Ruined Before Release - The Tragedy of Evolve
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 พ.ค. 2024
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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.
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F
honestly, thats kinda cool
i dont need this casual normie stuff
Been using GX since it first came out, definitely recommend for gamers (no pun intended)
I think you missed a huge problem before evolve was even started. When valve gave the turtle rock team a choice to stay or leave, the talent stayed. Turtle rock was made of the arrogant greedy trash that literally thought they where better than valve. Back 4 blood proves this. Turtle rock have always used the "creators of left 4 dead" idea to sell their games. But really only 4 or 5 members of turtle rock where actually involved with left 4 dead, the real talent was all valve.
There is something really wrong with the industry, when you can immediately tell what went wrong after hearing "published by 2k (or EA, or Activision, or...)"
Take-two
Akella
Bethasda
Ubisoft
Nah 2K the main reason these type of game sleeve them to Ubisoft
I remember the run-up to this games release. I then remembered my friends who had it telling me how fun it was, then nothing after a week
Echoes of Cyberpunk...
@@jonbaxter2254 Indeed
Reminds bf2042 too
@@TheMakiran Reminds me of 2 games in 2020.
@@TheMakiran Yeah
The actual community didn't help it either. If you joined up as a hunter and the other slots were taken by people who knew each other you got kicked more often than not. It didn't matter if you had a mic or not, and it didn't matter how good or bad you were. That was my experience towards the end of my time with the game, and the main reason I dropped it.
Yeah, Discord has really ruined alot of gaming communities.
I'm not sure I understand. Were they waiting for someone else to join? Did the game not have private lobbies?
That sounds just like the left 4 dead community. That always used to happen when I played that.
Wait, you could kick players? I never saw that option.
And there were times that I and others wanted to kick players. Like a Trapper who kept activating the dome when there was no monster. Or a medic who refused to heal.
Ah, so Turtle Rock games are doomed to have this issue then huh? This is still an issue even in L4D2 ever since L4D1 days..
This one does break my heart. I LOVED Evolve. I loved playing as the Monsters and I got very good at it. Unfortunately, not everyone had the patience for the gameplay and then there's the DLC which was disgustingly overpriced.
I’m in the same boat, loved this game a lot. But something didn’t sit right with me when they released new characters for a fat price
After i paid full $60 for this game
And they were there on day 1, and advertised on the main menu.
I played when its came f2p, ended up playing 307 hour, enjoyed as well.
@@baxterminat0r134 I loved the game so much I didn't care. Coming as someone who bought it full price I just want this game to continue and it has servers open now. The game has changed a lot but come join us and we have open arms.
Evolve was a great game. We have even won a tournament as the hunters. It was easy to learn but difficult to master.
Evolve's failure is extremely easy to explain: It was hopelessly unbalanced, and not fun when stomping / being stomped.
At launch If the monster player was good you'd never see them for the entire 40 minute match until they steamrollered your squad at the end. If the monster player was bad you'd kill them inside 5 minutes.
A week later it didn't matter how good you were as a monster, because the progression and unlocks on the squad side meant you were basically getting bullied for the entire match until you lost.
Asymmetric games are flawed on a conceptual level, imo
Another huge imbalance was that unless a Hunter had a regenerative health perk, all Hunters couldn't be healed without the Medic. So even a noob monster knew to go after the Medic first. Afterwards, even the wildlife could kill off the rest.
You guys cant appreciate a good game, you talk about all these issues but not about the good parts like the cool weapon skins! Your gun could be green! or blue! for the modest price of...I legit forgot but it was far too much.
REVOLUTIONARY
We already saw with Back 4 Blood how scammy and incapable Turtle Rock is so is this video a surprise? I only see devs with no soul
@@User-VerseS I mean....yeah? Though thats the same as any team game. Support mixed with certain perks for killing elite wildlife rather handily mitigated the monster being able to snipe the medic. And even then you could still win since hunters come back in the match after death. Honestly a lot of the problems with the game only really got exacerbated in stage 2, and Turtle Rock never got the chance to really fix stuff after that.
@@travislyonsgary Yet in other team-based games that I played there has been one way or another for the rest of the team to regenerate health: via health packs or slow Regen.
If I remember correctly, in stage 2, the other hunters were able to regen health in small increments without the medic. Also, the drop ship didn't take 2 minutes plus animation time. That's what drove me insane sometimes. And when someone would die during the drop in animation, you'd have to wait another 2+ minutes for that person to return. And with each return your health would decrease. But therein lies the challenge I guess. ┐( ˘_˘)┌
Though sniping the medic is an ideal strategy, it would back fire when a Monster would spend too much time chasing them while the other 3 Hunters were consistently doing damage.
In one arena match I played as Lazarus, who can revive dead players and cloak himself. We fought against a Wraith. In the first round, it immediately came after me relentlessly, then the others, and won the first round. But in the second and third round, I stayed hidden. First using my cloak and then being cloaked by the Support. LoL. It was so stubborn that while it was trying to find me, the other three were just blasting away. Easy win.
There was a lot of potential, but 2K announcing just how much dlc would be available even the moment it announced soured people on the game day one.
Then when the sales were low, 2K didn't give Turtle Rock enough time to really work on post-launch support.
And here's fortnite that's made its entire billion dollar fortune off cosmetics lol
Its Ironic that Evolve never really evolved…
@@loliking2763 that's because kids and many other brainless people actually bought into that garbage and now they're regretting the time wasted on that game lol
@@theunhingedgamer3762 That's exactly what DIDN'T happend lol.
Fortnite is a nice game with nice gameplay, the game is rewarding and when game is rewarding people get attached to it and buy stuff to say "thank you" for devs.
@@k1z4cz3k I dont think you belong here mate.
The biggest tragedy of Evolve was the characters and lore were really good and intriguing... even the DLC characters like Slim who was one of the mutants from the Mutagen Wars the other characters would talk about. And with the lackluster lauch of backforblood I doubt we will ever see a revival or rework of this franchise.
Not everything has to be about "lore" and all that nonsense. It was a throwaway MP title but it was fun for a while.
@@Grandmastergav86 I would hate to be your friend at a party🤮🤮🤮
@@Grandmastergav86 Not everyone has appreciation for that but alot of people love the extra detail because it harbors dedication and makes the world feel more alive.
@@Grandmastergav86 lore literally makes a game go from synthetic to organic, sorta say.
who cares about bullshit like this
I feel like Turtle Rock studios have good ideas, but without the push and backing of Valve their games have yet to even remotely match the quality of L4D.
Back 4 Blood is very evident of this.
This
Valve was almost the sole creator of L4D, very few Turtle Rock employees worked on it, that's all we need to know here. Like the L4D concept, the Evolve concept was amazing, yet they didn't have the necessary experience to make it happen in a way that made it fun and enjoyable.
@@JerBuster77 Back 4 Blood wasn't too bad the only real issues were the perk system and the fact the zombies could hit you without even being near you and funnily enough that was also in L4D I noticed so all the things wrong with B4B are carryover issues from L4D lol
@@theunhingedgamer3762 B4B has a lot more issues, special infected look too similar and arent well spawned, difficulty spikes feel like rng, the card system is bleh, the level designs felt somehow basic, none of the survivors felt as rememberable as the L4D 8, i will say gameplay felt solid and graphics were nice but it just doesnt have the charm or addictiveness L4D still has to this day
"We built the game from the ground up to support DLC"
In my gaming years, watching a developer effectively sentence their game to death before it even launched had to be one of the most remarkable things I've seen...
Saying THAT when the store page had over $130 in microtransaction DLC pre-launch killed the game's momentum dead in it's tracks, and they never recovered from it.
There was more to it, like the dev team not being allowed to change much until it was already too late. But the DLC being double the game's initial price is a total scam on the players.
have to agree on the 130$ of microtransaction statement, but not the first one, almost all games are built with eventual dlc in mind, in the end unless it's an actual unfair cashgrab it isn't a bad thing by definition (a good example are the dlc for the witcher 3, or ghost of tsushima)
And yet Overwatch did the same thing, except much worse because you had to gamble to buy the DLC, and yet no one batted an eye whatsoever because it's Blizzard.
@@TripleR3D cosmetic skins are not DLC. You don't need to gamble or unlock new characters
@@chainsawplayin regarding the character DLCs, I agree about it probably being made as a pay to win more, but did people REALLY need all those Cosmetic DLC bundles? No, you could skip that in favor of character DLCs and expansion packs.
that said, rancid bag of garbage vs pile of shit is still garbage vs shit in regards to Evolve vs Overwatched responce.
I like how every youtube video credits TurtleRock for L4D even tho Valve did 99.9% of the work. Except Crowbcat.
But their opening literally stated that TurtleRock had little to do with L4D in the first five minutes?
@@pedropedro1 What does that have to do with anything? I am very confused
As someone who was really involved with the game during and after release I think people really overstate the dlc problem, and really understate just how bad and unfun balance in this game was.
Wraith was broken to the point of hilarity in comparison to the other 2 release monsters and it went on for months. Once hunters got familiar with the map tracking the monster become trivial and playing the big bad boss felt more like getting bullied. There was almost no back and forth against a good team of hunters. You just got shit on. Using the environment to hide or using wildlife as obstacles just wasnt viable.
One later released hunter even had the ability to remove the monster players ability to see player outlines. Which might not sound like much of anything. Until you realize how far the camera pans out as monster and how tiny the players are, how dense the environment is, and how on console I'm sitting 10ft from my tv. As soon as you got hit with that hunters gun you couldnt see anyone anymore, and he could keep it going pretty much forever.
Shit just wasnt fun.
Had they made the game more focus on actual concept, having the hunter being the hunted, as survivors scavenging for supplies and completing objectives and the monster players having ability to control the map environment would have made the game much more exciting as the monster player can decide when the battle begins and the 4 players have to fight or flee. I found that could have been a better concept than having 4 players chasing the big monster around the map. I played the game and main Hank support. It was fun supporting the team in combat but man it is hard to keep track what was going on to shield the correct player from damage so I agree with you on the visual reads and how dense the environment is. It was unbalanced as hell, mainly I think is due to the core concept first and gameplay design second.
On release the Wraith was nightmare fuel.
There once was a challenge for a free Wraith skin. The condition was for the community to beat Hunters in stage 1 or 2. And even though I didn't main Wraith, I was able to beat the team with stage 1.
After the match, one player said, "Dude!" Followed by a few seconds of silence on the mics. Then another player shouting, "Was that bitch stage 1 the whole time? OP as fuck."
The wraith is what ruined the game for me.
Yeah balance was definitely the big issue with the game being sketchy both for hunters and monsters. A bad trapper or medic could sink your team regardless of how well you were playing making random games sometimes feel like trash. And if the monster was able to take one of those two down quickly the you'd often see hunter teams fall apart almost instantly. Meanwhile as the monster against competent teams the game was something of a nightmare, where actually getting enough distance to feed and evolve basically came down to maximizing your move speed and just constantly sprinting away. Stealth was too easy for good hunters to uncover and was extremely risky even against bad hunters since if you were actually trying to double back or otherwise through the hunters off your trail the punishment for failure was huge and the payoff was just another minute of unmolested feasting time. The fact that the basic tracker literally had a passive ability that in daisy that just drew the hunters right to you literally required incompetence for actual stealth to work really just hammers home how poorly implemented it was as a mechanic.
The fact that the game got less fun the more you understood the mechanics was the single biggest issue the game had with player retention and it just didn't seem to be a problem Turtlerock had any idea how to address.
wraith isn't *that* strong, although it's entire concept did fuel pre-existing issues with hunting. would have been better if they released that monster way later.
Man, I miss evolve. I still have my original preorder copy on disc, and I install it every now and then to have a couple of games to see what I loved so much about the game and damn am I impressed at the mechanics and visuals even today with a Series X. Evolve deserved more.
Same here... There is barely anyone on the XBOX One...I wish this game made a comeback like Star Wars Battlefront 2 and No Man's Sky...
Thankfully it has bot support and peer 2 peer servers.
@@ZSTE Thankfully
I feel like if another Evolve were released today (without micropayment bullshit) it would be incredibly popular. The asymmetric model works, and it is still the best version of the model we've seen to date.
agreed, plus if the new Evolve like needs money for server maintenance, DLCS as "Support the Devs and Game" sort of content instead of "let';s make the players HAVE to spend the money on the game because it is literally unplayable without these DLCs" sort of content is needed.
Hunt Showdown did the former.
You know you done goofed when Crowbcat decided to make one of his spectacularly edited videos. And Turtle Rock did that twice with Evolve and Back 4 Blood. Yikes
TRS can generate great ideas, but they don't know how to make the games good. Ideas by themselves are not everything and can't make a good game.
Without Valve TRS couldn't even repeat the success of L4D.
It took years of playtesting, with different focus groups and a professional psychologist to make L4D good.
I bet Evolve could have been good too, but it was made only with the intentions to be a cash-grab from the day 2K got their hands on it.
B4B failed in the same way, not enough playtesting. Good idea, zero knowledge of what makes game good. The game was barely running after the release.
@@RmFrZQ
Ideas with no attention to detail is nothing that people want.
What made Left 4 Dead good were its features, its attention to the detail as well but in B4B for example we see an utter scam. A game that can't even mount in basic physics (welcome to 2003 people) and a marketing quote thats simply wrong (almost nobody from L4D made that game)
It doesn't matter who gets their hands on it, with these soulless developers no game will be more than a cashgrab.
@@RmFrZQ No? B4B I'll give you, however the gameplay and characters of Evolve were extremely well done and enjoyable. The issue came down to the fact that THQ died and 2K got their mits on this title.
Crowbcat is an idiot who doesn't understand games. Take his GTA IV vs GTA V video. Complaining that GTA IV had more interiors to enter compared to V. Which isn't true. GTA V map is so big next to GTA IV that it only feels that way. He also complained about vehicle destruction being better in IV. But he didn't take into account that the vehicle models in V are way more detailed then in IV.
I recommend watching Matt McMuscles "What Happun" episode on this game for more details and to better understand why it failed. This video makes it seem like there was nothing wrong with the game at launch but the truth is the core mechanics of the game were unbalanced from the beginning. Sure, corporate decisions contributed to the demise of the game but the game was never perfect to begin with and they were never able to fix it even after so many patches and new versions.
"Great Concept, Terrible Execution"
What a suprise. I was just catching up with some older vids. Evolve is such a waste of potential. Asymmetric coop is nice on paper, but hard to realize especially in a game with these ambitions. Barely anyone in that team was actually working on L4D and it was showing. Terrible monetization just accelerated the decline. Or rather- collapse.
Also, not enough play testing. The gameplay loop was either on one of the sides of the spectrum: Either the match ends up in 5 minutes or devolves into a 40 minute slogfest.
Also also, there was a huge hype wave about Evolve; Hell, the idiots were already going for E-sports and the game didn't even launch. No one came in to temper expectations and quell concerns
Just like in Crowbcat's video on Back 4 Blood - about 15 people who worked on that, worked on L4D. All of them in low-impact positions or working under someone better.
The marketing pulled the wrong players.
@@Destroyer2150 Death via E-sport sucks, can't have casual games anymore. Rest in peace HOTS
It blows my mind that Dead by Daylight got huge while this game fell off the face of the earth. Even with the many failures, I think this genre still has a lot of untapped potential.
Same
Dead by Daylight wasn't picked up by 2K is the reason.
Instead of an asymmetrical multiplayer game, I feel like this setting would've been better as a kind of western sci-fi Monster Hunter type co-op title that can also be comfortably played solo (albeit with a little more challenge). There was already a massive amount of lore based on the character interactions alone, and they could've made a story-driven experience that steadily unravels over time as you progress through the world, hunting bigger and badder monsters, before reaching a climax and still allowing you to play on at your leisure.
They also need cats that pull carts
Why they didnt go that route boggles my mind.
I’m glad to see people looking back fondly on a game like Evolve. Despite all the controversy I prefer to remember all the hours of fun I had playing this game as broken as it was. While I haven’t touched a game in years; it, Titanfall, Destiny, and Warframe will alway have a special place in my heart.
I don't know if people here are looking back at Evolve fondly... Most of the comments are talking about how imbalanced it was.
However, I do agree, there were a sunset of games from that era that just sort of got forgotten but I do hold dearly in my heart. Destiny 1 and Titanfall 1 especially. I lament that both of their sequels, which both changed the tone of the series they sprouted from and not for the better, got more popular and left their predecessors in the dust.
I miss Destiny 1's focus on the sci-fi with touches of fantasy world in it's simple but inspired art style... Meanwhile Destiny 2's is all over the place with a few designs reminiscent of D1 shining through.
And the same can be said for Titanfall. 1's art style and focus of story was great, but 2 just decided to go crazy and add in silly things like explosive shurikens, pilot outlines and healthbars, and generic, cleaner looking titans. I miss the industrial military look of 1 and abhore that Titanfall 2 was the popular one, and then Apex killed any hope of that universe ever going back to its serious roots since it's basically just tame Borderlands now.
Sadly once Destiny and Warframe's servers shut off they'll be gone
what did you play it on PlayStation or xbox or pc? did you get it on disc?
I played all those games on Xbox One. Pretty sure I got Evolve digitally
@@purewhiteloverbizarrejelly oh okay thanks for answering
I didn't really pay much attention to Evolve when it first came out and had the whole fiasco about pre-order bonuses and microtransactions. I figured it was just another cash grab monetization game doomed to fail. When I heard it was going free-to-play, I figured it might be worth checking out at least, but I didn't really think it would last in that model as well. What I discovered when I actually gave it a shot was... a really freaking fun game.
I played it a TON during the time it was a free-to-play beta or whatever. I had a bunch of fun. I got really into it. I was trying out all the weekly free characters, I was grinding currency in anticipation of the inevitable full release, I was having a blast figuring out the meta and learning how to use different hunters skillfully. It was great. I actually had hope that this game might stand the test of time despite its controversies.
And then, it was finally announced that a full release in its current iteration was forthcoming. I was excited for all of about a hot minute, until I logged in and discovered that apparently as part of getting the game ready for the full launch, they had increased the cost of EVERY unlockable by like 3-4 times the amount it had been before. So all of that currency that I and many other players had spent hours and hours of dedicated playtime in order to unlock was just MASSIVELY devalued in one fell swoop. And just like a week or whatever before the full launch was supposed to take place. What a fucking slap in the face. I was playing your game, consuming your product, every day for weeks, or months even, and this is how you reward me? Fuck that, I never played the game for a minute after that. It deserved its fate.
It wasn't their fault. Didn't you even watch the video?
@@guysomebody1145 Lol as if it matters whose fault it was
I totally forgot about that. I played a lot so it was easy to keep up with the grind. And I also just enjoyed the game so it didn't really feel like grinding. I don't remember needing to buy anything either.
Turtle Rock always struck me as a company that has good ideas but, if left to their own devices, they eventually ruin their own concepts.
Back 4 Blood is a great concept but forcing players to have a large selection of weapons/attachments and the card system keeps people from committing to the premise.
L4D 1 and 2 was straight forward and because you didn't cards or different attachments for the weapons it felt like a playground for fun instead of a work assignment.
This,
Making a feature that enforces your creativity instead of making it a tedious to-do-list similar to Ubisoft open world
Games essentially needs to evolve and B4b implemented a new take on the saturated genre. Now of course its all subjective whether you like the new direction or not but it the point still stands. WWZ is another zombie horde shooter that is vastly different from L4D. Both of these games are their own thing and arent trying to be L4D as much as people try to say.
@@svenwalter4293 Would even say that WWZ is fun and trying to be it's own thing because it isn't trying to be L4D like BFB.
This studio is one of those "teams" that makes me apreciate the suits job.
Suits being greedy etc etc when they do their job correctly, caring about putting out a good product serve as a counter balance to the free range developers hyped by their own ideas. That's how i see their former relation with VALVE and why they have NOT put out a game that has NOT go down the drain soon after release since L4D.
Hell EA, yes EA, only got big because the founders understood the need for the suits, as well as the suits the need to allow the devs to do their thing, when that balance brakes it all ends it pure garbage being put out.
@@svenwalter4293 Not all change is good if something works expand on what works. Like the simple shooting gameplay honestly just needed more zombies types and more interactions with said zombies. Keep the guns simple so people can pick up and play with all of them instead of focusing on rarity meaning usefulness which is a step backwards for this type of game. Since it isn't and should be like Borderlands.
4:00 the communication part seems so mute now in today's game dev industry. There's tons of companies with a bunch of subsidiaries around the world and between WFH and more complex build pipelines they just couldn't manage back then? I think there was a culture mismatch despite how much turtle rock has done for Valve.
Is the other way around "how much VALVE has done for them". Till this day these people are called "developers of L4D"
th-cam.com/video/EdRLNUGmFC8/w-d-xo.html
If i was to balance Evolve, it would be like this:
Monster would have a diminishing perk that is strong early game and gone by stage 3 (speed bonus, health regen, faster ability CD,... ), food becoming more scarce because wildlife fleeing the region due to monster's increasing threat level. As the monster evolve, it would also gain permanent mutations that grants bonus for an ability/stat at the cost of others, like increase in ability dmg but increase CD
Hunters would gradually receive extra supports from their ship as monster's threat level grow. Starting from simply aid in tracking the monster, deploying hazard zones to deny the monster food, to outright bombarding it as priority shift from capture to kill. The hunters themselves would also receive stronger equipment for the same reason.
The game had always been plagued by one problem: being a one-sided battle but the tables are slowly turning because there was nothing to balance out the advantages/disadvantages of either sides.
I remember this game getting so hyped up till release then quickly forgotten like a week later after release
I loved Evolve. I don't remember exactly when I got it but I was probably around 14-16 but I remembered the game very fondly. I don't think I got to experience the multiplayer side of the game due to internet issues so I mostly played with bots and no DLC. I never knew anything about the media around the game or anyway just a few videos from youtubers I loved and seeing big cool monsters and hunters that looked cool with funny personalities so I just enjoyed being monsters and hunting said monsters. It really earned a special place in my heart but eventually i stepped away due to not being able to play multiplayer since that's a good chunk of the fun of games like this. I eventually returned but it was dead at that point and I had no clue why. I really wish this game was given a better chance, it was really fun.
I feel like I’m learning new words every time I watch your videos. You’re great at articulating your reviews; love the content!
Thx for the work. Another great video to watch. Very indeep looks at the topic. Always wondered how Evolve did not succeed at any level. When i first saw it at gc i thought this is the future of MP-Gameplay... Well how the turntables...
The problem with this game was the lack of balance moreso than the DLC. Yes the DLC was upsetting and it didn’t help the optics or public perception of the game. However, the balancing was awful so if you happened to give the game a chance, you felt like much of the outcome of each match was out of your control. This is what really led to the quick death of the game imo.
I think that balance was a punch in the gut, and the dlc was spitting on you while you were down. People hate getting punched in the gut, but the spitting is what makes a lasting mark.
I got back into Evolve just 2 days ago, after a year or 2 of not playing. If you couldn't tell I adore the game, and will always miss the game in its prime, there is still a community for it with multiple discord servers that get games going. There is also a xbox club with little over 10k members.
I play on weekends Xbox, and welcome anyone coming back into the games. Of course there are also PS4 and PC players who will also welcome you.
Any questions or help with the game can be found in those servers or other players.
I got to play it again last month too and I'm a monster player, but the balancing was so bad that I lost the will to play.
How to I download this? I keep trying everything I can to find it and I can't. This game is so much fun. Please help, from one gamer to another.
@@boldexistence6954 through steam you need to have bought the game when it was still available. I'm not sure if it also counts if you played the free to play version.
@@Joao-lw5pj So if I want to play it after never hearing of it previously and didn't purchase it, that I am not able to purchase it at this or any other point in time?
@@Joao-lw5pj You can get the legacy version of the game if you had Stage 2, I personally don't know how to do it as I don't own a PC. There are guides online for that however
Never seen that footage from that early iteration of Evolve. This and the Infamous video, you're spoiling us :3
I loved this game so much. The greedy DLC wound up ruining it… but such a cool concept, I hope we get another game like it some day.
I remember Jim Sterling rightfully tore this game a new asshole for it's bullshit DLC.
DLC has got to be the worst thing to happen to gaming.
@@CagedPhoenixThe1st not really but games do rely on it too much
Give a try to Hunt: showdown
@@lobstergod8993 what has done more damage to gaming, than dlc.
I will forever maintain that this game's fate was sealed the moment that Angry Joe immortalised the words: ''It's blue.''
tf u talking about. The game sucked lol
There was so much hype for Evolve, and then poof, nothing, just silence.
You're publishing this video the exact same day i re downloaded evolve. Awesome
These intros and conclusions are a work of art! Thank you.
This game had such a great premise and massive promise.
What a shame.
Fundamentally it is a great game. The selling stuff, the wait, over expectations, how certain parts of the game ran all did the game in not counting other aspects like the players themselves
PS oh yeah forgot about the shitty publisher 2K making the game F2P without bring actually F2P killed it for me and mostly everyone I knew who was ever interested
Oh, I remember that commercial at 1:56. It was a fun one.
Corpsegrinder and Orion from Behemoth play...as a Behemoth.
Another amazing video!! Can you do one about Imperator Rome from Paradox? That game suffered a lot and had great potential, it is still breathing thanks to the community but was left for dead by the company.
Based on the comments of this videos, evolve stage 2 was the right direction for the game. It got rid of bullying, other exploits and bugs. Evolve was the the game that opened a new gaming potential. It had gone through so many changes. I still play multiplayer with small groups of friends still. Evolve is great inspiration for my current project.
This is why I subscribe to this channel. Never would I though you would end up covering evolve but I’m glad you did. Thank you. I played Evolve a ton when it released and I loved it honestly. It was something new and different and you could definitely see the developers had taken the time to craft out the world and lore. It’s sad that it never took off, I remember seeing the all the launch versions and was kinda shocked especially the prices of the most expensive edition. They should have waited and then dropped the dlc when the game had matured a bit. You mentioned dead by daylight, I’ve played it but its nothing quite like evolve. Evolve had that AAA look and feel that no other game in the genre has had. Thank you again for covering it.
14:05 holy shit, that Revolution 60 booth. XD That's a reminder I wasn't sure I needed.
My old roommate got the day one edition. You could watch the excitement in his eyes fade to frustration in literally days
Ah yes. The classic “from the makers of Left for Dead” game
I don't know, man. I loved EVERYTHING about this game, I think a second game with everything they've learned from the first game could be something special. A genuine shame, because I'd do anything to play this game again with fresh servers
agreed, same for me.
This channel and Retro Ahoy are my 2 favorite gaming documentary channels
New to your channel, love the content and narration. I noticed you use the word nascent a couple of times. It has a long a sound like nay-cent. Keep it up!
Thank you. I was using this site for help: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nascent
The biggest tragedy is it was supposed to be open world but no one wanted to sponsor that, open world would’ve been amazing
There is still somewhat of a community left over still playing it through discord. Defiantly worth checking out if you still want to play it with others.
You guys are the best channel on TH-cam I’ve been saying it since 100,000 subscribers I don’t know how you don’t have millions it’s been a pleasure watching you guys grow out I just love you guys Contant I find it so fascinating as a lifelong gamer
Thank you! We appreciate you!!
The happy hunting trailer with the Danzig cover was so cool.
I personally actually enjoyed my time with Evolve.
The most pressing issue the game had was that the hunter team had to competently work together to find, trap and eliminate the monster, while the monster had the freedom to work on its own, not being dependent on the cooperation of anyone else.
Considering the vast majority of matches played were pubs, without proper team coordination, this resulted in the famous "walking simulator" meme as playing against even just the least bit competent monster in pubs was a chore.
Evolve was so much more fun when you had a group of people that you can either properly coordinate with in voice chat, or reasonably play against for a good challenge.
Sure, both the monsters and the hunters had their arguably broken gimmicks that resulted in a lot of frustration for the other side, but those only exceedingly rarely actually mattered outside of competitive play.
I was excited when I first saw Evolve. The concept was novel enough to pique my interest back then. Unfortunately, the monetization overwhelmed me. I was quick to jumped in when it became free-to-play... which I actually enjoyed if I ignored the waiting time. I feel that this game would have fared better if released around this generation, especially with the boom of Twitch.
great video man always love these
this genuinely hurt me, it was one of just 3 games ever I wanted badly enough to go to the midnight release to pick up so I could play it and I LOVED IT. The over reliance on teammates really sucked especially when you got a tracker that was utterly incompetent so you had limited means to actually hunt the monster but still, it was really fun.
I loved this game! I was devastated when 2k forced the devs to stop production, 2k even private their goodbye stream which showed the making of evolve
This is one of my favorite cases of last gen. Failure of an objectively sound concept that should have been popular based on trends, a corporate dream come true. Except gamers could smell the bs a mile away.
had real potential hopefully one day someone will pick it up and do something with it
I waited for so long for a video like this
The story is simple. L4D was a Valve project. Evolve was a Turtle Rock. Much like B4B, it showed that Valve was the driving force behind L4D.
Turtle Rock itself is it's own tragedy. Built of the success of Left 4 Dead, but lost all the people that helped make it a success to Valve, only to try and recapture that lightning in a bottle but with none of the people who's vision crafted that bottle in first place.
I remember playing this game so much with friends and I miss it so much I really enjoyed all the hunters and monster design. All the abilities were so cool.
There are no other channels that do video game documentaries like you guys:)
The game was enjoyable but there was just such a lack in content for most I'd assume but especially for me
Thanks a lot 2k...
The balance was never there with this game... I played an absolute ton of matches, and from what I remember I had one good one. By that I mean where the fight went back and forth throughout the match. Everything else was just a steamroller going one way or the other.
I still play Evolve from time to time for nostalgia, such a rich setting. Tragedy really fita with this one.
1:57 corpse grinder definitely mains behemoth
I miss this game so very much. It was so much fun and didn't deserve to die the way it did. Would absolutely love if they gave it a reboot.
Evolve is easily in my top 5 games of all time. I played hundreds of hours of this with my friends and it always breaks my heart knowing people didn't love this like it deserved. This game was hit with unfair hate. Me and my brother still to this day say to each other "I miss Evolve...."
I loved you Evolve. You were wonderful.
Have you only played 5 games in your life?
I adore the game, but probably in my top 20
@@marrow94 there's not many games like it. maybe DbD but the combat is very simplified in that.
One of my first games on my XB1, I played the hell out of the trapper class. I had fun, the monster side wasn't my jam but the cooperation in taking one on was a lot of fun back then.
Really well put together - I watched all of these happening in real time, and it was such a shame. Gameplay though was just not there. Especially on release they just made a bunch of dumb choices that almost immediately turned off the fanbase.
This game came and just went.
I remember so many people being hyped up and then I never heard of it again. It’s like 7 bucks now, I’ll check it out as a curiosity thanks to this segment. Thanks again GVMERS
I don't think anyone has managed to figure out how to do a truly excellent 1 v group game yet. There's been many attempts like Friday the 13th and Predator and that Resident Evil game but they just don't seem to stick. Ironically Evolve looked like it's the most in depth of all these examples.
@@papanewpasta succesful ye, good? mhm
@@papanewpasta Just kind of. Dead by daylight is in fact a terrible game (extremely buggy, terrible balance, ultra repetitive, etc), but is the best we have in the genre.
I’ve always wanted a successor to Evolve, it could be so awesome with an overhaul
The unthinkable had happened, Stage 2 is getting peer to peer servers. The legacy ones were down for a month and we asked for them to be fixed, didn't expect to see stage 2 back also.
Fun Fact: This game actually had a set of Funko Pop figures that released concurrently with the game. While the plus-sized Goliath is still worth a pretty penny, the other 4 (based on in-game characters) are barely worth their original cost of $10. I have the trapper Maggie for funzies, which i picked up at a local antique store for only $5!
It makes me sad whenever I hear about this game, when it was a thing I couldn't run it and later when I got a better PC I remember this game existed but it wasn't available anymore and I really wished I could've tried it even if it wasn't balanced or whatever. I just love the idea of being a big bad monster against human players
the balance was skill based, not game design based.
but yes, a pity Evolve, and IMO Battleborn were not given a better chance. Maybe relaunching under better publishers would help?
this one always breaks my heart. loved evolved then it got to the point i could not find matches. maybe cause low population but i was top 30 for wraith and the spider monster.
Preordered this game, my friend and I were so hyped. My friend and I tried playing a dozen times and only managed to get in a lobby together 2 times because the servers were so bad. Never touched again
I actually really liked this game, I was sad when it died so quick I would’ve loved to get more time with it
there are still active communities keeping this game alive, even for new players on PC.
@@Rem_NL ah I’m a console player, but thanks for the tip
One big issue that Evolve also had was that it simply wasn't a very good game in regards to being a shooter. It was a completely different skill set to play as a Monster that wasn't really a shooter mentality, and the classes being reliant on each other in order to have a good experience ended painfully frequently. The shooting never felt good, the abilities were always on a long cool down, it took forever to do much of anything and then when you did get to do stuff, you were pretty limited by your class or how the Monster player played. And then sometimes you'd just get focused down and if the terrain or teammates didn't peel for you properly, you would simply be out of the game.
It just honestly was not a very good game when playing despite sounding like an absolutely amazing concept. Left 4 Dead series and even Back4Blood boil down the same concept of playing as the monster/s for it's MP without the hassle of limiting both people and the monster in order to make a game balanced. Which makes playing them much more fun than when you have to focus on a single giant enemy.
So, it just was not fun. And I tried, boy I tried.
I mean, to address your point of the hunters having to rely on too much on each other to be successful, that's the whole point. You're suppose to team up and cooperate with your fellow hunters to fight a "boss." It's no different to other team shooters where teams that communicate and work well with each other do better than teams that don't.
I can agree that the cooldowns are a bit sluggish, but at the same time the game generally encouraged swapping between guns/ abilities as many of said cool downs would be mostly finished by the time you fully used up another ability. As an assault, rather than waste precious seconds reloading my gun, I just switched to my secondary gun to deal damage while the autoreload does its work.
The VO guy sounds a bit like fantasy flight games' board/card game video tutorial guy :D
How about a Rise and Fall of Crackdown series.
the problem is hardly ever marketing or stupid dlc politics
if the gameplay itself is fun - people will play it
i still have the original evolve and still playing it to this day
“You’re giving me a gun that’s painted blue and you’re charging me two dollars”.
I have yet to see a single person make one of these many Evolve retrospectives who actually played the free-to-play launch. Everybody pretends Turtle Rock was some tragic hero and every single thing wrong with Evolve was the result of those evil greedy publishers, but the game was just bad. It was slow, unbalanced, and was barebones content-wise. The devs hosted a stream where we told them for weeks about the issues and what we wanted to see fixed, and all they did was release 2 half-assed variant hunters and keep adding dumb meme gamemodes that nobody cared about and only served to break up a miniscule playerbase even further.
The game died because it was bad. It was fun as a novelty, but play it more than a single time and the myriad of cracks begin to show really fast.
They didn't really want it on console but the sales from way bigger population on console made them unable to pass it up however long after the console version started dying off the pc version kept getting support which kept a small but loyal player base they had a winning formula but they just handled it poorly just wish this was handled by anyone else
Just no dude, game was only slow for people who didn't know/ want to learn how to tackle it. Matches became a fast paced back and forth when you had good players and this game should have never been broadly marketed. For the most part it was pretty well balanced outside of some smaller things in hunters kits that the F2P version had fixed in a couple aspects but made worse in other areas. It had plenty of content for a MP game the issue was it should have never been sold at full price or needed to be free at launch. Have you played a game like R6: Siege or Paladins recently? Those games suffer from so much content bloat it has become a balancing nightmare that the devs just ignore. Hell even Dead By Daylight is having this issue as there is so much stuff in the game that is worthless and makes it harder for new players. Where Evolve ended before F2P was plenty for a game such as this and remember, 2k was barely giving Evolve a budget after launch let alone for F2P as publisher was hoping to get more money from it. When that failed the servers were shut down (though it's still possible to play the original version). If THQ had not gone under this game would of likely been in a better spot but that didn't happen.
Nerdslayer has a episode of Evolve in his death of a game series
@@ZeFluffyKnight Yeah most people just couldn't be bothered to learn how to play the hunting part of the game. It wasn't slow at all if the team knew how to hunt. With a good trapper and flanking maneuvers a monster would never get to free farm as you'd be hot on their heels constantly.
Evolve was genuinely really fun. Sad it’s gone.
I remember this game being everywhere and then people just sort of forgot about it.
I miss this game. It was hard to find a good match but when you did, it was amazing.
I remember i played TWO whole rounds and was like...
"Yeah, this is worthless."
Never touched it again.
Me too, i rented it and realized how disappointing the whole experience was.
. . . . you disliked the tutorial that much?
@@drivanradosivic1357 They just sucked at the game
@@drazam6608 I think that these two were not used to to Evolve, which was a skill based class shooter type game, over drop in drop out sort of games.
1:07 Game design genius ??? LMAO they stole that concept from warcraft 3 custom maps like Vampirism
Farcry instincts literality did this in 2005
Loved playing the monster in this game. Spent a couple months playing and tried hunter once, I waited 3 hours for a match and was left to die because the team didn't like me because I was new. The monster though was a BLAST once you learned how to play. Evolve for me is exactly how the Assassins creed multiplayer was, easy to play and fun for a while. A story mode, new maps, new modes, anything post launch except the skins would have saved it.
I'll never forget these guys on PSN.. I miss you guys .. AG Chains.. Californa love.. and menacing blue.. OMG! Those guys carried me so many games. and some of the funest games of my life. lol & sorry if I misspelled you guys names. but Ranked was the best with you guys. lol
Loved this game
I usually stick to strictly single player games but I remember the first time I saw the preview for evolve and that was the first time I thought “maybe playing video games with other humans isn’t a disgusting horrible idea” never had since.
Evolve is a really bad example of multi-player games. Many MP games are quite fun.
@@loubloom1941 i know I’m in the minority but story based games helped me get through some tough times. Playing with fake people is more fun to me than real people and it’s been that way since I was a wee lad
I bought the game and got mostly what I'd expected. The game didn't hold your hand. If you wanted to know how to play a character, you had to play as the character. It wasn't easy to track the creature, so sometimes a match was a borefest until the creature was fully evolved. People then showed how pathetic they were. Hunters would bail when the creature hit stage 3. If the creature was found and caught up to at stage 1, the player who was the creature would give up and AFK. People complained that they had to actually do some work to track the creature. In a lot of ways, the game was hurt because the community wanted their hands held. In other ways, the non-micro-microtransactions, the game hurt itself. Characters were locked behind insane XP walls and you had to play as a character that you didn't like so much in order to get to better characters. Then if you wanted to buy something from the gamestore, it was insane. The costs were out of control. Average kids were playing this game, not Richie Rich.
People had to play offline so that when they played online the match had a chance. Too many people thought that they could just jump into the deep end before they'd even learned to swim. I still think that the game was a great concept. The execution could have been done better and players needed to pull their whiny heads out of their lazy backsides.
I remember being sold by playing the beta. Every game i played had people communicating and working like a well oiled machine. As soon as the retail version came out, no one used their mics, and the hunters tried just doing their own thing. I got so frustrated that I quit playing out within a few weeks.
I'd really like to know just how much influence, if any, Giants Citizen Kabuto had on this game. As it was also an asymmetrical, team vs 1 game, just decades earlier.
It also had a POV camera looking out of Kabuto’s mouth for the lulz.