Evolve also demands a certain level of communication in order to succeed. The AI is competent enough to know how to play, but obviously, it can’t take your cues. A team of random players has no guarantee that they’re going to have microphones or be willing to communicate, so you may be SOL there as well. That leaves playing with a group of friends.
Simply put, Evolve’s high points all came when I was playing with people I knew, and that’s a double edged sword. When everyone is working together on the same page and able to enjoy the ride, there’s really nothing else like this on the market. It can honestly be one of the tensest and most rewarding multiplayer games, ever. However, I can’t assume that I’m always going to have three friends willing to go at any moment.
Sure, you may luck into a good group who’s able to put all the pieces together, but that’s just not the norm with random online games. All it takes is one person to completely destroy any chances of success, and those people seem to outnumber competent social players.
The games themselves weren’t without issues, either. While none of these problem were damning with their regularity, they did pop up enough to be a nuisance. For one, players could get stuck at the loading screen in between missions, leading to a situation where the other players can talk to each other but the game is stalled until whoever is stuck quits. I’ve also seen situations where players get stuck in the air coming down from the drop ship. It’s hard to feel like a valuable part of the team when all you can do is helplessly watch your teammates get slaughtered as you hang out a few hundred meters above the ground. We also experienced more than our fair share of rubber banding issues and hunters getting stuck in terrain when bleeding out. The bottom line is that while everything here would be “minor” issues on the whole, for a major AAA title, it’s inexcusable.
I do want to tip my hat to the audio team here before I wrap up, as they truly did a fantastic job. Being able to place the monster via footsteps is dead on, the maps sound naturally enough with the wildlife without feeling like it’s a scene being set, and the weapons all have satisfying sounds matched up with them. The team even made it that when you hit your push to talk button, the audio drops a few notches to help eliminate that annoying echo. The only problem with this is that if your teammate happens to be talking at the same time it’s almost impossible to hear them, and if I raise the volume on them they can be blaring at other times. It definitely would have been nice to have seen more configuration here, as well as the ability to keep this from happening.
Visually, Evolve is impressive. The official We Got This Covered test rig is a beast running an overclocked 4770k, 22 GB of memory, and a 295×2 GPU pushing the game through a 4k monitor. While there were drops below 60 FPS, very rarely did we have any issues keeping it above the bare minimum of 30.
Ultimately, the sad reality is that Evolve fails on too many levels for it to be considered anything more than a niche title. There are massive imbalance issues right from the start, which means it’s pretty much game over if a Wraith should even hit level two. There are also a plethora of “small” glitches and issues that add up to being more than a minor inconvenience. Plus, generally having to rely on team members that may be more interested in grinding away for an upgrade than actually winning is definitely annoying.
Evolve should have been one of the biggest and best titles of the year, but I just simply cannot recommend it unless you already have three dedicated friends willing to go in with you every single time you play.
This review is based on a PC version of the game, which was given to us for review purposes.
