2K and Turtle Rock Studios, the folks behind Left 4 Dead, have officially announced their latest offering in the cooperative shooting universe, Evolve.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Wasn’t Evolve announced last week?” Well, technically, yes, but that was in the form of an “exclusive first look” from Game Informer. Now 2K and Turtle Rock are letting the rest of games media in on the fun, dropping a few new details about the upcoming title for PS4, Xbox One and PC.
Like Left 4 Dead before it, Evolve is a shooter that “expertly blends cooperative and competitive multiplayer experiences as a team of four hunters face off against a single, player-controlled monster,” reads the statement from Turtle Rock. The game takes place on an alien planet sometime in the distant future with hunters operating in first-person and the monster being controlled from a third-person perspective.
Having a player control the baddie while other players control the heroes isn’t exactly a new concept in games, but Turtle Rock hopes to pull off this unique balancing act with lots of unique features and carefully crafted mechanics that won’t tilt the scales too far in either side’s favor.
“Our philosophy is to build incredibly fun game experiences that we can’t find anywhere else,” said Turtle Rock co-founder and design director Chris Ashton. “Evolve’s co-op vs. lone wolf formula has created some of the most intense multiplayer matches we’ve ever experienced.”
And really, that makes a lot of sense. There are typically two types of shooter fans: Those who like to team up and operate strategically with their partners and those who prefer to break from the pack and take on the enemy alone. Playing Battlefield 4, for instance, I find myself getting a lot of enjoyment out of both scenarios so long as the conditions are right. If I happen to find myself teamed up with three folks who like to chat, plan and help each other out, then working together can be an absolute blast. If that’s not the case, however, I prefer to ignore my useless teammates and just move about on my own. It can get lonely, but at least I don’t feel like I’m relying on partners who are dragging me down. Evolve looks to offer both of those experience, so it’ll be interesting to see which side tends to get the most love from players.
“Evolve will be a generation-defining multiplayer experience,” said 2K President Christoph Hartmann. “As our first new IP for next-gen systems, 2K is working with Turtle Rock Studios to deliver a game that’s instantly entertaining and impossible to put down.”
Pre-orders for Evolve go live today, so check your favorite retailer and see if you can snag your copy nice and early. Pre-order will also net you a Monster Expansion Pack, which includes a Savage Goliath skin and another new monster character sometime following the game’s launch. Speaking of which, said release is set for fall of this year, so you might be hanging onto that pre-order for quite a few months.
