Evolve

Evolve was a first-person shooter game developed by Turtle Rock Studios and published by 2K Games for the Microsoft Windows, mh:awesomegames:PlayStation 4, and mh:awesomegames:Xbox One on February 10, 2015.

The game's dedicated servers were shutdown in September 2018, making the game unplayable.

Why It Couldn't Evolve

 * 1) The game was advertised as being "the ultimate next-gen multiplayer shooter", but player counts quickly dropped after several of the game's issues became apparent.
 * 2) The game's main selling point (the asymmetrical multiplayer) was flawed in execution, as matches quickly devolved into cat-and-mouse games of chasing a target around for several minutes on end.
 * 3) The developers had announced pre-order content before any gameplay screenshots or trailers had been revealed.
 * 4) A massive amount of micro-transactions were made available at launch, as the game was announced to be "a game that supported paid content better than any game before it" (and ironically failed at that).
 * 5) * One example of this was a playable monster known as "The Behemoth", which was released for $15!
 * 6) * The game also had 2 season passes over its lifespan, and a large amount of the DLC within the game's marketplace was not available on either season pass.
 * 7) The art style tried to be dark and gritty, but this resulted in maps being too dark to see much of anything outside of your direct field of view.
 * 8) The game was incredibly unbalanced at launch, with one monster in particular being overpowered to the point of being virtually unkillable in certain situations.
 * 9) Around a year later, the game would be re-released as free to play under the name of Evolve: Stage 2, but exclusively on PC and with players who owned the original game only receiving a small amount of in-game currency as compensation.
 * 10) * This also proved to be ineffective, as even fewer people played the game and support for it was dropped less than a year after the free-to-play version launched.
 * 11) The only way to play the game now is through peer-to-peer community servers since that the dedicated servers shut down on September 3, 2018.
 * 12) The maps, while very detailed, were way too big for only 5 players and suffered from a lack of variety.
 * 13) The playable monsters were very slow and cumbersome to control, and playing as a monster meant playing the game from a third person behind-the-back perspective akin to a beat-em-up rather than like a first person shooter.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The game's concept was interesting, even if the execution was not very well done.
 * 2) The graphics do look pretty good due to using the CryEngine, despite the dark art style.
 * 3) Each monster and soldier has a different play style or feature, meaning that no two matches can be the same.
 * 4) Many of the monsters do have pretty great designs.
 * 5) The free-to-play version fixed a lot of balancing issues and lowered the amount of microtransactions.

Reception
Despite positive reception from critics, the game received backlash for its unbalanced gameplay, lack of content, high $60 price tag, and massive amounts of microtransactions. In fact, 2K Games pushed this "character skins and weapons model" so hard that it influenced the entire gaming industry from then on out.

While sales numbers were high at launch, the game's player base quickly dropped within the coming months and the game was labeled a commercial failure.

Trivia

 * The game originally scheduled to be published by mh:awesomegames:THQ, but after THQ filed for bankruptcy in late 2012, the rights to the franchise and publishing duties were transferred to Take-Two Interactive.

Videos
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