Evolve Review: Hide and Seek with Guns

Turtle Rock Studios set out to make a unique multiplayer experience with Evolve. It won many awards before launch and had a bunch of hype. How does Evolve stand up to the hype? That depends on how you measure that. 

When it comes to big name games like Evolve, I can usually judge the popularity by the number of people on its subreddit. Evolve is pretty small in that regard. That doesn’t mean it is a bad game, just weird that a game with this much hype doesn’t have more people playing it. I have own theories on that.

DLC

Part of the reason could be all the DLC. People see a bunch of DLC and red flags come up. Evolve has a lot of skins that are essentially just recolors and they aren’t apart of the season pass. The “Hunting Season Pass” offer 4 new hunters.

The game is already $60, then you have the season pass to add more characters and all the skins, make it seem like a mobile game that stuffs microtransactions in your face.

This is not the case because the skins don’t do anything to the game and new maps and game modes are being added for free. I didn’t lower the score for that, it was for one reason. The constant chasing nature of the game gets repetitive.

Hide and Seek

That’s the name of the game. During beta, Hunt was the only thing available. This game mode has the hunters chasing down the monster trap and kill it before it fully evolves. You can do this by tracking footprints, watching wildlife and changes to terrain, tracking it with abilities, and so on.

While this is fun, in theory, in practice it turns into a big game of hide and seek with guns. Eventually you realize that you’re just chasing a camping player until he or she gets strong enough to kill you.

You look for a monster at the beginning, hard to do if they are smart, and eventually find it. Great, now you have to get close enough to it to trap it in a giant dome.

Well, if you do that then great, then the monster either kills you, takes the trapper out to lower the dome, or waits until it goes down. If it gets away, you spend the rest of the time running after it or trying to find it.

The joy of trying to track the monster goes away quick and you’re left with the hope that you can capture the monster early just so you don’t have to spend 20+ minutes running around the map.

You’ll learn to hate the Wraith.

Does that sound like fun? Maybe to some, but I’d like some variety. Now, this is much more fun as the monster because you’re the one keeping away from the hunters and you always know where they are. 

After seeing the game and playing beta, many people probably got tired of it and figured it wasn’t worth getting. Thankfully, that isn’t the only thing available in the game.

Evacuation is the game’s savior

Seriously, if it wasn’t for this game mode, I wouldn’t like it nearly as much. This “dynamic campaign” mode allows you to play through 5 matches with changes to terrain based on wins and losses.

Evolve boasts having over 800,000 possibilities in this game mode, and it is easy to see why. You start playing a match of hunt with some story scenes shown beforehand. What happens next depends on whether the hunters or the monster wins.

For example: They could be studying a Wraith’s teleportation and if the hunters win, they get transportation gates to use in the next match. If the monster wins, it could get it.

The monster could also destroy a power plant and cause toxic clouds to appear in the next match. If the hunters end up protecting it instead, they could get turrets to help them in the next match.

When a match ends you vote on which game mode to play next. The 5th match is Defend. Hunters must defend a point from the monsters. If the monster destroys the objective it moves back to a new one until you reach the transport ship. The monster wins if the transport ship gets destroyed. 

You can play this mode as a hunter or monster and it adds much replay value and breaks the monotony of the game.

Class Variety

Another thing that makes this game fun is the multiple classes of hunters. There are 4 classes: Assault, Medic, Trapper, and Support. Go here if you want full details. Each class has multiple characters to choose from and they each have their own abilities.

This allows you to have very different play styles and not get bored with doing the same thing. The monsters all play very differently as well.

Teamwork, yes!

My favorite part of the game is teamwork. As the hunters, you need to work together to kill the monster. If you don’t you will lose every time against even a halfway decent monster. In fact, the A.I will probably beat you.

For people who love working together and figuring out which abilities work well with together, this game does not disappoint. It is a little punishing to people playing matchmaking without a full team.

Solo play for the lone wolf

Don’t worry you can play all these game modes alone and offline. You’ll be able to switch to each hunter during the game. You can play as the monster and choose which characters to use in the match.

Full Customization

You can also make custom games online and offline. You can choose a variety of options including:

• Map Effects
• Game mode
• Wildlife Population

There are many more options to choose from, but you get the point.

The bottom line is I enjoy this game and the many options available make the game fun. Even though there is a single-player option, I find it better with other people.

The core of the game can still get old after a while, which is why it gets a lower score, and it would be even lower if Evacuation wasn’t in the game. If you don’t find the idea of hide and seek with guns appealing, I’d pass on it, or at least try it out before buying.