It's been almost two weeks since Evolve came out, and yet I haven't written a word about it. There are two reasons for that.
The first is that I don't feel like I've properly played it
yet. It's a game best played with three
friends against a stranger, or with four friends in regular rotation, sliding between
the "odd man" position of being the monster and working as part of a
team with three other hunters, and I've only managed to play it, so far, with
half-full teams of friends. Even then,
there have been fairly major problems, similar to the problems I encountered
when I started playing Left4Dead at
release. Voice chat is an iffy prospect,
relying on inconsistent detection or inconvenient push-to-talk methods, like
most integrated VOIP outside of Left4Dead
2. Matchmaking is fine when you're
just trying to find a random game, but while playing with friends I was
repeatedly "banned" from a friend's server without him issuing a
command of any kind. It would sometimes
happen in the middle of a game, and required both of us restarting our clients
completely to resolve the issue. Even
then, it kept happening with irritating frequency.
Those kinds of bugs can seriously discourage gameplay,
especially when people have lives outside of the game. A younger version of me would've soldiered
through and troubleshot all of this shit, but present-me has papers that need
grading waiting in his backlog, and present-me's friends all have kids and
lives and responsibilities. Ain't nobody
got time for this sort of shit. So even
though all these bug related experiences happened a few days after released, I
haven't tried to play properly again since.
I have sunk a little bit of single player time into the
game, a few solo drops here and there to unlock new hunters and monsters, but
that's not the same. It's akin to doing
maintenance: there's a certain catharsis to it, and the function of play, the
function of the game itself, is all there, but the spirit is missing. Without those tight multi-person maneuvers,
without weird, customized teams based on preferred play style and discussion,
there's something missing, something fundamental. It's clear that Evolve is meant to be a social game, an iteration on the tradition of
trash-talking social shooter play that Goldeneye
established so long ago, and while it's situated in a decidedly virtual couch
environment, thanks to the asymmetry, the hook behind the game, which makes
split screen play an impossibility, it's still clearly a game you're meant to
play with a small group of friends.
The time I have spent in single player has made that
clear. The colorful banter that marks
play is sparse, mostly limited to a quick set of quips at the start of each
mission. There's a little bit of
dialogue representing situational and environmental issues, but that's just
there to give audio cues to players who wouldn't get them any other way while
playing alone. Missions unfold in much
the same way each time. While the
Monster's AI is quite solid, there just aren't that many tricks it can pull,
and with quick, punchy rounds marking Evolve's
play, you get to see those tricks on display relatively quickly. If I spend an hour playing, I'll see between
three and five matches unfold, and two of those matches will likely be the same
kind of match, possibly even on the same map.
Bereft of the human element, the game stops feeling random, and feels like
an exercise in basic coding: I see the way the AI has been mapped, and while
I'm impressed by it, I can still see the seams at the rough edges.
Solo-play is also hamstrung a bit by a shallow progression
tree. It took relatively little time to
unlock all of the hunters and the monsters, eight, maybe ten hours all
told. And while that's nice on a certain
level (it does, after all, give me a lot of neat toys to play with) it has the
unintentional side effect of discouraging grind play. While the "ah-HA!" response is
still there, with leveling up and hunter and monster specific perks unlocking
as play progresses, the rewards are so iterative and slight (the first in a
series of stacking 2% boosts to damage for one weapon, or an upgrade that makes
my 10% movement speed boost a 15% movement speed boost, to name a few) that
it's difficult to remain engaged by them.
The initial progression was smart and pressed me into trying new
classes, testing out each aspect of those classes, and learning to play them
"properly" in game, and additional challenge tiers seem to aim at
teaching me how to use my character class in new and interesting ways. It's a savvy new take on training, but it's a
crap incentive structure to keep me playing.
When I do hop in to get some Evolve
on, I feel like I'm spinning my wheels, especially with so many other excellent
titles hanging out in my Steam Library.
There's something missing in Evolve
when you try to play it alone.
Which brings me, at long last, to my second point: there's
just something missing in Evolve in
general. I shelled out the absurd $100
for Evolve's super-duper fanboy pack,
and while I don't regret it (I think Turtle Rock is an excellent studio, and
I'm happy to support them financially) I also don't think I actually got my
money's worth. Evolve released with a
staggering amount of content missing, content that is theoretically going to be
released in due time but, at present, is just absent. Hunters, monsters, skins, and maps are sure
to come down the pipe later, but for now, Evolve is clearly not complete. There's a lot of game here, and with a good
group of friends it's a promising, enjoyable game, but the fact that I'm
sinking time into a product that I know isn't completely released yet does dull
my fervor a little.
That's not to say that I've given up on Evolve. Schedules will soon
align, and I'll be beyond psyched to get some Evolve time in with real live human beings. Content will release, at some point, and I'll
have even more incentives to keep playing.
Patches will shift things, I'm confident (based on Turtle Rock's
relationship with its community) that new maps and modes of play will emerge
over time. Evolve will, to cornball it
up a little, continue to evolve. Right
now it just feels like it's in mid-transformation. It's been sort of fun before, and when it's
finished? I get the distinct impression
it'll be explosive. I just worry that
I'll wear it out before then.
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