MeinMMO demon Cortyn reflects on a game that changed the world 10 years ago. Well, at least Cortyn’s world.
February 10, 2015, was a very special day. Not just because it is typically the last day to urgently remind yourself that Valentine’s Day is coming up soon and you need to save a relationship with chocolate, flowers, or a mix of both.
No, because on February 10, 2015, the only game that made me completely forget about World of Warcraft for a few weeks was released, which provided me with an immersive experience that I had never encountered in a game before—and haven’t experienced since.
I’m talking about Evolve.
Evolve was the best asymmetrical game of all time
The game from the legendary creators of “Left 4 Dead” holds a place in my heart like no other game ever has.
Evolve was an asymmetrical “4vs1” game where one player took on the role of a monster, and the other four played as hunters who had to take down the monster. At the start of a match, the monster was weak and had to hide and gather food to gain strength and size, evolve, and acquire new abilities.
After a while, the power balance shifts. If the hunters fail to kill the monster early on, the monster becomes on par and later significantly stronger than the hunters, turning the hunters into the hunted.
Evolve completely caught me off guard, sucked me in, and didn’t let go for a long time.
No matter how good the story of a game is, no matter how intense the scenery, how dramatic the plot, and how convincing the world building – I have never “felt” a game again like I did with Evolve. No The Last of Us II, no Baldur’s Gate 3, no Final Fantasy, and no World of Warcraft could ever captivate me like Evolve did.
I didn’t just play the monster. I was the monster. When I was hunting the hunters, I would lean forward, tense, closer to the screen. When I used the monster’s “deep breath” to scan the environment, I found myself inhaling deeply in front of the computer as well.
A game that overshadowed everything else for me
Even though the term “addiction” is often thrown around a bit inflationarily and glorifyingly in the gaming world – with Evolve I was probably closer than ever before. During the release week, I played at least 14 hours a day, working on articles during loading times and matchmaking, reducing my sleep to an absolute minimum. I thought about Evolve while falling asleep and quite surely during my dreams as well. I felt like a child who can’t think of anything else just before Christmas – and I enjoyed every minute of it.
The highlight for me were the PvP campaigns. Here, you played multiple maps in succession over the course of about two hours, and depending on how well one side performed, it affected the next map. For example, if you won as hunters on the “Dam” map, the next map would be partially flooded – drastically limiting the monster’s movement space and facilitating the hunt. However, if the monster won and the dam was destroyed, it would rain on the next map, drastically limiting the hunters’ visibility and providing the monster with extra cover.
I played so much that I was ranked 2nd in Europe with the Goliath, the “standard monster,” for weeks. That is actually one of the few gaming achievements I am still proud of today. The only person ahead of me was a known cheater who simply quit matches with Alt+F4 when he was about to lose – because then the game wouldn’t count a loss against the account, and it would retrospectively be declared a “bot game.” It was simply impossible to compete with that win rate of 100% – a form of cheating that he even boasted about in the comments back then.
Evolve was dead before it truly lived
Evolve unfortunately went under due to catastrophic marketing by the publisher, a steep learning curve for hunters who fundamentally had to set out as a full 4-person team – as “randoms” made most hunts impossible. The revision of the game to a free-to-play model didn’t help anymore. It was perceived by many potential players as “greedy,” with a disastrous DLC policy.
What it boiled down to was simply very, very poor marketing and did not reflect the reality in the game at all. The reasons why Evolve flopped also had other grounds, as the boss of 2K explained years later.
Now, Evolve is just a greyed-out, because uninstalled entry in my favorites list on Steam. And that’s exactly where it will remain, until Steam is eventually shut down or Evolve is removed from my account for other reasons.
For me, it was the best game ever created. The game against which every other experience must always be measured. The absolute peak of my gaming life, which will probably never be surpassed. A sad yet deeply fulfilling memory that is now 10 years old. An experience I will never fully forget – and from which I also never want to recover.
