Unfortunately, this isn’t going to be a normal review, so don’t get upset, you’ve been warned. As much as I would love to focus on the game itself and its merits, I cannot. You see, Evolved is a game that has received a great deal of hate from both gamers and internet personalities alike, and it's driving me up the fucking wall. Scattered through most of these vicious rants, are three recurring arguments against the game, and I wish to discuss them further to explore if they are indeed valid.
First, we shall talk about the elephant in the room, the number one reason why people are so upset with this game: For our sixty dollars, Turtle Rock Studios owes us more content. Many people across the world wide web seem personally offended that Turtle Rock Studios, the studio behind Evolve and Left 4 Dead, could release this game at a full sixty dollar price tag when, as they put it, could have been sold at a cheaper price or even made into a free to play game. The consensus here is that Evolve does not feature enough content to warrant a full sixty dollar price tag and the fact that Turtle Rock Studios is charging gamers sixty dollars is an absolute crime against humanity.
Wait, what? Even if for whatever reason Turtle Rock Studios decided to release a game with zero content whatsoever, it’s in their right to do so and with whatever price tag they want. This is how capitalism works. It wouldn’t be a very good plan to make money, but they have the right to do so and this isn’t disrespectful to the consumer as some internet personalities seem to believe.
Let’s take a look at one of my favorite internet personalities, Darksydephil.
“It’s a slap in the face to gamers” says Phil. Now I have to take a step back and think about this for a second. A slap in the face to gamers? I’m not sure how this argument works exactly. Is it Turtle Rock’s job to create conscience consumers? Here’s what most of these people tend to forget about, Turtle Rock Studios was quite clear what kind of game they were putting out. Most gamers were aware of it, and Darksydephil was certainly aware of it since he played an alpha version of the game, which, in fact, had most of the content already. There was no mystery as to how much content was going to be featured in Evolve. This is taken straight from the Evolve website:
“From Turtle Rock Studios, creators of Left 4 Dead, comes Evolve, the next generation of multiplayer shooters where four Hunters face off against a single, player-controlled Monster in adrenaline-pumping 4v1 matches.”
So for sixty dollars, this is what I’m getting out of the game, okay, fine. Maybe that is too much to charge for a game with essentially one game mode, but a slap in the face? If Turtle Rock Studios is explicit and explaining what sixty dollars is going to give the consumer, and the consumer buys it, how exactly is the consumer’s anger justified?
There’s no basis for this. You, the consumer, has fucked up, not Turtle Rock Studios. This would play out differently if the studio said there was going to be a full-featured campaign, ten hunters instead of four, six monsters instead of three, and when you installed the game none of the advertised content was there. Then I could say yea, Turtle Rock Studios totally robbed you, but this isn’t the case.
It takes very little effort to read a couple reviews to understand what the game offers and to then make a decision on whether or not it’s worth your money. If you’re the type to pre-order and stand in line on release day, you have to understand that you are gambling. You understand that right? Not every game is going to live up to the hype and not every game is going to blow your mind and to be upset when it fails to deliver is foolish.
What really irks me is this sense of entitlement gamers have these days. I’m not sure when it began, but I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty, that I don’t like it. Truthfully, gamers, and consumers, in general, are not entitled to anything really. The only thing you may be entitled to as a consumer, as said before, is the proper information from the seller to understand what your money is buying. That is all. If there is a problem with the product, you don’t buy it. If the product isn’t as full featured as you were promised, then don’t buy it. If the product breaks in an unreasonable amount of time, you return it. I mean, this is all pretty basic common sense right? Am I going fucking crazy? I’m not sure how else to explain it, nothing else was promised in Evolved. If you believe there is not enough content in Evolved to justify its sixty dollar price tag, then don’t buy it. You can hate on the game all you want, but Turtle Rock Studios doesn’t owe you a damn thing other than what they promised.
Okay, on to the second argument: Evolve is Repetitive. This is a tough one. Now I’ve been a gamer since before I could walk and I don’t plan on quitting anytime soon, and in my entire experience playing games, there was always an element of repetitiveness. I’ve played platformers, first person shooters, RPGs...you name it. I’ve played casually and I’ve played competitively throughout my career (really?), and I can honestly say the breed of repetitiveness you will encounter in Evolve is not the end of the world.
Anyone who has played games such as DoTA, Starcraft, and many other competitive games will experience an element of repetitiveness in both high and low levels of play. This repetitiveness though is especially found in low levels of play. Take for example Starcraft, for the inexperienced, the opening minutes of a Starcraft game are pretty much the same routine game after game: You build workers, you send one out to scout, and then you build some sort of structure to produce basic infantry. This is Starcraft at its absolute basics. DoTA is another one, that at its lowest level of play, it goes something like this: two heroes in both safe lane and off lane, one in the middle, and everyone farms for twenty while cursing at each other on the mic.
Notice I keep saying, at the lowest levels of play; this is important. At the lowest levels of Evolve, it goes something like this: hunters deploy onto the battlefield, everyone follows daisy, trapper misses dome, and round and round we go until either side wins. Now, I can’t tell you what the highest levels of Evolve are like because the game is still relatively new, but I can tell you from experience that this game has potential.
Others, however, don’t share this sentiment. Take Angry Joe, another internet personality who pretty much despises this game.
Here’s the thing, though, there are multiple ways to play the game. You don’t necessarily have to stick together as the hunters. There are in fact other options. Now I haven’t played a whole lot of the game, but I’ve played enough to unlock the 2nd tier medic known as Lazarus. Now Lazarus is interesting because he has a cloaking device and coupled with the perk that allows for your jetpack to be recharged quickly and you have yourself a viable scout. He has a long range sniper rifle which can tag the monster and start weakening his armor, and if he gets in trouble he can cloak and make for an escape, and all the while pinging like crazy the monster’s whereabouts. Tracking isn’t exclusive to the tracker class. The first tier medic has a poison gun, and if she is accompanied by the level 1 support who has a group cloak, well, you get the idea, nerd stuff. As with most things you see, the devil is in the details.
Now I’m not going to go into game strategy as I could go on for pages at a time, but the point is yes, the game is repetitive at times, but it’s also has some depth to it. How much depth? Who the fuck knows, the game is still relatively new and any game worth their salt bides their time when revealing their precious innards. The point is, sometimes with games such as these, it’s not the game itself that makes it interesting, but its ability to support great interaction with other players.
Evolve you see, features 4 different types of hunters: Support, Assault, Medic, and Tracker. Each of these hunters fulfill a role, and their abilities help them fill that role. Now within each type of hunter, there are 3 variances on the hunters, i.e., there are 3 types of supports, 3 types of assaults, and so on and so forth. Each of these variances have unique weapons and abilities that adds layers of synergy to the gameplay, and also affects how well you will perform against the monster. For me personally, this is where the fun of the game is.
I will gladly spend sixty dollars on a game if I feel it’s competitive enough and deep enough to last me for a year or so, regardless of its so-called limited content. Most of the games I play, involve me attempting to crush another human opponent, it’s what I live for, and surely there are others like me. The most played game on the internet right now, League of Legends, is all about beating your opponent to a pulp and making them feel bad about being such a scrub. Evolve can and will give you this feeling, but its rewards are not instant.
This ties into the final argument I wish to talk about the game dealing with its skill progression and unlockables. Now I do believe this game has a method to the way it handles unlockables, but let’s first address some of the hatred being thrown at Evolve.
Some of the wonderful people on the internet seem to be of the opinion that because they had paid for the game, everything should be made available from the start. Using Darksydephil here again as an example, he states “I should have it. I paid for it. I should have it now” during his Hateful truth review of Evolve, which in essence goes back to what was discussed previously, entitlement.
So quickly, in Evolve, there are essentially 12 hunters and 3 monsters, however, at the start of the game, only 4 hunters and 1 monster are available for you to play from the beginning. The only way to unlock this other content in the game is to play a specific role, and unlock achievements specific to that class. Once a certain amount of achievements have been met, you will unlock the next tier of that class. This can be slightly frustrating, simply because the achievements are based around how well you use each of the classes’ abilities and you need to use all of the abilities in order to progress, not just one.
The problem with this is that not all of the abilities seem entirely useful at first, but I can assure you they are. Sure, Turtle Rock Studios, could have given you everything right at the start of the game, but by not giving you everything, they have devised a system that teaches you how to play the game. Granted, it is a bit of indirect hand holding, and I hate hand holding in any form, but it works as long as you the player are patient. There is no win button in this game; you need every single ability, and you need precise cooperation from your teammates in order take down a skilled monster. There’s no other way around it. And what is the result? When the game is firing on all gears, and you’re playing against a good monster with a good team of hunters, there isn’t a game on the planet that can match the intensity and pure chaos of a game of Evolved.
However, your average game can’t get to this point if people simply give up and stop playing. This is a game where you will need to develop skill, and then help those around you develop skill in order to be fully enjoyed. This is not a run and gun game that is immediately gratifying. This game is an elaborate cat and mouse thriller that can easily turn into a bloody all-out war in a moment’s notice. Fights are intense as a missed opportunity to take down the monster early can easily cost you the game, and heaven save you if you’re the tracker and you are unable to catch him in the dome with any consistency.
And then there’s the DLC. Now this is something I am not fond of, but it’s the world we live in and I don’t see it getting any better. Games are getting more and more expensive to produce and more difficult as well. Some of these big budget games rival movies in some aspects and that’s scary. But unlike movies that can benefit years later from rentals and rebranding, new game studios typically only have one shot, and if they fail, they go broke. It’s as simple as that. They cannot simply rely on rentals or rebranding for the game so when a big game is released, they need to cash out as much as they can so that maybe they will have enough to make another game one day.
This isn’t every game company I can assure you. I’m sure some companies just have bags of money sitting around collecting dust, but I have a feeling Turtle Rock Studios is not one of these companies. Now listen, I don’t like DLC, but at the same time we can’t expect people to simply work for free either. And like I said, if you don’t like it, don’t buy it, but paid DLC is not going away.
There are other arguments being made against this game, but I think I’ve covered the big ones. Of course, we could go into the cosmetic DLC, the lack of a single player campaign, and other areas Evolve may be lacking in, but that would be missing the whole point. While all of us gamers and consumers would like to get the most for our money, that responsibility is not on the game developer, because when it comes down to it, Turtle Rock Studios is a business, not a charity. We the consumers are the ones who must be held accountable to how we spend our money. By simply not buying the game, the most powerful message you can send is already being delivered. Don’t get upset because you feel someone owes you something, or pass judgement on a game prematurely when it’s barely been out for a couple of months, because by doing such things, you will only be wasting energy and selling yourself short of any potential fun to be had.