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Matt McMuscles: Evolve - What Happened?

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


I was one who loved the game

Proud Of You Reaction GIF


 

CheeseCake

Member
This game was so, SO fun back then. The best part is that they supported it really hard even though players were already leaving. New characters, more monsters, etc..

In fact, I loved this game so much to the point where I was really pissed they went the F2P route and made a rant on the Steam Forums but then realized that this would actually end up bringing more players lol.

Still, they ended up screwing up a lot of stuff.
 
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Ribi

Member
I'll keep saying this but there's a decent sized community that still plays games on console and PC dm for discord
 
Evolve was one of my most played games of last gen. I think I finished #3 or 4 on the WW Goliath win leaderboard. The main problem with the game is that it was extremely difficult for new players. It was marketed in gaming events with five people playing together in close proximity and having a blast but in reality as Hunter you were teamed up with three strangers and if any one of them were bad players then your team was essentially screwed. And matches could take a long time, so it was very frustrating.

Throw in gargantuan numbers of DLC and the snails pace of patches he mentioned, no surprise it crashed. Hell the last time I played it, Goliath still had traversal bugs that had been in the game since the beta.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
From what I remember, the entire gameplay loop was either being chased for the full match or chasing for the full match. It never felt like you were stalking anyone or using any creativity to accomplish your goals. Everything was based on getting things done as fast as possible.

That concept needed work from the very beginning.
 

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


Left 4 Dead’s 2008 release redefined multiplayer, injecting new life into the first-person shooter genre by emphasizing cooperative gameplay above all else. Series creator Turtle Rock Studios began tinkering with early versions of the concept on a whim, a bit of after-work fun not initially intended for public consumption. But even before the crew started toiling away on the genre-defining zombie game, creative leads had another grand idea lingering in the back of their minds, one that would later do for asymmetrical multiplayer what Left 4 Dead did for co-op.

Nascent concepts for Evolve married hunting games Cabela’s Big Game Hunter and Deer Hunter with the premise of extended boss battles. From there, Turtle Rock devised gameplay wherein a group of players would assume the role of Hunters tasked with tracking larger-than-life monsters on an alien planet. In a stroke of game design genius, the developers assigned a lone user the part of monster, the predator and prey who evolved in stages throughout the match.

Multiple publishers were drawn to the idea, so much so that Turtle Rock had little to no trouble finding a home for Evolve on two separate occasions. The asymmetrical title also remained a media darling and fan-favorite appearance at trade shows for much of its preview cycle. And barring minor technical hiccups at launch, the content spoke for itself—offering a unique experience with the potential for exponential growth. So what went wrong? How did a groundbreaking, 2K Games-published phenomenon become saddled with so much baggage that its online community dwindled drastically in only a matter of weeks? The answer lies in unforced errors that managed to disrupt anticipation for the game just a month before release.

This is the tragedy of Evolve.

Intro: 0:00
Video: 3:45
 
To be fair to the devs, the patch cadence was all just an unfortunate case of bad timing. Back then Sony and MS used to heavily restrict patching games with restrictions on the cadence of patch releases as well as high patch costs. It was a hangover from the previous gen, where many players had consoles with pitifully low amounts of onboard storage, and platform owners also didn't want to see gamers getting shafted by broken games on release that aimed to be patched later (because platform owners would be the ones hit with the game refund requests).

In today's GaaS world, it's very different. Games like Destiny 2 can patch whenever they like and the costs to do so have drastically reduced. Had Evolve launched F2P in today's market, I suspect it would have been one of the biggest most successful GaaS games.
 

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


Turn back the clock to early 2015, and you'll find plenty of buzz around an upcoming game called Evolve. Developed by Turtle Rock Studio, the developers of the original Left 4 Dead, Evolve was being billed as The Next Big Thing in multiplayer games back before launch, and pre-launch coverage and impressions suggested that it would live up to that billing.

A unique idea, a cool setting, and a fascinating gameplay hook- it seemed like it had everything going for it. And sure enough, for a short time after the game's launch, it was enjoying all the success that so many had predicted it would.
 
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