PAX East 2014: Hands-on with Evolve

ith all of the competitive multiplayer titles being played for eSports and even more down the line of 2014, there’s one particular title that’s bringing back the intensity of competition through cooperative play in a whole new way. The folks behind Left 4 Dead have channeled the same frenetic combat of the infamous tank encounters from the hit series and have filtered it into what looks like could have only been inspired from marathons of watching the original Predator film; Evolve is poised to be a familiar kind of shooter that’s refreshing in all of the right ways.

With the promise of additional hunter classes and monster types, the hands-on play began with the introduction of the Assault class (which I manned), Trapper, Support, and Medic as we were tasked to bring down the Goliath monster. As the match was starting, the map panned us through a tour of the intergalactic tropical locale, and out prey as large as he was, was still dwarfed by the sheer size and real estate of the stage.

The depth of the various nooks and crannies that laid between us and the Goliath opened to so many different tactics that we could combine elements of ground strategy. Positioning our Medic on high ground with her remote healing ray and sniper rifle with our Trapper baiting traps from the around the base of the same plateau allowed us to not only flank our first encounter with the Goliath Player, but it allowed us do so organically thanks to the responsive level design. While we only had the chance to play one map, is evident that the coherent construction behind the stages managed to nail both atmosphere and dynamics of play down a considerably degree of engagement within minutes of the game in motion.

The fast paced nature of combat was complimented by competent shooting mechanics that aligned adaptively with movement, meaning exchanging fire from aimed position to directly from the hip seamlessly went hand in hand when scampering around your tenacious prey. These integral quirks helped solidified the fast-pace into a balanced fusion of reaction and action that provided the right kind challenge instead of frustration, ranging anywhere from sprinting towards the target to getting your shit handed to you by the “target” and helplessly become launched from his attacks through the air as you try to regain composure to counter-attack—these elements and their execution is what sets Evolve apart from it’s peers.

The Assault class luckily catered to the style of play I personally prefer in these sort of ventures, with his frame built more for “Tank” play, allowing me to take all of the enemy Goliath’s repeated swipes while I activated this Class’s specific shield ability; provoking most of the opponent’s attention gave my Trapper teammate the chance to land a harpoon into their backside which left them helpless against evading my mine that required precision planting because of the delay within it’s trigger; this tactics and so many others are intuitive enough that they can be applied within even the most rudimentary competitive skill sets that bridge Evolve into a territory of accessibility that similar styled games aside from L4D before it, have had a hard time achieving within the video game community.

However, even with our effective teamwork and quick grasp of the systems at hand, we still got our asses handed to us in the end; players cannot afford to be a wasted action or strategy in every single match because each second is crucial in bringing down the monster before it eveolves. The opposing player was able to get the creature to level 2, and along with it’s increased mobility, the dude had a gnarly increase to his spray range for his fire breath and an additional bar of health on top of his base one—we could have scraped by with a victory but he was able to pick apart the strongest assets to our strategy by killing our Trapper and Medic, at that point we were reduced from predators to pansies who were to trying scratch our way to survival at the dropship that awaited us. The tightest strategies have to be quick and methodical, because any hint of transparency picked up by your titanic adversary will give them the edge to pick your shit clean with their immense strength and durability.

Evolve is coming out later this year for Next Gen consoles and PC, and will undoubtedly transcend all of the fundamentals of the chaotic teamwork of Left 4 Dead into an entirely new stage of standard that will be hard pressed to best.