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Evolve wasn't the game I expected. I knew going in that it was an asymmetric FPS from the makers of Left 4 Dead, in which one team of four futuristic hunters chases down and defeats a rampaging monster, controlled by a fifth player. In my head, that (very uncharitably, I admit) sounded like it was going to be, well, Left 4 Dead-style shooting, only in the future, and one person on the other team controlling a scaled up Tank or Witch or whatever.Well, it's not that. Not even close. Like King Kong, it's a far more complicated beast than it appears, and one that takes the greatest risk any online game can - betting its future on players playing 'properly'. If the hunters treat it as simply a deathmatch, everyone loses. That doesn't simply mean the monster will win, though it probably will. It means it's no fun for anyone. And even if people do play nice, with the best will in the world, your first couple of games are likely to be pretty miserable. Many details are just not satisfying - the weakness of the hunters' weapons, for example. The length of fights versus achingly long skill cooldowns. And design oddities such as why the monster has to run like a chicken from the puny humans instead of teaching them what fear is. There's a lot that just doesn't make sense, or at least not gut-sense, during those all important, often frustrating first plays.
Skip forwards a bit though and things change. This is a carefully considered and engineered game and, however it turns out, it's clear every element has been pored over at great length. It takes time to appreciate, to an extent that few shooters this side of Super Monday Night Combat have had to deal with (and we all know how fast that one vanished from the conversation), and operates in ways Evolve will have to address for it to find the audience it needs. If you don't play it on its own, very specific terms, the experience sucks on toast.
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