Preview: Evolve (Multiplatform)

When Turtle Rock Studios put out Left4Dead, they not only made shooters interesting again, they redefined the “zombie apocalypse” scenario in a delightfully demented fashion.  It wasn't just about blowing away zombies, it was about working with your buddies to make it to safety. Now, Turtle Rock is giving the sci-fi “bug hunt” scenario a similar shot in the arm with Evolve.

The setup sounds straightforward. Four players are working as a team of big game hunters in the far future. Their job is to kill giant monsters from the planet Shear and live long enough to get paid for it. A fifth person gets in on the fun as the giant monster. The hunters have various weapons and gadgets to make the hunt happen. The monster can metamorphose into a more powerful form with improved abilities. They're all dropped into a large area and Nature, literally, takes its course.

Players will have four classes to pick from, each class having variant characters who level up as you play them.  One of each class has to be picked for the team to deploy.

Assault characters are the heavy hitters; Support characters are the next heaviest with some added features to help the team as a whole; Trappers have the tough job of restricting the mobility of the monster; and Medics trying to keep the whole team alive.

So far, only two monsters have been revealed, but both of them are a nasty handful. Goliaths are all brute force and ugliness, using charge and leap attacks to smash the hunters to a pulp. Krakens, on the other hand, have limited flight abilities and electricity-based attacks that are better suited to hit-and-fade tactics.

Both sides have to survive the environment as well as each other.  Man eating plants and hostile wildlife are threats that have to be dealt with, but they're also rewarding, since certain creatures can drop perks that can give the person or monster who picks it up a special bonus.  Moreover, the monster has to eat wildlife in order to gain enough energy to evolve to the next stage.  This, of course, presents a problem and an opportunity for the hunters.  Killing creatures makes it easier for the monster to feed, but it also could be used as bait for a trap.

During a hands-on demo at E3 2014, we got a chance to play as the Support class against a Kraken, and it was glorious.  The action was tense, and for four people who've never played together before, we all managed to bring down the Kraken after a furious hunt that didn't have a single fatality in the group.  Of course, the monster made it all the way to Stage 3, which added to the sense of the epic about the whole thing.  It's not a stretch to say that we wish we could have stayed in the 2K booth till the end of the show playing.

Evolve shows us once again that sometimes the simple ideas are the ones that are the most fun. There's no world shaking apocalypse, no convoluted storyline with a cast of thousands; just four hunters squaring off against one giant monster. And they're not even done showing off all the cool stuff yet.  New environments are likely going to be announced, along with the third character for each class, and that third monster.  We can't wait to start the hunt this fall.

The scheduled release date on Xbox One, PC, and PlayStation 4 is October 21st, 2014.

- Axel Cushing