I Am the Monster: Get Ready for Games to 'Evolve'

What's This?

Hunters take on the monster in 'Evolve', an upcoming game by 2K Games and Turtle Rock.

Image: 2K Games/Turtle Rock

By Chelsea Stark2014-04-15 16:23:28 UTC

"Okay, you've got a 20-second head start," my guide says in my ear, his voice loud over my headphones.

I scramble forward in my new, dark surroundings. The woods around me echo with animal sounds as I look for food, safety, escape from what's coming.

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Sniffing the air, the terrain around me springs to life as all the smaller creatures are illuminated. I need to pursue, hunt and kill them quickly so I can grow stronger. My survival depends on evolving from them, so I can take out the team of four pursuing me. Alone in the forest, I must hunt to avoid being the hunted.

This is the surprisingly solitary line of thinking found in Evolve, the upcoming cooperative/competitve shooter from 2K Games and Turtle Rock. The latter is best known for its groundbreaking cooperative four-player franchise Left 4 Dead, which puts a team of survivors against some of the most evil and creative zombies ever to grace video games.

A legacy like that leaves high expectations, and the preview of Evolve I played at PAX East shows plenty of promise both for gamers who want to work together, and for those who would rather don the lone wolf role.

A hunter tethers the goliath in 'Evolve', an upcoming title from 2K Games.

Image: 2K Games/Turtle Rock

Hunt, Run, Hide

Unlike every other character in the game, the monster is viewed in third-person, a switch 2K Games Executive Producer Denby Grace confirmed was done later in development. It's an important change, as you really get the sense of the size of the world around you, and how big and lurching you can become. Everything around the monster looks so small, especially the team of hunters you fight, so pulling the camera back gives a sense of power you wouldn't get if you just could see two huge claws in front of the camera.

For such a hulking beast, the monster moves like a dream, at least at the first level of evolution. An important gameplay element is being able to scrabble over all types of terrain, so you'll have to scale walls and jump away from foes quickly. Some of the fluid, parkour-like movements feel completely graceful; it was easy to lose myself in running away. Your speed is the advantage so early, as you are a lot weaker than your combined foes.

Thus, the early strategy for the monster involves hunting, using its ability to sense prey to quickly take down other beasts. As you eat, you fill up your evolution meter and prepare for the next level. While this match allowed me to play a monster called Goliath, there will be other monsters with different powers in the full game.

But of course, you are constantly being chased by a team of four hunters, each with very specific abilites to take down the monster — the game only ends when you win or you die.

The biggest threat to the monster is the trapper. That character can snare you with electric threads and pull you toward the group, and also lay down a large electric force field to keep you from fleeing the area. The monster should take them out first, and likewise, the group should protect him. In my play experience, the group left the trapper for dead, and it lead to a much longer play time for me after I ate him.

The second biggest threat to the monster is the medic, who provides support to the team via healing and a sniper rifle. Following that, you'll want to take out the support and assault characters, who are both able to deal massive damage to you.

Adding stats to the monster during the match in 'Evolve'.

Image: 2K Games/Turtle Rock

Evolution

All of this is secondary to your need for flesh, because you're a giant, bloodthirsty monster. So eating was a priority, even when I was running away. Getting to the second stage of evolution quickly changed the dynamic of the match.

Once you evolve, you immediately get to put skill points into slots. You also get a huge health boost, though you are temporarily a little more vulerarable until the process is over. But heaven help the team of hunters once I was more powerful; the dynamic of the match quickly changed to where I wanted to chase them.

Along with basic melee attacks, the monster is equipped with lots of ways to do damage. You have two different types of jumps that allow you to close ground between you and a foe. My favorite attack was the rock throw, which could put a lot of hurt on a fleeing hunter, or one that had taken to the air to avoid my swiping claws.

You do lose a great deal of speed and mobility after evolution, which means changing strategies. You won't be able to always outrun the group of hunters, but you may not really want to.

While I was taken down before the final stage of evolution, it was easy to see how it would progress. A much more powerful, but barely mobile monster has a very distinct play style, and hopefully you've taken out at least a couple members of the hunting party before reaching that level.

Grace told me the game is built around catering to these different play styles: gamers who love to work as a team, and those that love to play by themselves. The four hunters can't succeed unless they stick to their roles, and the monster must be able to adapt to a number of situations. There will be options for players to create matches based on whatever class they favor online, or play offline against AI.

There's still a lot to learn about Evolve. We don't know the status of a campaign mode yet, or anything really beyond the matches played at press demos and at PAX. But the game shows huge promise as a fun, compelling experience that players will want to come back to over and over.

Evolve comes out to PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this fall.

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Topics: 2k games, Entertainment, evolve, Gaming, PAX