Turtle Rock Studios is a development house that practically lives and breathes the multiplayer experience, from the Xbox version of Counter-Strike to Left 4 Dead. The co-op experience was something few games offered at the time, and the versus mode was good enough to keep it in rotation for some time. After its split with Valve, it constantly hinted about something big in development. That something is Evolve, one of the first big multiplayer titles of 2015.

Much like last year's Titanfall, which came out early and captured the multiplayer audience, there's a bare-bones story. An unknown calamity hits the colonized planet of Shear, and as the colonists try to flee, the native beasts attack. It's up to a ragtag group of misfits to eradicate the monster threat and save the colonists.

Evolve lets you choose between five different classes, four of which belong to the group known as the Hunters, who have jetpacks to compensate for the Monster's climbing and leaping abilities. Each class has three variations, and each class can level up abilities based on how much damage they give or take. The player has a global XP meter that takes into account his experience with all five classes. Leveling up your general profile gives you access to perks that can be applied to your character before a match starts.

The Assault class is the primary damage dealer, similar to tank characters of many action RPGs and MMOs, though it's highly mobile. Markov can lay down electric mines, Hyde has a flamethrower and toxic grenades, and Parnell has a faster firing rate and better movement speed at the expense of some health. The Medic is the healing class. Val's gun fires a healing beam at allies, Lazarus requires his teammates to get incapacitated or die so he can revive them with full health, and Caira specializes in group healing from a distance with her healing grenades.

The Support class can turn allies invisible but still deals some hefty damage. Hank protects allies with a shield projector, Bucket has a UAV scout to find the Monster, and Cabot has a tagging device to find the Monster.  The Trapper can drop a force field that contains Hunters and Monsters in an enclosed area to force them into battle. Maggie has harpoon traps to slow down the monster down, Griffin has harpoons and uses sound spikes to track Monster movements, and Abe uses a tracking dart that can be applied on the Monster or animals that the Monster might eat.

The Monster class has no allies, and the abilities vary wildly. The Goliath is a classic melee brute who can chuck rocks at enemies and breathe fire. By comparison, the Kraken is more of a distance fighter who relies on lightning and mines to attack enemies. He can emit a lightning burst that can chain attack enemies. Then there's the Wraith, a monster that specializes in mobility with limited dashing and stealth. Her decoy ability provides a temporary period of invisibility while sending out a clone that goes after nearby enemies.

Of the few modes in Evolve, Hunt is the easiest to understand and best exemplifies the game. As the Hunters, your task is to hunt down and kill the Monster. While the Trapper's abilities can help you find the Monster faster, you have to use more natural signs to find the creature's whereabouts. Fallen trees carve out a possible path, and birds can help. Birds that fly away give you an idea of where a Monster is while carrion birds reveal where the Monster has last eaten. You also have to deal with the planet's wildlife, including carnivorous plants and animals that attack when provoked. Though you don't need to kill any creatures aside from the Monster, you can do so if you want to cut off the Monster's feeding opportunities or gain temporary buffs.

As the Monster, your goal is to kill all of the Hunters. However, your initial state leaves you vulnerable to all kinds of weapon fire, and you only have three of four abilities ready to use. You must survive, hunt down and eat animals to gain health and armor in addition to building up experience. Then you can evolve to gain more health, armor and attacking strength. You also have the chance to add that missing fourth ability and power up the abilities you already have. Repeat the process to enter the third evolution level, and you gain a secondary goal: end the game by destroying the power generator.

Evolve rides this very fine balance, where it initially favors the Hunters but slowly gives the advantage to the Monster. A team of Hunters that are either very skilled or very lucky can easily take out a level one Monster. Give the Monster enough time to reach level two, and it's a very formidable fight. By level three, the Monster is powerful enough that it may take sheer luck to bring it down. It places some pressure on the Monster to play things safe until it is powerful enough to take on the Hunters, but that's balanced by the Hunters' need to get things done quickly or face prolonged doom. Unless you want to challenge yourself, the best Hunters communicate with each other often.

The formula for Hunt works so well that the other modes feel like they took the Hunt formula and tacked on extra objectives instead of doing something different. Rescue has the Hunters trying to rescue five colonists by reviving them and escorting them back to the extraction zones. The Monster needs to kill five colonists first, so this mode really favors the Monster since killing colonists is an easy task once you find them. Nest has the Monster trying to defend its eggs while Hunters try to destroy them. Given the relative weakness of eggs and minions, Hunters have an easier time in this mode. Defend is slightly more balanced, as the Monsters have to destroy two fuel pumps and the connector to the escape ship while Hunters have to defend them both under a time limit. Monsters have an advantage since their minions can come out at timed intervals to destroy the targets, but their weakness means that Monsters have to be smart about their approach. In all three modes, the basic Hunt conditions are still in play, so there doesn't seem to be much interest in playing anything but Hunt.

Evacuation is the only other mode that's worth considering due to its variety, but you'll need a real time investment to make the most of it. You're given five rounds where maps and game types are randomly chosen, though rounds two through four give you a chance to choose between two modes for that round. Aside from being forced into playing modes you might otherwise avoid, you have to wait until all five rounds are over to get the XP payout. The bonuses for the next round are dependent on the location and brief setup. For example, having the Hunters rescue colonists from a chemical factory means that the Monster can't use its smell ability for the next round to sniff out Hunters and food. The game promises around 800,000 different combinations based on map, objective, and win conditions, and even though it is a significant time investment, it makes for a varied multiplayer experience.

After more than a year of seeing one big game after another falter in online performance once it was unleashed to the public, Evolve manages to do this part right. After a few public alpha and beta tests with stable netcode, the retail version exhibits no problems. Games connect at a decent time and stay relatively stable match after match. There's no lag and no warping in all but the worst of connections. For a game that's dependent on multiplayer to get the most fun out of it, this is nothing but good news, though there is a contingency plan in place to have bots take over for missing players if necessary.

There are a few issues with some of the game mechanics. The first is in the lack of variety in the hunts. The presence of only three monsters means you'll eventually develop a strategy to fight each one, and once-exciting battles can quickly become rather stale. Unlocking characters is something of a slog, so it can take plenty of matches before you unlock one character. This was demonstrated in the first week of matches, when players often saw the initial set of Hunters and the Goliath Monster. On the flipside, the strict requirements for a hunting team means you don't have room to play around with as many configurations as you'd like. Teams require you to have exactly one Assault, Medic, Support and Trapper class member, so you can't play around with the possibility of hunting with an all-Medic team or one with two Assault members in lieu of a Support class member.

There's also the elephant in the room: DLC. Early on, the game got lots of unwanted attention for having multiple versions that which included multiple variations of DLC, a season pass for extra Hunters and Monster skins, and a version exclusively for the PC that included even more Monsters and Hunters not available in the season pass. Those who pre-ordered the game got the fourth Monster for free, and they'd also get early access to the third set of Hunters. That's lots of stuff to sort through if you're trying to figure out how committed you'd be to the game before it launched, and it rubbed people the wrong way. On top of that, the game launched with a slew of skins for both Monsters and Hunters that aren't in any of the passes or pre-order packages.

The good news is that Evolve already has some steps in place to ensure the community isn't fragmented by the additions. For starters, players who didn't purchase any of the extra Hunters and Monsters still get to play against and alongside them. Maps are going to be given away free to all players, again as a method to keep the community intact. The gesture is nice and forward-thinking since similar splits have doomed the lifespan of other multiplayer-centric titles.

For those not interested in multiplayer, the solo mode emulates the multiplayer experience with bots. All of the modes and XP are present, making for a nice alternative way to level up if you're overwhelmed in multiplayer. The solo mode offers up two additional differences. The first is the ability to switch between classes on the fly when playing as the Hunters, so you can sample each experience without switching to a new match each time. The second is the ability to switch any bot character to any locked Hunters or Monsters, so you see how each one is played.

As one would expect, the mode isn't a perfect substitute for playing against real people, and that's because of the AI. When playing as the Hunters, your AI teammates are pretty good in battle. They're smart enough to drop traps, heal, and do some real damage to the monster, but you do the brunt of the work. They aren't good at tracking down the beast, so they follow you from skirmish to skirmish. The beast hides from everyone so well that he evolves to level three in no time. When playing as the Monster, it feels like the AI Hunters are too good. It's like playing the game against veteran players months from now when you've just picked up the title.  It means most of your time playing solo is spent grinding out losses instead of trading victories and defeats.

Graphically, Evolve is pretty impressive. As one of the first games to use CryEngine on the latest round of consoles, the environments look great. The rocky terrain mixes in well with the abundant and lush jungle foliage. The same goes for the water and other particle effects, which look rather natural. Texture work is probably the most noteworthy, since it looks sharp and well detailed, only faltering during the pre-game matchup screen, where you see textures pop in here and there. The detailed texture work lends itself well to both the Hunter and Monster designs, which look very good and are a clear step above the previous console generation. Animations are fluid, especially on the Monsters, whose size heavily emphasizes how good the attacks and general movement look. The solid frame rate also helps, as it never drops below 30fps.

The sound is also quite good. The music is pulse-pounding and heightens the thrill of the battle while amplifying the feeling of victory once your adversary has fallen. With most of your time spent away from your enemy, though, the score takes a back seat to ambient noises that build on the character of the planet's rocky jungle-like terrain. This is especially true when you're playing the game on a surround sound system. The cries of birds, the crunching of grass and other vegetation, and the occasional small talk from your teammates comes together for a very immersive experience. The voices are well done, with lots of dialogue that is tailor-made for any team configuration. There's also a great deal of dialogue, so it can be a while before you hear lines being repeated. That does a good job of fleshing out the characters and setting, and the hope is that it's expanded once the new Hunters, Monsters and maps come into play.

Evolve is the kind of game that is rather difficult to judge. The basic mechanics of the asynchronous multiplayer are solid, and the game surprisingly feels balanced as it goes from favoring Hunters to favoring the Monster. The other modes are fine, but the basic Hunt mode still feels the best, while Evacuation makes the other modes more likeable due to the various map conditions. As fun as it is, it seems best played with friends and in short sessions. Real teamwork is tough to achieve with random players, and long sessions quickly make the game feel boring. DLC concerns aside, there's no telling whether the community will be there in the long haul. The long legs needed for any multiplayer-centric game aren't that visible right now. Evolve has some of the best ingredients to make a good multiplayer experience, but it's up to the community to make this a game that's constantly in rotation.

Score: 8.0/10