Evolve stage 2 types of monsters.

The game Evolve made a lot of noise at the time. A project from the creators of “that same” Left 4 Dead, asymmetrical multiplayer, hunting for a smart monster that evolves during the match. The CryEngine 3 engine provided an excellent picture, and visual style he was amazingly good. Both the monsters and the hunters succeeded.

But in our expensive industry, any good undertaking can be ruined by the publisher. The desire to “eat a lot” led to sad consequences. Evolve was sold at full price and additionally tried to force two (!) Season Pass plus microtransactions with dull weapon skins. People were taken aback and, despite the generally positive impression of open beta test, for the most part they postponed their acquaintance with the “revolutionary shooter”. And Evolve got boring quickly. A limited set of heroes, a far-fetched and terribly tight development system and a long process of searching for a monster big map didn't help turn Evolve into a favorite evening entertainment.

It’s no wonder that the game’s servers quickly emptied.

And when it seemed that everything was over with Evolve, the Turtle Rock studio “with a flick of the wrist” transferred the game to a shareware basis. Now the project is called Evolve Stage 2, and for now it is only available to PC users as a beta version. And there aren’t even microtransactions yet! What you earn is all yours.

As a bonus, people who purchased Evolve will be able to unlock most of the content, exclusive icons, and coloring pages at launch.

The concept of the game has remained largely unchanged. Four heroes different classes(stormtrooper, support, trapper, medic) find themselves on a huge level where an alien monster is hiding. Moreover, both the hunters and the monster are controlled by players. While the creature is small and frail, it is forced to run away, kill and devour wild animals in order to evolve. A little time passes, and the trembling creature turns into a fiend of hell.

Fun gameplay directly depends on the team. You can waste a long time running around the level after a monster, in vain attempts to find and overtake it. Or the hunt goes as it should, with excitement and constant confrontation.

What has changed in just over a year? The cast of heroes has been seriously expanded. There used to be 12 of them, but now there are 24! Monster lovers are also in luck. There were 3 types, but now there are 7! The pointless development system was abolished. But now you can take not one, but three perks at once from a large set to choose from for strengthening passive abilities. Moreover, perks are allowed to be improved.

Naturally, as in any shareware project, everything costs money. And improvements, and heroes, and coloring for weapons, hunters, monsters. To progress quickly, you need to enter the game as often as possible, perform daily challenges, win matches and receive to your account silver coins, which are then spent on acquiring what they want.

Due to the fact that now everyone can join Evolve for free, there was a wild excitement at first. The game reached the top of popularity on Steam. However, then interest began to quickly fade. As we already noted in, this is a good, but difficult to master game that requires well-coordinated teamwork. Strictly speaking, to get an interesting match, you need to get 5 good players, which even in the paid version (where people knew what they were signing up for) was very, very rarely possible.

Shareware projects have one feature: in order to become popular, the entry threshold must be low. But here it’s kind of the opposite. Until you understand the rules of the game, especially the interaction of different classes, you will spend the first hours running around, yawning and falling asleep, since the developers have not solved their main problem. If the monster actually starts the game from the first seconds of the match: he is forced to run away, hide, devour prey, and evolve. Then the hunters are exclusively busy running along the trail, and this can last for a very long time.

Diagnosis

Evolve Stage 2 should be regarded not as a success or some kind of reboot, but as a panicky shot in the foot. On the one hand, now this is a truly full-fledged product that deserves its money, with a sufficient number of heroes, monsters and maps, with excellent graphics. But now they are giving it away for free, while maintaining the main disadvantages: a high barrier to entry for beginners and boring matches in the early stages. The public is spoiled these days. And if the audience is bored, they turn around and leave.

The Evolve Stage 2 audience fell by more than half after the initial surge two weeks later, and I am afraid that the situation will worsen further.

Offering players to fight in arenas in the format of 4 people against 1 monster. But as time passed, the project lost more and more audience, until there were only a couple of hundred active users on the server instead of thousands. With their last breath, the developers went all-in, deciding to make their game free. Well, they did get a 150-fold increase in population, but the fun didn't last long. The gameplay changes completely upended the balance and possibilities, focusing on arcadeism, simplification and brainlessness. Hunters no longer have to spend a long time looking for a monster, as most of the vegetation has been cleared, making the regions easily visible from high points. Now it is enough to look around closely to determine the location of the enemy. And then it all comes down to a banal crush of numbers and the inability to give the monster a chance to win.

Balance? Into the furnace!

In general, all the players who could previously be called fans have successfully spat on her, and there are many reasons for this. Each hunter now has the ability to trap a monster in a dome, meaning the team can split into 2 squads of 2 or even spread out in four directions to hunt down the poor little fauna eater in a matter of seconds. Moreover, now the trapper (well, this is the one who does the main tracking) has an area scanner that immediately gives out the location of the enemy. This is in addition to traces on the ground, frightened birds and other marks that make the work of hunters easier. All this led to the fact that people began to hate being monsters. Before you start your next match, you are free to set your class priorities to get control of the hero you want to play. Accordingly, everyone pushes the monster to the last (fifth) position. But local matchmaking is done in a backwards way - it doesn’t know how to select people according to their wishes, but simply throws everyone into the room.

When a bunch of people are randomly pitted against each other, chaos ensues. First of all, the monster falls to someone who doesn’t want to play with it... It’s no wonder that the unlucky gamer stupidly leaves the lobby, thereby sending the rest of the participants back to the matchmaking stage. This process can be repeated up to five times until someone finally agrees to do hard labor in the skin of a monster. You will not be punished in any way for leaving the match in this way, so everyone is actively bullying. Then the long preparation for the start begins, where you select a character (about 7 different “heroes” are available for each class to choose from). The game then demonstrates the skill of each participant, at which point someone can leave the match again. Yes, the experience rating is calculated for each hero separately, so if you have never played as the healer Val, you will not be given the same newcomers to the squad, but will be thrown in with random gamers. It turns out that some users don’t even know their skills yet, while others managed to win 30 matches and polished their tactics to perfection.

Further more - the game is teeming with top-class cheaters. These are not interested in the process of directly beating down enemies - they simply initiate an instant victory by pressing one button, which immediately displays the statistics window and gives rewards, as if for a full round. If you notice a person in the lobby with a long streak of victories, then most likely he is cheating like this. Checkmate in the chat, checkmate in the voice chat, constant exits from the lobby, imbalance of levels and experience, imbalance of characters... Actually, there is nothing sacred left in the game. The graphics were cut significantly, on the one hand this is good, since even my FPS rose from an unacceptable 15 to 32, on the other hand, the picture began to look rather poor. Most of the vegetation has been removed, there are also fewer neutral creatures, and monsters with bonus buffs are also illuminated by a huge column of light, which not only disrupts the atmosphere, but also kills tactics.

Let's go to the bottom

is still afloat, but people have already begun to actively give up on the game. The process quickly gets boring, since there are very few maps, and you don’t want to spend dozens of hours of grinding to open new character classes. The target audience of the project has changed dramatically - wildly and ugly on the part of the developers. The desire to make money one last time took over, and they decided to do anything to reach as many people as possible. Ultimately, the project community now consists of trolls, cheaters and children (of whom there are plenty in the voice chat). There is absolutely nothing to do here alone, since you are unlikely to like the process, graphics or atmosphere. If you have a group of acquaintances or friends, you can still try it for fun, otherwise it’s better not to waste time downloading a 20 Gb client.

Evolve is a co-op shooter from 1st and 3rd person simultaneously, with up to four players on one team and only one on the opposite team. The game came from the pen of the developers of the famous Left4Dead project. The authors claim that the idea of ​​Evolve arose much earlier than the zombie shooter, but it has now come to fruition.

Main villain

The bloodthirsty zombies from Left4Dead have been replaced in Evolve by a monster of gigantic size and unprecedented power. The monster is so strong that it is absolutely impossible to defeat it alone, no matter how good player No matter who you are, this will require coordinated actions of the entire team, each member of the squad must strictly fulfill their role and then, perhaps, victory will be on your side.

Roles

Markov (stormtrooper) is the main damage dealer; he has really hidden weapons in his arsenal to deal damage. cool guns, and with the help of landmines he can block tactically important passages.

Griffin (hunter) is a character armed with a powerful gun, but in addition he has traps, it is very important to use them correctly to slow down the monster and prevent him from leaving, or to help his team escape.

Hank (support) is a character who monitors his team and helps them survive in every possible way in this difficult battle; in his arsenal there are special modules that activate protective fields, which will be very useful when the monster is really angry.

Val (healer) is a character whose responsibilities include healing the wounds of his allies and trying to prevent them from receiving these wounds. To do this, Val has the ability to stun the monster for a short period.

Gameplay

We've sorted out the roles, now let's talk more specifically about the gameplay. Everything looks damn interesting. At the very beginning of the round, the monster, although of impressive size, is not yet ferocious enough to easily scatter its pursuers to the sides and it needs to grow a little. The monster's task is to hide from the pursuit of the four and eat representatives of the local fauna. These actions allow the monster to grow in size, gain health and armor, and finally gain new abilities. The brave four must interfere with this in every possible way and try to shoot the monster before it grows to monstrous sizes and finishes them off. Everything looks very fresh and dynamic. By the middle of the round, if the four were unable to deal with the monster, sometimes it is no longer entirely clear who is the victim and who is the hunter.

Conclusion

The Birth of a Monster

The original Evolve was highly anticipated by many. Turtle Rock could claim to be a regular Left 4 Dead clone, in which adventurers fight alien fauna. But the intrigue lies precisely in the fact that the most gigantic and dangerous beast on the planet is controlled by a live player, and not by AI.

At the very moment of its release, Evolve was received almost with a bang, but literally a couple of days later, dubious game tactics were revealed (both for hunters and monsters), which called the entire gameplay mechanics into question. By the time Evolve restarted, the simultaneous number of players on the servers had dropped to 80 - this clearly does not suit competitive game, the life cycle of which was designed for at least 3 years.

Stage No. 2

Now there are 18 - 20 thousand people simultaneously playing in Evolve Stage 2, the game has broken into the top 10 of Steam online. The developers were able to achieve a wow effect by relaunching using a free model. But free to play is not all that evolution is capable of, and that’s good. The changes affected the hunt itself, that is, simply put, the gameplay.

The most important thing is new ability trapper called “Satellite Scanning”. By pressing one button, all four hunters' compasses highlight the direction in which the monster went. The cooldown of the ability is only one and a half minutes. Previously (in the original Evolve), if a trapper lost track, it almost certainly meant the monster would evolve to stage 3 somewhere in a secluded corner and the subsequent death of the entire team. Now a small cheat in the form of a companion has made matches much more dynamic.

To make things even more dynamic, the developers have completely eradicated stealth as a concept. Previously, Wraith (Ghost) could become invisible and troll a team of not very experienced hunters with almost impunity. Which, by the way, had their own stealth generator (specifically, the support). In Evolve Stage 2, invisibility was taken away from both sides, since the tactics using it were openly griefer-like, i.e. provoked uncontrollable rage among the players. Turtle Rock said they didn't want toxicity to spread in the community.

Instead of stealth, Wraith was given a temporary copy of it (in fact, X2 damage), and support was given a powerful collective shield booster. As they say, everything is for the front, everything is for victory! And not to sit in the rear and sneak around in complete invisibility behind the enemy’s back.

Game of tag and catch up

But achieving 100% balance in a game with asymmetric multiplayer 4 VS 1 is an almost impossible task, and the developers, of course, failed to complete it completely. Hunters still need to catch up with the alien monster at the 1st stage of evolution, and the monster needs to hide in the corners and eat fauna up to the 3rd, invincible stage.

Then everything depends on the professionalism of the players of both teams. If your trapper lacks instincts, your team will be treated to a “most exciting” running simulator for 10 minutes of real time, followed by an inglorious wipe in 50 seconds.

Now imagine that you are that same professional playing as a monster. Your most important guarantee of success is to run away for just 10 minutes, after which you can tear apart the hunters quite quickly and painlessly. But 10 minutes of regular running, during which absolutely nothing happens? Dubious entertainment. In some other multiplayer games, two matches filled with action and adrenaline can take place during the same time.

And one more important point: Let's take Battlefield, CoD, CS:GO - whatever. Look at the teams - 6 vs 6, 8 vs 8, 32 vs 32. In general, complete symmetry. And when there are several noobs and several pros on each side, the matches become more or less balanced. And Evolve (including Stage 2) simply allows punctures due to its mechanics.

A classic sad case - a noob monster. The poor fellow is caught in the dome in the first minute, when he hasn’t really had time to eat, and is beaten mercilessly within another minute. And all this despite the fact that Evolve is not particularly efficient in terms of the lobby. A leisurely selection of players, then each of them selects classes and perks (including a monster), then loading. This can take up to 5 minutes - remember, for the sake of a 2-minute match. We have already talked about the pro-monster who leads us by the nose for a long time and tediously and tears everyone up in the end like a hot water bottle. It is not yet clear which of these “entertainments” is worse.

Survival of the fittest

Just don’t think that 2K and Turtle Rock have rolled out the same barrel of ointment for you, giving you gold-plated spoons instead of copper ones and asking you to take a bite. It’s more like this: the best honey and tar were mixed in a 50/50 ratio, and you eat at your own peril and risk.

Well, metaphors and allegories be damned, what we mean is this: when the stars align just right, Evolve truly shines. Balanced, intense matches with an unknown outcome - this is definitely worth trying the game for (especially for free). When a monster at the 3rd stage of evolution, already trapped in the dome several times, still blows up the reactor, despite the fact that he and the last hunter have the last hit point... these are indescribable sensations that are better to experience once yourself than try to understand in theory. After such a match, even if you were on the technically losing team of hunters, there will be no burning of the 5th point: only positive things.

We guarantee: this kind of thrill cannot be found anywhere else. Not in L4D2, not in Borderlands, not in Dead Island- in general, not in any classic co-op game. One simple fact that the giant boss is controlled not by AI, but by a living opponent, changes everything radically. For those who lived in a post-nuclear bunker (that is, know nothing about the original Evole), it is worth noting that the game has very soulful characters, and on both sides of the barricades. Well, where else will you see a redneck with a flamethrower, an engineer with a kilometer-long beard, a fragile medical girl and a trapper a la “Crocodile Dundee”, driving the Lovecraftian octopus-like Kraken into a trap? That's the same thing.

A trap worse than the dome

Participating in a match gives you from 80 to, say, 300-plus silver coins(depending on victory/defeat and dozens of other factors). Daily challenges and daily login will bring a little more - such enticing tricks are familiar from Hearthstone, Killzone and many other games. Unlocking a character costs from 5500 to 8500 coins (depending on the toughness of the hunter/monster), unlocking and upgrading perks costs from 1500 to 4500 each. In general, an honest and persistent Korean grind, and without the opportunity to spend real money.

But in literally a month, if not less, an in-game store for real money will be launched. No, but what did you think - that 2K restarted Evolve out of pure humanism!? IN best case scenario it will be a kind of Oriflame, that is, only cosmetics: skins for guns, hunters and monsters. Well, in the worst case, it will be possible to purchase the beasts and adventurers themselves.

The first iteration of Evolve was bent not only because of the crooked balance: the community literally went crazy when they realized the fact that all the worthwhile hunters and monsters were only in expensive DLC. The second stage of the game's evolution faces a very similar syndrome. Imagine that you, honestly, like a true Korean worker, have been grinding for the third hunter and the second monster for more than a dozen hours. And then the damned donator comes, buying everything and everyone at once, and instantly breaks even that dubious balance that Turtle Rock has created with great difficulty over the past year and a half.

Overall, Evolve Stage 2 is one of those rare cases where we will give 2 ratings at once and hope that the higher one will be valid.

+ Unique sensations not available in L4D2, Borderlands, Dead Island, etc.

+ Very colorful characters and monsters

+ Original game mechanics 4 VS 1

- WARNING! Free to play can turn into Pay 2 win

- Unbalanced matches: 10 minutes of running and shameful death in a minute

- Instability of free servers

Here you will find information on system requirements online games Evolve Stage 2 for personal computer. Get brief and to-the-point information on Evolve Stage 2 and PC requirements, operating system(OS / OS), processor (CPU / CPU), volume RAM(RAM / RAM), video card (GPU) and free hard disk space (HDD / SSD), sufficient to run Evolve Stage 2!

Sometimes it is very important to know in advance the requirements for a computer to comfortably run the online game Evolve Stage 2, which is why we publish both the minimum and recommended system requirements for Evolve Stage 2.

Knowing the system requirements, you can move on to the next stage, Download Evolve Stage 2 and start playing!

Remember, usually all requirements are conditional, it is best to roughly estimate the characteristics of the computer, compare with the system requirements of the Evolve Stage 2 game and if the characteristics approximately match minimum requirements, download and launch the game! If you want to rate the game at maximum settings graphics, but your PC or laptop won’t handle it, then you can try to play Evolve Stage 2 without downloading the game itself and a long installation, and you can play at the highest graphics settings, this became possible thanks to the advent of cloud gaming platform with payment for playing time!

Minimum system requirements for Evolv Stage 2:

As you can understand, these requirements are suitable for playing Evolve Stage 2 at minimum settings; if the computer’s characteristics are below this level, then playing Evolve Stage 2 may be very difficult even at minimum settings graphics. If the computer matches or exceeds the data system requirements, then a comfortable game is ahead with a sufficient level of FPS (frames per second), perhaps even at medium graphics settings.

• : Windows 7 64-bit
• : Core 2 Duo E6600 / Athlon 64 X2 6400
• : 4 GB RAM
• Video card (GPU): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 / ATI Radeon HD 5770
• DirectX: Version 11
• Hard drive (HDD / SSD): 25 GB
• Sound Card

If the recommended requirements are met, players can enjoy a comfortable game at maximum graphics settings and an acceptable FPS (frames per second) level, usually if the PC characteristics are approximately equal to the recommended ones Evolve requirements Stage 2, then there is no need to make compromises between graphics and FPS. If your computer’s specifications are higher than these requirements, then download the game right away!

• Operating system (OS/OS): Windows 7 64-bit
• Central processing unit (CPU / CPU): Core i7-920 / A8-3870K
• Random access memory (RAM / RAM): 6 GB RAM
• Video card (GPU): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 / ATI Radeon R9 280
• DirectX: Version 11
• Hard drive (HDD / SSD): 25 GB
• Sound Card: DirectX Compliant Sound card