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Online experience review: Evolve day one

So far, so good. Mostly.

As promised, Stevivor will be watching Evolve with careful attention. Touted in our review as most enjoyable (or was that only enjoyable?) in online multiplayer, we’ll be providing our thoughts on online play as appropriate.

3.13 pm AEDST: As parts of America are now entering Tuesday, 10 February, I’ve jumped online to see how it’s all going.

I elected to do a round of Evacuation first, going for the co-op option. That means ideally, I wanted to play in a team of four human Hunters against an AI monster. Initially paired with one other player, we seemed to be thrown together in a PVP lobby, meaning it would be four Hunters versus a human monster. While not what I asked for, I can live with that.

My worries about a steep learning curve and that balance would greatly effect matches proved true. In the first round I played, the four Hunters scattered to the winds almost immediately. I was using markers and my individual skills to track the Wraith we were to hunt, but to no avail. When we eventually clustered together, the Medic never once used Val’s medigun.

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The next match, I selected Bucket… and almost single-handedly handed the Wraith his or her ass using carefully placed sentries around the evacuees I was tasked to protect. The human monster wasn’t really aware that his monster possessed the lowest health of the lot, and once again, my team was anything but. Our Trapper did deploy the mobile arena for the first time during that match, so yay for them! During Nest, the monster didn’t try to hatch a minion… but neither did my teammates try to destroy an egg.

I did manage to get a proper co-op Evacuation game in after the first, with new players… and the same problems. Don’t even get me started on day five.

The only thing weird of note with the experience as a package was that the post-Evacuation summary screen, showing who won what day, had zero information to offer.

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Still, most of what I noticed are hardly issues specific to Evolve, eh? People not playing to objectives? People not working as a team? The slight problem is, with the very specific gameplay Evolve has to offer, it’ll get frustrating without a regular crew.

We’ll play more tonight and see if anything changes, updating this particular post either way. For now, that review score we issued yesterday looks pretty solid.

6.27 pm AEDST: After another hour, I’m super happy with how Evolve is running. Matchmaking — even on my strict NAT Xbox One — is working efficiently. I’m also being matched with level 8 players, so games run smoothly and class-based as they should. I’ll keep playing and will update if necessary, but it looks like smooth sailing from here.

10.50 pm AEDST: Unimportant for most and huge for others, I may have identified an issue for those using multiple Xbox One consoles. Head here for more.

Have you already purchased Evolve? How have you been finding it?

Stevivor is reviewing Evolve‘s online experience using a copy of the game on Xbox One.


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About the author

Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.