Overview

Evolve is an asymmetrical, cooperative/competitive first person shooter, developed by Turtle Rock Studios. If you aren’t familiar with the developer, you’ll have likely heard of Left 4 Dead: they’re the brains behind it. Evolve sees a team of 4 players take on a single Monster (controlled by a fifth player) with the winner determined by the Hunters destroying the Monster, or the Monster destroying the Hunters or a secondary objective.

Each map has its own theme and each has a variety of terrain and structures that the Hunters and Monster can utilise. On each map there are also a variety of wildlife that can harm you and which the Monster will attempt to eat in order to Evolve. A certain number of these wildlife offer unique power-ups once killed for both the Hunters and Monster.

Setting

Evolve is set on Shear, a distant planet located in the "Far Arm" of space, that humanity has traveled to in the distant future. Many of the established colonies that are considered valuable assets in space are attacked by a variety of alien Monsters. As the Monsters begin to destroy the colonies on Shear, William Cabot (a former Planet Tamer) is brought out of retirement to deal with the threat, in order to evacuate the remaining colonists. To deal with this threat, Cabot brings together mercenaries of all different kinds from around the galaxy. If you choose solo or multiplayer, you'll have the opportunity to play through the campaign and if you're familiar with Brink's story delivery, you'll be comfortable here. 

Game Modes

Similarly to Left 4 Dead, there’s a single and a multiplayer campaign in Evolve. The single player campaign sees you play as the Hunter (or Monster) and play through five specific maps as you and your team attempt to trap the Monster in order to evacuate survivors. Multiplayer allows you to play through the single player campaign with friends on a five map rotation or you can choose to play just one map from the campaign. Regardless of whether you choose single player, or multiplayer, there’s 5 game modes:

• Rescue: "Injured colonists trying to escape the Monsters are placed randomly on the map. Hunters need to locate, revive and protect them as they make their escape. The monster needs to kill as many of these colonists as possible and keep them from getting away. Whoever saves or kills five colonists first, wins."
• Defend: "A starship's refueling station comes under the assault of a player-controlled fully evolved monster and smaller Goliath minions. The hunters must stop the monster from causing a catastrophic accident by protecting the power generators until the ship is fully powered, while the monster must destroy two generators to reach the ship's power source."
• Hunt: "The Hunters must kill the Monster before it can destroy the power relay located in the map. The Monster must reach stage 3 in order to destroy the relay, though it can also opt to kill all of the Hunters."
• Nest: "Six Monster eggs are located in random locations on the map. The Monster must protect them from the Hunters for 10 minutes, and can hatch one of the eggs to spawn a minion to help it. The Hunters must destroy all six eggs, as well as any minions, within the time limit to win."

The Hunters

There are a total of 12 Hunters in Evolve and at the start of the game, only 4 of them are playable with the remainder being unlocked as you play specific Hunters. Each of the four compliments the other and are all designed to combat the Monster as a team, with each Hunter also having a unique class ability.

• Assault has a Shield
• Trapper has a Mobile Arena
• Medic has Healing Burst
• Support has Cloaking Device

Assault

Assault are the main damage dealers of the team. Their Shield is incredibly powerful for surviving against the initial Monster attack.

• Markov
• Hyde
• Parnell

Trapper

Trappers specialize in tracking down and trapping the Monster, their Mobile Arena creates a small fighting space that doesn't allow the Monster to escape.

• Griffin
• Maggie & Daisy
• Abe

Medic

Medics focus on keeping the team alive. Their Class Ability is the Healing Burst, which provides a large boost to health.

• Val
• Lazarus
• Caira

Support

Support has variety of versatile tools for aiding allies, with reliance on the Cloaking Device to stealth their allies.

• Hank
• Bucket
• Cabot

The Monsters

There are a total of 4 Monsters in Evolve, although there are only 3 currently playable. The fourth, Goliath, is not yet in the game but is ready for implementation. The other three play vastly different and are all challenging to play well. Goliath is a melee orientated Monster that can survive large amounts of punishment, Kraken offers long-ranged attacks and Wraith is a stealth-focused Monster with melee attacks. Lastly, Behemoth has the inability to jump but instead turns into a boulder to quickly travel the map.