the session is going to go. Simple premise, but effective for creating tension, friction, and all out action.
Every member of the Hunters is important. It’s rare for an online action game made available on consoles to champion the ideology of classes and roles as much as Evolve does. Assault, Trapper, Medic, and Support are the four team members that all bring very important skills and abilities to the table, and is very hard to win if one or more players don’t fulfill their end of the bargain properly. For the sake of this piece, I’ll explain how my friends and I thought about and eventually settled into what was expected of each Hunter. This is not to say this is the only or best strategy, but our “system” did pay bigger dividends the more we played. Essentially, our plan broke down like this: Assault and Medic should be at the front of tracking, with the Trapper a few steps behind them and Support in back at a safe trailing distance. Assault is the most “offensively” tuned Hunter. They’re armed with an automatic rifle that deals out damage at a decent distance and a deadly plasma/laser gun for when the fight goes CQC. Now, you might think having our Medic in front is a risky proposition, considering how important it is to heal during exchanges with the Monster. But Evolve‘s version of the Medic has tranquillizer darts that slow down the movement speed of the beast considerably for several seconds and highlights it in green. And with the heavy Assault person there with them, we felt it was worth the risk to have them help run point because of how useful tranqs can be to getting at the Monster early. Second in tow is the Trapper, my personal favorite Hunter. This teammate has two big contributions. The first is the de facto fifth member of the team, Daisy. An alien/dog thing-y that is able to highlight tracks when the trail goes cold and revive downed Hunters very quickly. That is, when she realizes someone is down and goes to their aid. The second, and most important tool in the Trapper’s bag of tricks, is the Mobile Arena. This is one of the defining features of Evolve, and brings about a “game within a game” scenario. Once the Assault-Sniper sub team makes contact and begins to engage, the Trapper (usually me) needs to hustle up and get close enough to deploy the Arena. If played successfully, a dome will encompass the immediate surroundings, trapping the Monster inside. This takes away its biggest advantage, the ability to evade. It’s not a permanent fixture, with each release lasting about a minute and a decent cool down period before it can be thrown again. So, it’s very important the Hunters make good on that “trap time” when made.
Ah, but don’t forget about the Support person. They become very important once the fight starts. First, they have a beam device that creates an invulnerable force field around one of the Hunters, making them temporarily immune to the Monster’s attacks. Naturally, the Hunter that got this added padding the most was Assault. The biggest Support weapon, however, is an aerial bomb drop that can cause serious damage if it makes contact. The barrage is the one offensive “haymaker” afforded the Hunters, and is the quickest way to either turn the tide in a fight or secure a victory for the humans. Additionally, during Arena fights, the philosophy for the Medic changes drastically. They should now play back as much as possible to stay far away from the Monster. While each Hunter is instrumental to success in their own special ways, the Medic is far and away the most important team member during exchanges. The Monster’s attacks are just too strong to withstand long enough to kill it without being able to heal. Luckily, the Medic’s first aid beam works very effectively at a pretty good distance. If the Monster wises up and puts the agro on the Medic, the other Hunters need to do everything possible to draw the attention to them. I’ve been apart of a few human victories where we had one of us missing for most of the fight. Never in those instances was the Medic the one sidelined. During our first night of “growing pains” with the Alpha, trying to learn how to do certain things and what all of the kits do, we struggled. By day three, when we had this primary strat in place and each of us had settled in to our most comfortable roles, we became a little force to be reckoned with. Which was a good thing, because this “trial” period for the game has revealed one thing that I think needs to be looked at by Turtle Rock when they go back in to tinker with settings after this weekend is over.
It’s too easy to be the Monster. That sounds way near sighted, so allow me to explain. Of course, the “enemy” (which is a relative term given the circumstances of no narrative or story being revealed at this point, and made strictly on the assertion that the humans are on a noble quest) is at a numbers disadvantage, and the possibility of sound teamwork and collective experience could spell disaster for the Monster. This is where the checks and balances end. First off, a third person perspective is superior to first person under these circumstances. Being able to click down on the right thumbstick to use the Sniff ability and get an outline of organisms in the immediate surroundings is crucial. Couple that with quickly swinging said ‘stick around, and you can gain a ton of knowledge very quickly about sources of food and if the Hunters are hot on the tracks. Plus, the environment is much less hostile to Mr. Monster. What could potentially kill an absent minded Hunter is little more than lunch to Goliath or Kraken (the playables in the Alpha).
It’s also pretty simple to get enough resources to evolve from stage one, to two, to three. It doesn’t take a great number of “meals” to gain the levels necessary for staging up. A good player can use the leap ability to begin the match during the “head start” afforded the Monster and get way away from the Hunters before they drop in via parachutes. A swing of the claw or burst of fire breath can incapacitate a handful of medium sized fauna at once, and munching doesn’t take more than a few seconds. When I played, I was usually able to get to stage two without any conflict, and could even reach stage 3 without engagement if I really made an effort to be mindful of my movements. The reason I’m putting so much emphasis on staging is because that metric is the number one factor in deciding who (probably) has the upper hand in the match. Assuming all things are equal, Hunters have the advantage at the first stage of the Monster’s evolution, sides are about level at the second, but then leans heavy towards the big man at three. Again, I’ll subject my own play experience as an example. The first night of my friends and I playing as Hunters, we didn’t win, the second night we actually won a few, and by day three we could actually compete at a high level, unless it was a stage 3 fight in which we’ve only one once. In my first outing as Goliath, I got to stage three but lost. At my second time at bat, against the exact same Xbox LIVE folks, I won at stage two with very little shield. I think if Evolve was as balanced as it needs to be right now, I shouldn’t have been able to notch my first win as a Monster within 20 minutes of playing time.
Of course, all of this is to be taken with not a grain, but a full tablespoon of salt. This is an alpha build. Not a beta, an alpha. Meaning the first playable version of a game. Speaking from conjecture, I think the point of this weekend’s experiment was to see how the community would handle the “4v1” ideology in practice. Closed Q&A sessions at the studio is a great way to get the basic guidelines down, but until people that are not involved with actually making the game play it, it’s impossible to know how players are going to pick up on and exploit certain aspects, what community strategies become prominent, and if there is too much leniency for either the Hunters or Monster. As it stands, a really good group of Hunters that jumps out and finds and average-to-good Monster early in the match stand a great chance to win. But I think the “lean” in skill does need to be tilted to the humans. Without at least serviceable personal skills and great communication, the Monster should win. Having said all of this, with the perceived imbalance of power, I had a blast playing on both sides. This is the biggest time of the year for gaming and gaming journalism. And while it would have been easy for me to play this for a few hours, put up a little preview piece, and return to playing some of the holiday’s biggest games, this Big Alpha has taken up about 75% of my “controller time” since Thursday. Here’s to hoping Turtle Rock can make some adjustments and get things notched closer to the middle before it releases on Xbox One, Playstation 4, and PC on February 10th.
