Evolve is going free-to-play on PC. Starting today, the Evolve Stage 2 update turns Turtle Rock Studio’s 4v1 alien monster hunting shooter into a free-to-play game. Studio co-founders Chris Ashton and Phil Robb revealed the change to fans late yesterday, saying the business model needed to be overhauled for Evolve to successfully re-launch. Although the game was well-received during E3 and other previews, the negative reception at launch caught the team by surprise.
Sure, there were some good reviews. There were also bad reviews. Yes, there was excitement. There was also disappointment – for players and for us. The DLC shitstorm hit full force and washed away people’s enthusiasm, dragging us further and further from that first magical pick-up-and-play experience.
The course correction comes with immense changes to the gameplay experience as well. The force dome, used to catch the alien player, will now be an ability that any character can activate instead of being limited to the Trapper class. Respawns for the hunters will be on a timer that grows as the match progresses, instead of being on a set rotation. Monsters have more health to and begin with enough skill points at the start of a match to use four abilities right away.
Players that previously purchased Evolve prior to the re-launch will be rewarded for their patronage with various cosmetic goodies and everything unlocked in their accounts will carry over. Turtle Rock added that while they’d like to bring the same changes to console, the beta period on PC will allow them to work out any issues prior to working on the other versions.
Turtle Rock Studios has announced that Evolve, their asymmetrical shooter, will be free this weekend on Xbox One and PC. See, they just released the Monster 2.0 update back on the 11th of August, but no one seems to have cared enough to talk about it. In fact, you didn’t even check to see that it wasn’t really called “Monster 2.0” at all. It’s the Hunter 2.0 update. With a rough launch and rougher marketing campaign that never quite overcame the vocal objections to the pricing model, Evolve has floundered. A free weekend may be just the ticket to get people to at least try the game.
Not only will the game be free for the weekend, but Turtle Rock is releasing the Meteor Goliath, a fiery variant of the monster, for free to everyone to keep. Also, if you buy the game after the trial period, all your stats and unlocks will carry over. Wait! That’s not all! During the weekend trial, all the DLC characters will be available for everyone to sample as well. You’re not too busy playing Mad Max, or Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, or taking a nap, to experience the shooter that got a solid “mixed” rating on Steam right?
Got enough Evolve? Despite the brouhaha over Evolve’s DLC plans, Turtle Rock and 2K have announced a second content pass for the game. Hunting Season 2 will add four more hunters, another monster, and a cosmetic skin for each to Evolve. The first character revealed is Lennox, a mech-suited hunter with a melee attack.
No price has been revealed for Hunting Season 2, but it will be available to order on June 23rd for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
Evolve is getting a free update that adds a quicker gameplay mode than the standard 4v1 hunting matches. The Arena Mode update features deathmatches between stage 2 Hunters and a similarly leveled monster duking it out in one of 70 domed spots in the game’s maps. Players get one life per round. The winning side is declared after defeating the enemy in two out of three rounds. Turtle Rock Studios expects this mode will result in faster matches since it jumps past the tedious hunting part of the game. The free update for Evolve should be live on all platforms today.
Insect mantis faced dude, otherwise known as Slim, is coming to Evolve with three other new hunters at the end of the month. Slim, the new medic, is a genetically modified insect hybrid because… Oh, who cares? He’s a bug guy with a wasp-shaped healing drone. The other new hunters are Torvald, a mortar dropping assault trooper, Crow, a sneaky trapper, and Sunny, a support character that can boost the whole team’s jetpacks. Each of the new hunters can be purchased separately or come as part of the Hunting Season Pass.
If you’re more interested in stomping around, the fourth monster, the Behemoth, will be available as well on March 31st. Thanks to Evolve’s confusing DLC scheme, he’s not part of the Hunting Season Pass. He comes with the Monster Expansion Pack.
Pre-order incentives are nothing new. Putting money down on a game before launch may be a sucker’s bet because you don’t know how the game will actually turn out, but publishers love these programs because they lock customers into the purchase. The old reasoning given for preorders, that stores needed them to gauge demand for supply, has nothing to do with digital sales, yet the practice thrives. Sometimes, they’re fun little bonuses like a gold version of a weapon, or an extra mission crammed into a game with umpteen quests, but lately pre-order incentives have either become too convoluted to suss out or place a significant feature behind a paywall. Evolve goes for option 1.
Let’s figure out what we need to buy to get the full game after the jump!Continue reading →
Evolve, the asymmetrical hunters versus monster multiplayer game, has a pre-order offer on the Xbox One that allows access to content that players on other platforms will need to grind to access. Turtle Rock and 2K have announced that pre-ordering the digital Xbox One version of Evolve will unlock the top tier of hunter characters as well as the Wraith, the third and final playable monster in the game. Each character in Evolve must normally level up through grinding XP – at least 8 hours worth of play, going by the rate of progress in the beta. But why grind for it when you can just pre-order and have it unlocked for you when the game launches? Playing games to experience content is so last gen.
Evolve will launch on February 10th for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PC.
