Every so often a game comes along that grabs you by the throat and demands your attention. Evolve by Turtle Rock Studios is one such game. Since its unveiling back in February 2014 I have devoured every single scrap of information I could get my hands on.
When you have a game being developed by the team that brought us Left 4 Dead you know something special is happening. You are placed in the role of one of 4 hunters, Trapper, Assault, Support, and Medic or the eponymous monster. Each hunter has his or her own specific role to act out and special abilities to call upon. But that's not to say that the monster is left short handed either. By eating smaller animals to start with or any of the unlucky hunters, you help fill up a metre that will eventually let you evolve and choose from a variety of special abilities to evolve and add to your arsenal of attacks or defense.
As of writing this article 8 hunter characters have been announced. Maggie and Griffin are Trappers, Markov and Hyde are Assault, Hank and Bucket are Support and Val and Lazarus are Medics. A total of 16 hunters have been promised to be included in the game on release day.
Two monsters have also been revealed so far. 3 monsters have been confirmed for release with the game, along with one for DLC. Goliath is a heavy duty monster that specializes in close quarter fights. Kraken is a flying monster that wields electricity. Information on the remaining 2 monsters has yet to be revealed.
In a recent interview with Official XBox Magazine co founder of Turtle Rock Studios, Chris Ashton said "You know, in Left 4 Dead we could make new environments, but we really didn't have a structure there to make new characters or zombie types, so we were pretty limited on what we could do, DLC-wise. But with Evolve... we made these modular pieces - the way the whole game fits together means we can make new maps, new environment types, new wildlife, new monsters and hunters, and all of that stuff just plugs into the game."
"We're definitely looking to see how the community reacts... It's designed to have a long life - hopefully that works and we get to try a bunch of crazy things with the community after release. As long as people are into it and the DLC does reasonably well, then we'd like to keep making more. At the end of the day, it's a business and it has to make sense, but we believe that we've built a game that does support that really well - more so than any game ever before."
How much the DLC will cost or maybe just maybe it's gonna be free has yet to be released. With Microsoft securing the beta for a limited time and DLC being released first on Xbox One its a good time to own Microsofts console. While details of how to access the beta are being kept close to Turtle Rock Studios chest rest assured when we know you will know.
Evolve is released on the 21st of October 2014.