Death of a Game: Evolve

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#DOAG . Death of a Game is a series dedicated to uncovering the mysteries surrounding the death of a game or company. nerdSlayer defines the term "death" in the context of the show as either... 1. Literally dead. 2. Had a mass exodus of players and never recovered (expectations etc). 3. The company ceased to exist. We follow a timeline of events, to uncover clues concerning why a game or company doesn't do well, and attempt to put it all together at the end for a deduction explaining how or why the game failed based on the evidence gathered.
Sources:
steamcharts.com/app/273350
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolve_...)
evolve.fandom.com/wiki/Evolve
www.metacritic.com/game/pc/ev...
www.gameinformer.com/games/ev...
store.steampowered.com/ageche...
steamcommunity.com/games/2733...
2k.com/en-US/game/evolve/
www.ign.com/articles/2014/02/...
www.usgamer.net/articles/4v1v...
arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/0...
www.gameinformer.com/games/ev...
www.polygon.com/2015/5/26/866...
www.ign.com/articles/2014/12/...
www.ign.com/articles/2015/03/...
www.vg247.com/evolve-publishe...
www.gamespot.com/articles/evo...
www.gamespot.com/articles/thq...
www.gamespot.com/articles/evo...
www.pcgamer.com/evolve-looks-...
www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...
hardcoregamer.com/features/ar...
www.gameinformer.com/b/news/a...
www.gameinformer.com/b/featur...
www.neogaf.com/threads/why-ev...
www.destructoid.com/evolve-bu....
www.pcgamer.com/evolve-dev-sa...
www.mcvuk.com/business-news/p...
www.mcvuk.com/development-new...
www.engadget.com/2016-10-26-e...
www.pcgamer.com/face-off-has-...
comicbook.com/gaming/news/evo...
www.engadget.com/2015-01-13-f...
venturebeat.com/2014/05/22/wh...
www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...
www.gamespot.com/articles/fre...
www.gameinformer.com/b/news/a...
www.ign.com/articles/2014/12/...
www.ign.com/articles/2015/02/...
www.gamespot.com/articles/evo...
venturebeat.com/2015/02/11/ga...

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

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[@geoDB.]

Death of a channel: nerdSlayer Studios

[@Mojavekight17]

My favorite case so far since I watched this game go down from very very far😅

[@jacksonteller3973]

Something tells me we'll soon be seeing "Death of a Game- Back 4 Blood", I mean come the fuck on, forcing you to play with other people to earn story-related achievements? What the fuck man?!

[@Mojavekight17]

@@jacksonteller3973 yeap

[@Ginpei_Wangan]

@@jacksonteller3973 Yeap,the flag is there too.Sooner or later it would be into Death Of The Game's Graveyard

[@goblinzaku6211]

It absolutely blows my mind that we’ve had these style games for so long yet every one is missing one of the most basic game mode ideas: monsters fighting each other free for all.

[@TheJysN]

"War of the Monsters" Used to play it as a kid at a friends home on PS2.

[@souxoux1671]

@@TheJysN indeed, War of the Monsters is just that. Great game!

[@tlofrank5689]

I've been wanting to play as a monster for so long

[@osirisavra1301]

Damn right that was my first thought lol and even hunters vs hunters.

[@ihatemp5k818]

@@TheJysN naw fr I had that on ps2 as a kid prolly one my favorite games to play fs

[@adc1222]

This game just makes me sad because the monster designs were legitimately fucking awesome. Playing a tentacled lovecraftian monster that could fly around and shoot lightning, or just rolling around as an absolutely massive boulder creature was so cool as a concept, but the execution of it and the monetization surrounding it were just awful

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

They put tons of effort in the models, they are gorgeous

[@arandominternetuser455]

This

[@Mincecroft]

I preordered Evolve (it's the reason why I try not to preorder now) and I enjoyed playing as the Boulder monster. Rolling around, squishing smaller creatures and eating larger ones was fun. I enjoyed the gameplay of the Monsters but the queue times for Monster were quite long and I only had one other friend who bought Evolve which severely limited the enjoyment of the Hunters.

[@holoceneevent4534]

its a great idea in its base, make the players the boss creature

[@InarusLynx]

@@Mincecroft I had the same experience. Pre-ordered and got burnt. Never again. My one friend lost interest quickly while I loved the game play, just not the wait.

[@tarael86]

You forgot to mention that 90% of the team that worked on L4D belonged to Valve, not Turtle Rock.

[@theepicduck6922]

Yeah turtle rock has been trying to ride that namesake but it's evident that a majority of the talent has left.

[@gyroscope915]

@@theepicduck6922 the talent didn't leave. They never had the talent in the first place

[@alexanderforrest1983]

If you watch the video about it, only about 15 of the 100s of developers on L4D were Turtle Rock.

[@jockeyfield1954]

turtlerock playtested cs:s and found that it was fun to kill hordes of zombies valve added in the weapons, unique characters, the maps, the special zombies, all of the story elements but, because turtlerock said "hey, killing zombies is fun" they take all the credit for it, not the people who actually fleshed it out and made it better to play. think of bob kane and bill finger

[@dxBIGBOSSxb]

He did between 2:30 - 2:50. He just didn't give an exact number.

[@dorianvey6675]

I was on the QA team for Evolve. this video is spot-on regarding what we experienced because of T2 (nicknamed The Terminator for obvious reasons). In a gameplay meeting with the senior designers, we in QA warned them that the game was a "running simulator" since there was nothing to do but chase the monster, and they disregarded it, saying we had come too far to change aspects to the core gameplay. Later at a bar, we vented that if they had brought us on earlier in the development cycle, we could have possibly helped to warn them against such a monotone gameplay model. Hundreds of experiences like that across multiple publishers and dev houses are what made me eventually walk away from the AAA video game industry and transition into I.T. and non-gaming software development.

[@kamerionsmith4551]

Well it turned from interesting games of cat and mouse, to monster battle simulator where everyone just spams abilities until one side loses. I know which one i liked more

[@DoktahDoktah]

"Nobody makes a game for esports." Correction nobody SHOULD but the year is now 2021.

[@josephmeholick1300]

esports are short lived as soon as the leader board becomes a race to the bottom.

[@nathanielnizard2163]

LoL is a trash game that manages to advertise through its competitive scene, if I was a filthy capitalist I would want to do like the cool guys.

[@mythosinfinite6736]

eSports are best when they're emergent, not designed.

[@nathanielnizard2163]

@@Dualities I disagree, but nonetheless admire your ability to display a high degree of certitude on a topic you really don't seem so expert about.

[@JohnXina97]

*Cliff Bleszinski sweating heavily*

[@JorgeGarcia-gp5cf]

One of my good friends was a tester on that game. She told me that the testers flat out told the devs that their monetization scheme will ruin the game's chances of success and that it would not go well. The devs refused to listen, and my friend still tells me that was her biggest "I told you so" of her tester career so far.

[@Joao-lw5pj]

Turtle rock(developer) actually wanted it to be free to play since the beginning, 2K(publisher) is the one that demanded it to be a paid game with overpriced dlcs.

[@JorgeGarcia-gp5cf]

@@AzureRoxe Exactly man. I used to be a AAA game tester myself, and you'd think they would want to hear it from testers first since we have to be professional and have to provide constructive feedback. Unfortunately, game devs that refuse to listen to testers and their fans are lost causes.

[@JorgeGarcia-gp5cf]

@@Joao-lw5pj The biggest point of contention internally from what she told me it was Turtle Rock's idea to monetize gun skins. They told them that at the very least they could try to make the skins interesting, however we got them trying to sell us blue (Angry Joe ranted about this one), red, etc. gun skins.

[@SilverShinotora]

Jupp i was a tester and can confirm. Also that the chtulu looking monster was op, i often dumpsterd people as soon as they spawned.

[@Largentina.]

@@SilverShinotora Why would we need you to confirm that? It's not like you're bragging about making millions of dollars. You're telling us that you had a job that paid terribly, we believe you, no proof needed.

[@cheekibreeki6255]

This game was fun as fuck to play and I loved all the different characters and monsters. Remembering thinking “how is this not more popular”

[@nixmilt3040]

Who’s your favorite character? I was a Lazarus main

[@tiga8600]

@@nixmilt3040 laz annoyed the shit out of me mr. Boop ima gone then revive revive revive like where the fuck are you little man. My favourite was emmet since you didn't really need to aim with him and just focused on helping and the bug definitely the bug dude

[@tiga8600]

Poor realse and backlash from the community I stilll remember everyone ragging on the game about microtransactions while other games got way less gripe about that. And the unbalance of some perks in game where stupidly strong along with hunter combinations

[@nixmilt3040]

@@tiga8600 I’d play sunny if I was playing support and Maggie if I was playing trapper, bug man was my secondary medic

[@M00NQUITE]

@@nixmilt3040 i was a Caira Main !

[@AnimeBrosAMV]

Loved the game for like first 15 hours, then totally forgot about it.

[@CJWproductions]

That's a good return on your money imo. Better than a movie ticket. I don't need or want a game to consume my whole life -- there are so many awesome ones coming out all the time! That said, I'm sure the devs intended more. And I've certainly sunk considerably more hours into certain games. But I feel like 15 hours is pretty solid.

[@tomvonneefe4269]

Go back to playing cod

[@axeman8076]

@@CJWproductions its supposed to be something lke 1600 so it doesnt repeat itself and you can leave the game for 8 or so years come back and theres still more stuff to do

[@polskabalaclava]

@@tomvonneefe4269 why

[@Mizoturi]

@@CJWproductions not if it is supposed to be a live service game, 15 hours of fun is pathetic for what they were trying to pull off

[@disguy7345]

Evolve is the unfortunate result of a game with an interesting gimmick to it's game mechanics only to be slaughtered due to monetisation that disrespects the fact that you have already paid 60 bucks to play the game. It could have been great, it really could.

[@somedogsarecops2354]

I think everyone agrees the DLC was excessive but that was most like a Take-Two decision. The problem with Evolve was fundamental problems with the gameplay. Even without the crazy DLC the game would still be dead.

[@disguy7345]

@@somedogsarecops2354 true, turtle rock seem to abandon many aspects of LFD2s design of asynchronous PvP, which involves balancing of both sides fairly, the first person view of the monster and overall map design and aesthetic. If take two gave turtle rock a lot more time, i think they would have done better ( LFD2S one year gap of development doesn't count due to valves major involvement and more resources were alloted to turtle rock than the resources they were alloted to by take two)

[@HopeHorizons]

It hurts more knowing if the game was released 2019-2021 then it would've succeeded since monetisation in games you've already paid for are common now

[@luisvilca4467]

Nah, it was just hide and seek game mostly that's isn't fun

[@millardbaldwin7650]

Facts. What made me give up on the game was when I got the collectors edition that came with the first wave of dlc not working and the support team just saying “try reinstalling the game” no matter how many times I told those fuckers I already did that

[@ZybakTV]

I had a lot of fun with this game as someone who almost exclusively played the monster. The problem was that very rarely would you get a coordinated group of hunters that actually gave you any sort of challenge. Even winning as a monster got boring because all you'd do is just run around and hide until you fully evolved...then shit on everyone in 5 seconds. It was a lot of un-fun to reach the fun part.

[@MrJagermeister]

Definitely a game where, if you didn’t have a communicating, coordinating, and strategizing team of hunters working together as a foursome, you were definitely better off playing as the monster. I played in some community tournaments against some of the best hunter teams out there and I can’t describe that feeling of not remembering the last time you breathed, realizing you’re white knuckle gripping the controller and on the verge of a panic attack. Barely squeaking by, or getting obliterated. Wish everyone had the same experience that I did with this game.

[@danielletaylor9201]

I had so many games as the Gorgon where I'd just bum rush the Hunters as soon as they went boots down. It only failed me once, and that's because I fucked up and pretty much handed them my own ass on a platter. It was good times.

[@WitchLuw]

ALl they needed was smaller maps or make something with the players to level up quicker

[@vforveranda4788]

Ah, then I wish me and my mates ran into you on the battlefield, mate. We were pretty a pretty well oiled hunter troupe.

[@the11382]

I wonder if this game would be better if both sides became stronger over time, meaning its a race.

[@A1phaDrag0n]

I recall reading about this game and thinking "whoa, that sounds like my kind of game" then seeing the list of DLC and completely giving up on buying it. I don't want to put the game together like Legos, I just want to install and play it.

[@ivandankob7112]

Even back then the amount of Day 1 dlcs was a red flag

[@kingol4801]

Except DbD exists and it is literally that

[@browut644]

​@kingol4801 the big difference is you can get a majority of the characters with iri shards fairly easily, while with evolve you literally had to buy them. The dbd characters are also decently cheap compared to the evolve characters

[@lazarlazarteam1033]

@@kingol4801yeah but most dbd killers are free

[@mrsexy5680]

Personally i think what made it flop is… everyone wants to be the monster. If the game revolves around the dynamic of the monster why bother playing as the hunters who have basic fps gameplay you can find in any other games. Not to mention the hunters rely on teamwork and coordination, needing communication and such while playing the monster you are free to do whatever.

[@allemagneproducer]

Rly? If i buyed this with my friends, wed probably play prey only

[@nepi7847]

i probably got like 120 hours in befroe they closed evolve 2 and never had i played the monster, i hated it as i'm more of a coop person who likes the challenge, and what better challenge than someone hopefully better than me controlling this massive beast

[@planescaped]

In Giants Citizen Kabuto Multiplayer I never got to play Kabuto. :( I did figure out you could place buildings in the sky and then place gyrocopters and teleporters up there, far above the enemy base... I think kid me singlehandedly ruined that games multiplayer 'meta', as not long after I started doing that and dominating in a few games did I notice _everyone_ was doing it in every game now... Whoops.

[@nustde00]

I dont agree. Monster is the worst, Assault or Tracker please!

[@TheBorderHoppr]

i disagree, dead by daylight has a flourishing population and is basically the same just less exciting

[@ubermorpth2208]

I'll always remember the mass confusion and disappoinment that turtle rock studios brought with Evolve.

[@goldman77700]

I remember it and I never touched the game. Haha!

[@DmytroBogdan]

@@goldman77700 same, but watched some streamers play and it looked fun but then I remembered that I didn't have 4 men premade team

[@djandjb1]

It was hella fun, this was one of a few games I played where I said to myself, this is entirely unfair that it’s dying

[@RoGoSpLiNTeR]

@@djandjb1 yeap, i jump onboard with the f2p. And I played till near the end. There were no1 to play or sometimes and if you manage to start a game it was always the same people .

[@DmytroBogdan]

@@djandjb1 life is not fair in general :)

[@YoloMcSwaggot]

It was really difficult getting four mates together to play Hide and Seek - especially with the $60+ price tag as an entrance barrier. I quite liked the game, though. The different monsters, hunters and biomes were well designed and it was surprisingly polished for a AAA game.

[@Mixu.]

Ngl it sucks how "surprisingly polished for a AAA game" is a valid sentence nowdays. How are indies more polished than most of the biggest moneymakers out atm...

[@charlesingram2075]

@@Mixu. I've played indie games made by 10 chinese dudes that have engaged me more than playing Evolve, still fun to watch gameplay for me though.

[@nnelg8139]

Hmm, perhaps this concept could be revived by embracing the disorganization and having more people on the hunter team with less incentive to work together. I'm imagining a battle royale style arena with 20+ hunters and a mix of human and AI monsters, where monsters have finite bounty rewards that must be shared among those who kill them. (The rewards are in turn used to purchase weapons etc.)

[@nnelg8139]

Oh and monsters only evolve by eating humans or other monsters... so there's even less incentive for monsters to work together

[@richanddarksbane1439]

That and having to pay for ps plus or xbox live gold

[@Martiancookiehunter365]

The Death of this game hurt me it was a hell of a lot of fun and it had so much potential behind it it's such a damn shame man

[@tiga8600]

Ain't it werid how most of the community loved the game and or either hated but still sad to see it die out and be left behind forever

[@brandonambrose6926]

17:30 Hey that's me! As someone who was heavily invested into this game you did an amazing job with this video. Thanks for this great content.

[@GhostIsAYandere]

Dammnnnnn sonnnnn

[@KlutzyBoss]

Ur the cringelord doin the nae nae?

[@brandonambrose6926]

Naw that was our monster player lol@@KlutzyBoss

[@KlutzyBoss]

@@brandonambrose6926 Appreciate the reply a year in the making :P

[@medijate]

I feel like Evolve is ahead of it's time in how companies would mangle projects. It's monetisation will be the posterboy for "how to make consumers angry" decades from now.

[@user-ef8bf5xk9b]

most aaa games have even greedier monetization nowadays so.....

[@90benj]

I rather think it was too far behind the curve in terms of monetisation, there were already a lot of successful titles following the game-as-service model, where the content is free to play, but through regular updates you keep the game fresh and finance the developement through MTX

[@anupsetzombie]

Evolve died so modern DLC practices could be considered the norm.

[@Kaimax61]

nah, for that kind of aggressive DLC model they should've gone F2P from the start.

[@manuelredgrave8348]

And nowdays we have Day one paid dlcs as the norm...i was hoping that at least single player games like SMT 5 wouldn't have it, but nope

[@Grim_Pinata]

Ngl the first thing I ever think about whenever I remember Evolve is how cool the logo is True graphic design perfection

[@CoratMcRed]

The art design in general for Evolve was really well made overall, tis a shame it got stuck with a game so doomed

[@KyrosTheWolf]

That's arguably the best thing about the game. I never knew the reason for the design choice til my brother pointed it out to me

[@Jeff4theRaid]

I remember the one epic trailer with the Cosmo Sheldrake song

[@lygoozman125]

I genuinely hope they come with a sequel, this game had so much potential it was just cut short

[@halfknight2310]

true, I am really interested in it's lore too.

[@Laxhoop]

I remember being a regular viewer of Machinima’s daily gaming news channel when this game was coming out. Everything from the reveal, to the downfall, I saw the entire community’s reaction to the whole thing in real time.

[@hal900x]

"They were unable to get that game greenlit". There's your answer right there: they had to do something the suits thought would make money. Result: failure.

[@AuroraDrag0n]

God damn it. I was wondering when Evolve was going to be featured here. This one hit a little too close to home. This is my history. I was right there on the front line, and a piece of me died with this game. I loved this game, I gave it my heart. I will never forgot the incredible hunts I had. I so badly want Evolve to be a thing again, but I know deep down that it's gone for good. RIP Evolve.

[@BarnetGamer]

I feel you, bro. Evolve and Nosgoth were my most favorite asymmetrical pvp games back in the day.

[@s1mplem4gic58]

Same boat

[@clemmychan9295]

god, this is making me so sad. I started playing the game when it became free to public and I instantly fell in love with the game. Unfortunately though that's when it was already starting to fall apart. Just thinking about the massive potential of this game it it were to be released now....

[@TheCueJunior]

I'm in the same boat I wasn't expecting to see this come across my yt home page.

[@burritodevil4036]

same here, one of my favorite games, hopefully it comes back one day re-imagened

[@zoulsgaming9455]

Man this hurts to watch, i loved Evolve and i always felt it was "done dirty" by take2 and the way that they monetized the game. I feel there were 3 big reasons for why the game failed. 1) It was an amazing niché game concept made for a large audience, so the things that made the game so amazing, such as ACTUAL 4 players working together where each member was integral to the success of the game, instead of "COD Team shooter where i can carry my entire team", and the aspect of finding the monster where you had to cut it off while also being close enough to eachother to not get punished for it. Was also what made people, including big youtubers who had plenty of complete inept gameplay videos where they ran in alone and got pounced by the mechanic that prevents running alone, to rage quit the game and put the blame on the game instead of their own failures, 2) the 4vs1 lead to terrible balance issues, which literally every single game we have seen since come out also suffers from, i think the most successful is dead by daylight and the community hates eachother, there was so much discussion about who to balance for, as a solo monster vs pugs it was piss easy, and as a premade group vs monster it was also at times super easy, and then they decided to try and balance for pro play which just killed quickmatch totally. 3) Evolve was a niche game made with an AAA budget that try to make it back, So it was milked harder than it should, this meant that the absolutely amazing voice lines, audio and moveset design let to much less monsters and hunters, compared to if they simply added individual items as was originally proposed. It also came out at a time where the online boiling point for "paid DLC" was blowing over and all the gamer outlets like angry joe who hated COD for doing it but didnt have the balls to scold it, all wailed on Evolve instead with downright lies in regards to monitization across youtube leading people to not even daring to pick it up. Regardless. I managed to find 10 copies for 3 euro, so dirt cheap and sent some to my friends, since you can still play the old P2P version as long as you have a physical copy, so every once in a while i still drop back in for nostalgia.

[@firstnamesurname2482]

At this point, I don't even know how you can even balance 4vs1. It's 4vs1 for god sake, there's always gonna be imbalance, unless the devs are Icefrog, the dude who balanced Dota since forever, I don't think we're gonna see a somewhat balanced 4vs1.

[@zoulsgaming9455]

@@firstnamesurname2482 and thats the problem of the current designs for 4vs1, you would have to in a way make it 1vs1 but with 4 people on one side. Look at DBD, prob the only alive 4vs1 game atm the, and they arent even 4vs1 entirely, since each individual survivor can win while the others lose. In that game if you catch and kill a survivor you have only killed 25% of all enemies, so you have to be able to kill 4 of them in the time span that they have to do their objective, which leads to survivors complaining that they cant outrun the killer and "omg its so boring to be on the hook and dying" because their tribalistic mind only sees it as "killer bad, survivor good" What i mean would have to be something where everybody dies if one person dies, but that just leads to a weakest link scenario. Evolve had the advantage of the having the monster be in control of the match pacing, since it had a win condition that wasnt based on combat. Hence getting 1 kill would make the team weaker and give him time to get closer to his win condition, which was good. But it almost needs to be more than that. How one would do it, i dont know, thats why pve games are much easier to balance for since the base assumption is that the players win, but in a pvp scenario it has to be roughly 50/50, but since every monster win = 4 survivor losses, its never going to be that.

[@nixmilt3040]

@@zoulsgaming9455 to your first point yes I 100% agree a lot of the randoms I played with wanted to play every class like they were a one man army, and I’d just sit and watch the trapper and medic try to take down the monster on their own

[@Detralon]

Meat is back on the Menu booyyys

[@Indigo_Gaming]

Aw man, still sore about this game! So much potential, and clearly a ton of work went into building the world and making the jungles and environments feel like living places with real ecosystems. I feel that the insane amount of cosmetic DLC at launch poisoned the well, combined with hugely unbalanced launches of new monsters (wraith decoy, anyone?!) and its terrible, terrible matchmaking system that sometimes took half an hour to connect killed the game. It's a shame, I still go back to the original game (pre-Stage Two) and play solo sometimes. What could have been!

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

I am still a believer in monster vs player archetypes which is why I do believe a similar style game could work and work great 👍🏼

[@SarcasticData]

Same. I wanted to love this game so much and I had a lot of fun, but I just couldn't afford to shell out some of the most expensive, content gated DLC. By the time it went F2P I moved on and never looked back.

[@GusMortis]

Left for Dead was a good substitute, but didnt have that same scale. I do agree all the cosmetics where a put off for people. It was a bad call.

[@grantsamson2384]

@@nerdSlayerstudioss There's a game like that, dead by daylight, right?

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

@@grantsamson2384 horror games and the horror genre utterly bore me. Forced you can't fight back mechanics aren't ever fun for me personally.

[@LegalPhantom]

One of the trailers/ads had the COO saying: "In 3 or 4 years from now, when a AAA game lets you down, you can say: I'm gonna play Evolve, because, damn, that game is still fun." The best epitaph I've ever heard. Edit: Found it, Min 3:47 kzbin.info/www/bejne/bX6Xg6p9rLamoq8

[@Ivanstov]

makes me wonder if B4B is gonna follow in Evolve's footsteps...

[@andrewmeyer3599]

@@Ivanstov Yeah, I think it is. Definitely not the soul successor to L4D2 like it was being labeled as

[@phizmeister]

@@andrewmeyer3599 It does everything better than both L4D's. Those are dated games.

[@SubZeroDestruction]

@@andrewmeyer3599 B4B isn't like Evolve. 1: It's not being published by 2K, and 2: It's a game concept that's not completely new and original, so it's more likely to maintain people who enjoy L4D/PvE/Zombie shooters. It's not going to "die" like Evolve, especially if servers stay up, but it's not a game that's expected to have hundreds of thousands of daily players, since it's mostly just a story game which after a couple runs or completion will be good enough for most people.

[@Rusty126]

@@phizmeister L4D 1 and 2 has better characters, better environments, better storytelling, better specials, etc. B4B has a godawful card gimmick meant to milk people of their money.

[@Eclipsed_Embers]

I loved this game and personally never saw the issues with it this video finally explained why it sounds like all the major issues were on the Hunter side I never played Hunter I feel like a full game that just focused on playing as the monster for longer periods would've been better (even if a bit more niche than a shooter) it's a really big shame that Evolve failed, based on reading the other comments it seems like I'm not the only one who loved it.

[@nixmilt3040]

I loved this game too, but I only played hunter The problem I saw, at least from a gameplay perspective, was a lot of players want to play every hunter class like you play COD or battlefield In Battlefield you can still be a one man army even if your playing medic A lot of people would carry that one man army mentality with them no matter their class But the matches were you got a whole team that “understood game” were pure magic

[@mikebennett153]

Idk if things felt different when this launched but modern day this game feels like a 20 dollar game content wise, assume a lot of people couldn’t justify paying 60 for this

[@Eclipsed_Embers]

@@mikebennett153 personally my way of valuing games is £1 = 1 hour of enterainment as the expectation. anything significantly better is good, anything with significantly less time is bad. in pounds I'm pretty sure Evolve as around £40. according to Steam I got 83 hours out of Evolve. I'd say it was pretty decent.

[@Hikikomory_Life]

Death of a Game: Evolve 4 years later SIKE!

[@ShockedLogic]

Aside from problems in core design, Sterling still put it best "Evolve fell down the publisher bullshit tree, and hit every single branch on the way down." And the saddest part is that everything that was done to it that turned players like myself away is incredibly commonplace now.

[@KnakuanaRka]

Amen. 🙏🏼

[@ianwiesendanger2129]

guess why I don't play multiplayer games (and ubisoft singleplayer games; are you kidding me ubi??) anymore? That's right, season passes, microtransactions everywhere, unfinished games on release, completely broken matchmaking and balancing on day one.

[@Idkwhtpsipto]

Is the only way now! Not just commonplace! I literally rely on indie devs at this point. Utter monetized atrocity now is the gaming industry.

[@nuclearattackwombat8390]

The aggressive monetization killed it for me. I was actually very interested in the game and went to the store page looking to buy it. Five minutes later I closed the page without spending a dime. I had vague ideas of coming back and giving it a go once it went on sale or something, but the playerbase collapsed and made it a moot point.

[@muysli.y1855]

And they not learned B4B is same shit

[@willschoonover8654]

Evolve is one of my favorite games from the last 20 years. Thanks for giving it some time and for exposing all the things that we guessed were wrong with it.

[@teekay__]

I'm genuinely saddened that I never got to play this game online, it looked like such a good time.

[@NekoDisciple]

Man, it truly was a good time

[@LisssardManN]

it was so fun, even got some good friends out of it too

[@Jasonwolf1495]

Here's a prime game for comparison when it comes to the hunters side of evolve, Deep Rock Galactic. 4 classes, but the game is built from the ground up to let you play any combination and none being required. They even specifically avoided a medic class because they almost always become required. The need to get 4 random people together to work together is a lot harder with forced roles.

[@bombomos]

Deep rock is beautiful. Honestly I think it works because your objectives are mostly standing still. So you aren't chasing something around the map to get shit done. Plus it's pretty light hearted

[@kedarunzi9139]

@@bombomos how are the objectives, besides escorts "standing still"

[@tiga8600]

That was a pain 4 randoms either completely ass or completely overkill in 1 fight

[@xenophon5354]

Most 4 player co-ops that I’m aware of are like that. There are rough classes, but everyone can get the job done. Vermintide is another example. Rough roles of frontliner, ranged DPS, and utility, but a full frontliner team comp is perfectly viable.

[@Boxfighter-110]

@@kedarunzi9139 veins of Liquid morkite don’t get up and run away eating glyphids until they come back and kick your ass

[@nathanhale4430]

man i loved this game, i think the biggest problem with it was that they expected the players to play it in varied ways, showing in trailers with the monster playing stealthily and the tracker tracking things. but players will always choose the easiest path, which involves running around and eating everything as fast as you can without care for hiding from the hunters. this meant that every game i played was just the hunters in a constant chase to get the monster, while the monster was always right in front of them. ashamedly as the monster i did the same thing, as i couldn't think of another way. but there was one match which was different, i went as the tracker who had beacons and the monster was a kraken who was very good at hiding. everytime we would find it, it would be hiding on a rooftop or in a weird place, we would get into a fight and it would manage to hide again. i actually had to be a tracker and place beacons across the map, as that is the only way we stood any chance of finding it. it continued on that way, it was a very long game, it was one of the most fun matches i have had in a game, but it was the only one like that. KRAKEN GANG

[@LordOfel]

Kraken sound design is goated

[@MrJagermeister]

My buddy mainly played as Griffin (the sound-spike trapper) and he was the bane of monsters that tried to hide, everywhere. He ended up in the top #15 as that character in North America, and I was also there as the Wraith. I didn’t even bother using invisibility because of him. I just went balls out, waiting for them right out of the dropship and immediately attacking. I’d like to take credit for single-handedly moving away from the “wraith is a bitch” meta and to a more aggressive, tumble and warp style of play where I’d split them up, drag them screaming into the sky and drop them hurtling towards the ground, then warp towards the medic or someone and rip them to shreds. Got a lot of messages afterwards, win or lose, just thanking me for playing that monster in a more fun way than they were used to seeing.

[@Zerostealthman]

This video is just incredible, I love the serious analytical vibe that it has and the editing it top notch. This reminds me of the feeling some of my favourite non fiction shows would give me growing up. The format is just infinitely engaging. Nice length too

[@the_real_Kurt_Yarish]

Took me until watching this video to realize the Evolve title logo is stylized the way it is in reference 4+1 playable characters and monster, with the second "v" stylized separately from the rest of the text to bring to mind the Roman numeral "V", five. It's a subtle nod to their previous games' stylized titles using a number that represents the playable characters as part of, or in place of, text. And I remember being hyped by the game's original trailer and marketing, so it's doubly sad it's taken me this long to notice.

[@lockitty7263]

This ones gonna hit hard, I loved Evolve before the console servers were shut down, favorite part was definitely the Hunters personality and dialogue, so much opportunity for a great comic story or movie or tv series based off of it and it’s story. If this game was released current day, at like a 20-25$ price range, or hell, if they wanted to keep a larger number of micro transactions, they probably could’ve made it free-to-play for massive success I hope they do something with Evolve in the future, so much potential

[@mansourhaddad398]

It is free to play I think

[@lockitty7263]

@@mansourhaddad398 Well, it was originally released as a 60$ game

[@WeArrLegion]

I loved this game too and also wished for more of anything about. Such a universe to explore. What I missed most and think they went wrong was with adding more and more hunters instead of monsters. 5 monsters vs 30? hunter varieties? They should've done 2 more monsters instead of the variants and more hunters/variants. Hope we will ever see a proper sequel. Titanfall redeemed itself with their 2nd. Evolve can easily follow suit 🥳❤️

[@tiga8600]

@@WeArrLegion evolve if it ever gets a sequel would be hard to redeem it self from what its known as now. I say a sequel in an aspect of a single player coop with and actually diverse story line would be good for the concept of the game

[@muysli.y1855]

Not with Turtle Rock

[@aeonawriter911]

Somewhere out there in a different timeline, this game would have been so fucking amazing Such an amazing concept, 4 hunters v 1 monster with cool ass maps and make your moments, just utterly thrashed thanks to monetization being atrocious

[@robj4078]

I think it’s fundamentally broken. You get to play the monster at best 1/5 games.

[@gjgaming2133]

Agreed

[@stryke-jn3kv]

@@robj4078 Yeah I remember that being a huge problem as people just could not start games. They'd load in, see they're a hunter, and quit in the hope of getting to play monster, basically screwing the other players to an endless loop of getting a player, and then imediately losing a player as they just don't want to play hunter.

[@barubary218]

And that game does exist it’s called Dead by daylight… even if monetization is a thing but still

[@Wheler]

Isn't it just the Predator game?

[@AutomaticOps]

I am watching a lot of your videos since I just discovered the channel and I am seeing a trend that games releasing with a lack of content or a perceived lack of content struggle. Shows that first impressions really are everything.

[@CAW139]

It still hurts my soul a little to see the way this game fell. I loved the core gameplay and had a lot of fun when I played it

[@Arcademan09]

Angry Joe's reaction to IGNs score while livestreaming still makes me laugh to this day: Del: "IGN gave it a 9" AJ: " *NO FUCKING WAY!* "

[@WhiplashSL]

WHERE IS THIS GAME? I WANT TO PLAY THAT GAME! I'M GOING TO GO FIND IT!

[@vavra222]

You cant spell "ignorant" without IGN.

[@vavra222]

@@riordian2 What? Did Angry Joe run over your dog or something? AJ might be the annoying screaming guy, but his reviews are pretty spot on. Even then, it should come down to you, to form your own opinion and not rely on others to tell you what to like.

[@stygian5309]

@@vavra222 Nice. :)

[@firstnamesurname2482]

@@WhiplashSL YOU WANT TO GIVE ME A GUN, THAT IS PAINTED BLUE, AND YOU WANT TO CHARGE 2 DOLLARS???

[@WhiplashSL]

You were pretty damn spot on with the flaws and issues that resulted in Evolve's death. Well done. I would like to add to the discussion about the juxtaposition of Left 4 Dead's a.i. zombies and player-controlled infected vs. Evolve's player-controlled monster. The issue with Evolve in this regard is that, in L4D, you weren't just killing one zombie (i.e. Tank, Boomer, Smoker, etc.); you had wave after wave of zombie fodder, on top of the aforementioned player-controlled infected, that kept a given match compelling and intense. If you tried to focus all your attention on the bigger infected (Tank, Boomer, etc.), then you'll get swarmed by the horde of zombies barreling towards you and get overwhelmed. If you focused on those weaker zombies, you run the risk of an enemy player using your diverted attention to their advantage and maybe get a successful kill on a survivor. It also helped that L4D's infected had much more variety, depth, and complexity to how they operated. For example, a smart enough Smoker could position themselves in a very obscure balcony or hallway and snag a survivor. While that's happening, a Hunter could take advantage of that chaos and leap onto another survivor, temporarily taking them out of the action and sewing even more chaos. While all that is going on, a Boomer could self-destruct on the other two survivors to have the zombie horde lock onto them, while a Tank could work on keeping those two remaining survivors away from the other survivors being dragged by the Smoker or pinned by the Hunter. It could get all kinds of heart-pounding hectic fun. But Evolve? Well, firstly you didn't really have anything similar to the weaker, rank-and-file zombies in L4D. Sure, you had wildlife that can interfere in your tracking/fighting of the monster, but that's all they're capable of: they can interfere. Not are or will - but _can_ interfere. At best, the wildlife was more of a nuisance or annoyance than a credible threat. All they served was a potential roadblock in tracking and tailing the monster. If there were far more of the wildlife aspect in the levels (more variety and quantity in terms of how many could, say, charge at you or attack), then it could spice up the game a little bit. One of the things I was hoping to see in Evolve was for the monster to have some kind of battle cry/roar in the end-game that could summon the wildlife to its side, but that didn't happen. Secondly, the hunters in Evolve had only one objective: find and kill the monster. That was it. No killing other wildlife, no reaching a safe house or shelter or holding out until extraction arrives. Just... kill the big, bad monster. It would be like if you took out every other zombie in L4D and only had the Tank, with the survivors being more like exterminators than proper survivors trying to escape: it would get super boring real quick. Also, I wanted to comment on the e-sports part, because I wasn't even aware that there was even an e-sports scene for the game. I still remember one of the trailers for Evolve before the game officially launched where it was presented as a competitive match: live, analytical commentary on everything that was happening in the match, discussing tactics/toolkits of the players, shifting player perspectives, etc. When I saw that, my first thought was, _How on earth could you make a 4v1 an e-sport? Isn't the point of a competitive game being centered around having an even number of players on two teams, or a 1v1 if it's a fighting game?_ I was just thinking that they made the trailer because they wanted to present it like an e-sport (a la Destiny 2, which failed spectacularly at achieving its e-sports aspirations), but I had no idea that they actually turned it into an e-sport.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Great dialogue I appreciate the thoughts

[@leadpaintchips9461]

As to the competitive games, you can have asymmetrical games be competitive but it requires balance, and that's extremely hard to do while still being accessible to the general public. I think the best way of going about it would be a point base system, with each side having a 1 player and a team of 4 and playing two games. Not a "One side kills the other = win" that the base Evolve shows as a win. It allows for the heroes that E-Sports seems to desperately need (the solo player is a natural fit) and can lead to some interesting matches. It's how the tourney scene for DbD is, despite that game being massively imbalanced. If there was a developer who actually cared about getting close in the balance, then it would be even better. Also one of the biggest issues with coop games (even coop pvp) is the level of coordination between us normal plebs and high level/pro gamers. Trying to balance the cluster that is randos being thrown together is a completely different beast than trying to balance high level players together.

[@nandanthony]

Well, dead by daylight did have that esports scene for a smidge

[@magicmanmagicman5955]

I think this game would work for example if one TEAM of players are played a few lesser monsters and one big monster was some sort of hive queen and can shape enviroment, kinda like in the strategy game. This queen can be strong but vulnurable, can recruit lesser NPC creatures, etc. So Hunters can fight the realm itself, destroy some building, stop harvesting of resources, etc. Kinda like playing vs Zerg. Also Evolve monsters just had no personality and was straigh up boring. It is just a big ugly nobrain designs, and the main part of a good design is to make characters fun, iconic and memorable.

[@Jack_sosa_daniels]

It’s crazy I find your channel randomly, watched some videos, talked about evolve said why did they shut down the Servers and you. You’re that guy. Thanks

[@bearmcbear6080]

I miss the hell out of this game. I hope the concept resurfaces.

[@bitwolfy]

About the monetization thing, ads telling you to preorder evolve and get a bonus, came out *before* its official announcement. Really shows you exactly what take two had in mind for the game.

[@guillermocortes4415]

There should be an episode dedicated to "Why eSports fail" it's a very recurring theme and developers just seems to not get it. It's not even a recent thing, remember Firefall?

[@oscarriveraabal9390]

I hate when a new game HAS to go for the esports even when it doesnt have a stable playerbase . Thats a shit load of resources that could be used to improve the game and bring new content.

[@ChrisPhelior]

Remember some of the better ideas in heroes of the Storm being removed to make it "esport-ready"?

[@bassemb]

Firefall :( :( :( I loved that game SO much and I desperately wanted it to get better, but it only got worse and more confusing, and then it died... man I miss that game, so many good memories.

[@Brootall13]

I was going through a real rough time during the ending of and holiday season of 2014 into 2015; and when this game came out in Feb of that year it was an escape for me. Never thought about the stuff that was weighing me down when I would boot this up. Also Met some cool people while playing this. My record was over 80 wins and only 2 losses with Goliath. Thanks And RIP Evolve.

[@anthonyscanni6343]

Playing this game in its prime was amazing. Getting a group of friends together having a blast it was something else truly heartbreaking to see the downfall of this game

[@Spiritshakerthe4th]

The craziest thing about this game to me is that, in my country, the hype leading up to it was insane. As an Asian country not being Japan, Korea or China, gaming marketing was relatively unseen but yet this one had banners, electronic display trailers, big marketing collaterals, etc. Everyone I knew had played L4D and was interested in this next co-op experience by the same company. Then the game launched and like the Dwarves from the Elder Scrolls everything just vanished. Public interest dissipated almost overnight, the people who were interested suddenly just weren't anymore, copies of the game sat on shelves and the local community just went "I think I'll just stick with Monster Hunter". I can safely say, in my almost 3 decades of existence, I've never seen anything like this in gaming in terms of horrendously botched execution. Even Avengers and Anthem took time to die but EVOLVE, at least in my country, almost felt like a stillborn. What a shame.

[@radarphaser]

An FPS game like monster hunter would be amazing

[@HiroyaFujimiya]

Welp Evolve is one example of hype manipulation on years 2000 that failed on game(today is CP2077). And yes . that also my thinking, they wanna create Monster Hunter into FPS genre but they failed to exactly guess what make Monster Hunter great: a LOTS of monsters to hunt and complicated but fun game mechanic to learn and getting good with.

[@ihatethatyoutubedisplaysyo8106]

@@radarphaser bowgun

[@Saurygiel]

@@radarphaser a monster hunter game like evolve would be even better

[@JimJamTheAdmin]

Same! The only one I remember being similar, even around the same time, was Battleborn, but that did not have nearly the hype or media presence.

[@3ds_fellgod-myhopewillneve617]

I think Evolve’s downfall can be summed up with this single legendary Angry Joe phrase: “I-Is that blue? I-Is that f**king BLUE?! This is f**king BLUE. You’re giving me a gun that’s painted BLUE, and you want to charge me two dollars. It’s not even good DLC! It’s not even good cosmetic skins! Look at this s**t they didn’t even put effort into it! WTF?!”

[@mcgmgc]

A classic

[@ROYBGP]

Is that BLUE?

[@richardgries4098]

@@chainsawplayin oh yes and the fucking BLUE?!?? power armor that fallout 76 has. What is it with cheap looking skins and blue

[@thedefault8109]

@@chainsawplayintrue but at least it's f2p

[@LordOfel]

Years later and we look at 300$ Valorant skins

[@Sameeer_Saker]

Loved the video! I also really appreciate that you took the time to clarify that even with it's problems, Evolve had good new ideas that were better implemented in other games. I feel sometimes KZbin essays reinforce that mentality that if a game wasn't great then it's because their ideas were bad and could never be good, witch only makes developters and players to avoid games that take risks and try something different.

[@Miner49er201]

The character interactions and the characters themselves were very good as well.

[@chewybucca7703]

I really love this game, sad to see such an interesting concept mishandled so poorly, can't wait to watch your video!

[@gabornemes6932]

My words exaclty I loved playing this game early on then just burned out after a while

[@DavidJohnson-mo7ub]

I realise I'm splitting hairs but if something has been mishandled poorly doesn't that mean it's been handled well?

[@Largentina.]

Have you ever played Giants Citizen Kabuto?

[@-Cyuu-]

I'll be honest it was pretty fun and I thought the classes were interesting and their roles were all different and useful in their own way, monster game was very well made, it looked ahead of its time and I just thought in general it was good. People were unnecessarily harsh on it blinded by hype. Definitely was better than back 4 blood now lol

[@gabornemes6932]

@@-Cyuu- I would have to agree

[@cactuz4813]

Based on this and B4Bs “swarm mode” it seems like PVP isn’t Turtle Rock’s forte

[@fallendeus5641]

ummm... L4D Versus mode begs to differ

[@josephgarfield3363]

@@fallendeus5641 that turtle rock is not the same as the turtle rock that made Evolve and B4B.

[@overtale4516]

L4D and L4D2 are the only exceptions

@@overtale4516 I don’t think Turtle Rock developed L4D2

[@rickrolledbitch1941]

@@overtale4516 value made left 4 dead 2 not turtle rock buddy

[@thwomp1542]

I miss and will never stop missing this game. Was a ton of fun playing with friends. The game is beautiful even by today's standards, imo.

[@Necro_fury]

First vid ive watched and im totally enthralled by how you set things up and your script in general, got a sub already. Totally wanted to know this question. I Remember my brother excitedly describing it before it launched but then a year later I tried to ask multiple friends what the game was by describing it, but nobody knew, almost as if it vanished. Im a huge Rts fan, idk if you do whole genres but would absolutely love someone to explain why RTS games have fallen out of popularity. Too nostalgic for me to see why other than more than half the time your base got wiped out that you just spent ten minutes making. While mobile games with permanent bases (clash of clans and upgrade something over a week type of games) were on the rise.

[@BucklingSwashes]

19:24 This is actually one of the big things that I think Valve and Turtle Rock did so well with in the Left 4 Dead games, whereas Turtle Rock on their own has struggled to achieve it with both Evolve and Back 4 Blood. Cooperation in L4D was generally required for success, certainly, but it was straightforward and occurred naturally as players learned the game and its mechanics. Visual clarity, helpful screen tips, memorable and distinct audio cues, and immediate, consistent in-game reactions to player input all helped to train players to work together rather than try to go it alone. All players could at any time be a gunner, a medic, a melee specialist, a spotter, or whatever they needed to be at the time, as the game gave them the tools to do so and didn't force anyone to gravitate to a specific role through stats or builds. In Evolve, the hunters are much more reliant on their teammates' unique abilities and equipment rather than everyone having access to the same things, meaning any single weak link can potentially result in a loss. Similarly, B4B's cleaners and the decks you create are almost always going to be geared toward specific playstyles. Trying to play medic when your deck leans toward ranged damage can actually make things worse as you use resources better allocated to a Doc player. Similarly, a Doc player can waste much more ammo trying to save a teammate from one of the mutated Ridden because she's not built for damage. (Those Ridden are generally much tankier than L4D's special Infected, and thus don't have that immediate, consistent reaction to being fired upon that made rescuing teammates in L4D so simple and satisfying.) A system intended to add more variety and allow for deeper teamwork actually ends up restricting players more in the moment, and while that's not an inherently bad thing, it does make training players to work together and rewarding them for doing so MUCH more difficult. Deep Rock Galactic does this much better than Turtle Rock's recent games have, despite having similar class and build variety. A big part of that is that the gameplay and classes are designed to be able to allow for success solo as well as with others, so everyone has the tools needed to traverse the environment, complete objectives, defeat enemies, and quickly help their mates if they get downed or grabbed. Huge differences in equipment and weaponry certainly allow for differences in the experience, but digging, collecting resources, fighting, and helping friends are all possible for anyone at any time, and there's no punishment for doing those things instead of waiting for someone else to do it instead.

[@SuperRitz44]

Completely agree, I believe DRG is the best co op experience available right now. Rock and stone!

[@tarael86]

The main difference is that 90% of the team that worked on L4D belonged to Valve, not TRS.

[@EskChan19]

One of the things I kinda hate about B4B is not even that you need to cooperate but that you need to do it in such weird ways, like pointing out ammo because ammo is divided by weapons now, which also immediately restricts you more, because two people carrying a gun with the same ammo means both will run out very fast. It's just very restrictive when the game basically forces you to play the way the game wants. And that's how it works in B4B. You basically have very defined roles that everyone has to play, and if you change that composition in any way, you're basically fucked.

[@mcgmgc]

Damn it... this was one of my favorite games. I was 300/0 with the monsters (mostly Goliath, he was a bit underrated). They really fucked this game. The devs started nerfing / overnerfing things, eventually hunters became super broken (such as Sunny and Torvald from the DLC) so there were no monsters to hunt because the hunters would destroy everything.Those who played during that time know exactly what I'm talking about. Obviously this doesn't affect top players as much but it affected everyone else. Being a monster isn't easy, you only have yourself to blame. Evolve was the only game that has EVER given me adrenaline rush (monster solo) The whole DLC thing sucked. I really and I mean really loved this game. There was just nothing like it. I swear every game that I like ends up dying..

[@RandomPerson-tz7wk]

This game is basically a reverse among us. A group of player is trying to kill you while you do stuff. Yeah, it's impossible to balance. They either had to choose making it fun for 4 players (hunters) or 1 player monster. And getting owed is not fun.

[@mcgmgc]

@@RandomPerson-tz7wk Problem is, if you stacked with friends, the hunters were still more powerful than the Monster. But after the nerfs they made it so your average monster player would get annihilated by pretty bad Hunters. Eventually they tried fixing that but it was too late. There were some changes like evolving faster to stage 3, things like that. Wrong changes anyway, you should be punished for evolving incorrectly in front of the enemy so it was clear they had no clue what to do with the balance of the game. They kept adding really and I mean really broken asf effortless Hunters that just made the game worse. It's similar to Rainbow Six Siege - if you look at the game in the past, it was far more grounded and realistic / believable / less power creep but everyone was strong. Now everything is nerfed and the new operators are not grounded to reality at all. It does ruin the game a bit for me personally and the playercount on Steam charts is proof that many aren't happy with such changes / additions. This is also how OW died (yes, it is absolutely dead at the higher ranks - anyone that plays in GM and above knows this) the quality of the matchmaking has been proof of that since S6 or so. Everything in OW got nerfed, they kept adding awful characters with terrible balancing decisions, such as Mercy (an effortless, 0 skill character) being S tier for ages in an FPS game. This is going to happen in Battlefield 2042 as well. Look at these completely idiotic operators they're adding - wallhacks on demand? wingsuits (aka free C4 kills on tanks with no way of seeing the wingsuit guy coming), instantly deployable shields with no animation / activation time (will ruin 1v1 situations, Irish wins free 1v1s every X seconds) stupid crap like this ruins games. They're going to open a massive can of worms in terms of balance and we all know how terrible DICE are at balancing.

[@goliathownz9236]

What nobody is talking about is destiny also came out around this time and this was a casualty

[@Irochi]

7:23 and in 8:10 I love how narration and lips movement are so well synchronized here, that it looks like the guy in confessing lol

[@taurvanath]

I met my best friend through this game. I went to see him in February which is my only gaming friend I've ever had the chance to meet. This game was and still is a favorite of ours amongst a small group of other friends. He played Medic. I played Assault. The mental coordination of the hunter class bonded us in a way I've never experienced before.

[@ymblester5630]

When you brought up the IGN review, I thought were going to say "IGN gave it a high score, showing that the publisher had purchased banner ads on the site."

[@TheRogueWolf]

Can we consider that a "given" by this point?

[@WhiplashSL]

Seriously. I read the first paragraph of the review where it says, "It’s tactically deep, bursting with character" and went, "Tactical... bursting with chara- WHAT GAME WERE THEY PLAYING!?!? I want to play that game over this one!"

[@viper6220]

It sucks knowing this game had so much potential

[@halostormx7827]

Im new to this channel but the second Conan’s Theme came on i subbed i hope this is a reoccurring theme in theses videos cause thats rad

[@darthllama9278]

I remember loving every moment playing this game. Honestly in my opinion it is still one of my favorite game of all times. I mean the game had everything from gameplay to visuals to the world itself. I still remember all the good times I had with this game and every now and then I try to play a couple of rounds. I hated the microtransactions for the new monsters and hunters like everyone else, but I loved the game too much to let it stop me from enjoying the game. I must say I feel really sad seeing a video about this game here but I'm just glad that I was able to have a few great moments with my friends with this game before it died.

[@Morneri]

It really was a great game, such a shame that it failed, it had so much potential. I'll never forget it...

[@chuganoga1908]

The game was amazing it sucked seeing it go out like that

[@Chaosfly10]

This one hurt the most watching it slowly die. I really miss it a lot

[@FerintoshFarmsPhotography]

A big part of the problem was it had no objectives really, like Dead by daylight works because of the Generators which forces sort of like a king of the hill style gameplay where you actually will see the enemy

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

forced engagements on the map yep

[@steeldragon5730]

technically they helped remedy this with evolve stage 2 PC experiment and there was also the whole, once stage 3 happens the monster can destroy the relay

[@BucknerSJ]

The objective for the Hunters is to hunt the Monster, tracking it cooperatively and forcing a 4v1 fight. The objective for the Monster is to play stealth, feed to evolve, and ambush the Hunters in 1v1 or 1v2 fights, then run. Once the Monster hits stage 3, a map objective becomes vulnerable, shifting the conflict to a timed area defense. Forcing engagements is the entire strategic gameplay of Evolve. If you think it's just an action shooter, you weren't playing half of the game.

[@Kaimax61]

@@BucknerSJ and good luck trying to get 3 other competent people to play as hunters. you can write a whole 1MB guide on how to play Evolve, but it won't help when playing hunter with randoms is not fun. People leaving lobbies when they don't get monster becomes a real problem.

[@BucknerSJ]

@@Kaimax61 It was certainly possible to get a good team occasionally, but honestly I probably remember those instances a little too fondly. The player population, especially of those willing to play Monster, really was too small. ​ @Trouble in large numbers Maybe my perspective is skewed because I watched a lot of the beta Twitch streams, but the high-level play for Monster was, as I said, to go for ambushes early to get the health debuffs on Hunters. This style of asymmetric multiplayer does, however, lead to very bad gameplay experiences in unbalanced games. An unskilled Monster will be caught and killed at stage 1 by even mediocre Hunters, or a team with a clueless Tracker can lead to 10 minutes of blind wandering followed by death. For my part, I fell off playing because the community had shrunk and the ratio of good games had plummeted, but I never got bored of the gameplay on either side, even though I did prefer Hunter. Really though, I just miss the guns. Turtle Rock, please, give me back Torvald's shoulder cannons in Back 4 Blood. I don't care how they fit in the canon. I just need them. Please?

[@georgefluit8097]

i miss this game so much... i remember i met a team and played with them alot (also on teamspeak). We even signed up for a little tournament it was so fun....

[@sketchy14]

1:52 "Let's waste no more time" *Immediately starts a 5 sec countdown*

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

A transition done in an artistic manner is wasting time? Why do you even watch my videos if you see it that way 😂?

[@sketchy14]

@@nerdSlayerstudioss just thought it was funny, no crit 😂

[@gamerkingdom1442]

You know what’s hurt the most for me in this game? IT WAS SUCH A GOOD IDEA!! This is basically a Monster Hunter game, but another player plays the monster rather than a A.I.!!! But, of course, MICROTRANSACTIONS!!!!! IT PERSONALLY KILLED EVERY DESIRE FOR ME TO PLAY THIS GAME…….. But I do remember the infamous Review from IGN, that gave it a 9/10!! I mean, SHILL MUCH!?

[@Largentina.]

Such a good idea that someone else already came up with. Giants Citizen Kabuto had this style of multiplayer over a decade before Devolve came out.

[@gamerkingdom1442]

@@Largentina. Ooooohhhh, Riiiight. I remember that game. Good point…..

[@cuddlecakes7153]

I also like how this was basically a more scary monster hunter. I've always wanted to play the monster in that series

[@ThatPearlKid]

This got me thinking about the whole 1 monster vs a team of humans type games and made me realize something. Almost all of them where brought to their last breath insanely fast. They all got like a year at most and then.... BOOM coffin. Dead by Daylight is the only one I think of still moving. Though if you've played DBD in recent times that's not doing great right now either, Sad.

[@daviddiaz5815]

dbd is not doing good

[@poffzihavenoidea531]

Dbd has basically just had its balance screwed over by now

[@win2teabag009]

DBD's downfall is coming

[@daviddiaz5815]

@@poffzihavenoidea531 problem is that the game is (at its core) unbalanced just for the fact that is 1v4 that's way harder to balance

[@MistarZtv]

dbd balance and actually gameplay might be boring and stale af. but the simple and smooth brainness of the gameplay loop, the predatory grind and regular content update especially by massively popular licensee intellectual properties has been keeping the player count really strong and consistent. I think they recently broke their all time player count of all time at like 100k players peak, thats more than evolve would get combined in several months. sad sad day. but idk bhvr seems hella bent on releasing broken content and more cosmetics plus getting into bed with nft schemes. along with a cheater epidemic. would be very interesting to see just how dbd will devolve in the next few years, as another wave of asymmetrical games are trying to enter the market and learn where their predecessors failed in being a viable alternative to dbd.

[@Peter-qe1yh]

I absolutely loved this game. Me and my friends would always hop on as a group and it was absolutely amazing. Or I'd hop on just by myself and play the monster. I honestly loved the slow pacing of the game as you first tried to hunt down the monster, I really liked that slow gameplay, but it was definitely because I had my friends on chat to talk to.

[@Kallikukurinn]

Man, what a throwback. I remember sinking 50$ into the game. A year of my High School years went into playing this game. I actually had fun with it and had hopes of my friends also joining me in the game, which never happened. But there were ups to the game that I did like before they downgraded with Stage 2. The base game had a Single Player Campaign, while not that good, was still pretty entertaining and it was different from the samey Death Match games on different maps. You actually had different objectives other than to just kill the monster or for the monster to just kill the hunters. It was pretty cool. Another thing was the weather effects which play a part in the gameplay, I loved the aesthetic of rainy storm weather, it added to the feel. Then there was hunter dialogue at the start of a match and during a match which was a pretty nice bonus to the feel. They stripped the campaign, the voice interaction and the weather effects from Stage 2 and the game just became a soulless Death Match game, which killed all my interest in the game. Heck, I even made a cringy youtube video about it a few years ago. One of my favorite monsters to play was the Wraith, which is probably expceted given the high win ratios ^^". But I really just liked the fast playstyle of the monster and it's ability to sneak and lunge and pull hunters away from the group. Thanks for the video, it was a bittersweet throwback to my High School years :)

[@RecentCobra]

"It's a husk of what it used to be" It was always a Husk

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

fair

[@sivel7493]

at full price yes, but when it was free to play, hell was it a treat...I mean, if DBD could get so bloody popular, I can't see why Evolve wouldn't get that far if it had a better start...

[@chuganoga1908]

It was a good game dude wether it was worth full price is up to the players in all honesty but to say it’s a husk is pretty off

[@RecentCobra]

@@chuganoga1908 I played a match and it was nothing special

[@chuganoga1908]

@@RecentCobra I hear you but maybe it wasn’t for you in the sense that mobas wouldn’t be for everyone who likes RPGs

[@haruhirogrimgar6047]

My only memories of this game involved my friend playing Medic and f"cking sniping the monster at lvl 1 halfway across the map saying "Hey the monster is over this way" while the tracker is way behind him. I did not have a good time with this game. It would honestly be more fun as a singleplayer game where you exclusively play as the monster. Rushing around feeding on prey, growing slowly stronger, perhaps trying to escape AI monsters doing the same except hunting you. Up until you get to be top of the food chain and become the apex predator of the area. Like a much more hardcore creature stage Spore.

[@Carnidoom]

funny spore still more succes then rvolve too

[@remixedmind6648]

well made video as always. Quality work of finding all them proofs and stats. Cheers

[@royalloki4792]

This was arguably the first game where I decided to stop pre ordering games. Evolved was probably the most hyped I’ve been for a game before. And it was fun for the first 3 days and then just done.

[@ButterPacket]

And somehow they still haven't learned from some of their past mistakes with Back 4 Blood. History seems to repeat itself...

[@thatcow86]

B4B is such a disappointing failure that it's unreal

[@ButterPacket]

@@thatcow86 There was a ridiculous amount of feedback given to the developers during Alpha and Beta testing, but they made absolutely little to no improvements. Almost a year of development since closed Alpha testing. that went absolutely nowhere. Which leads me to believe the rest of the game was not even finished at all during the Alpha testing. Their studio was more occupied in deleting or locking any feedback posts. What was the point of having a website dedicated to asking feedback if you aren't going to do anything with it.

[@ButterPacket]

Here is a list of feedback that was mostly consistent by the community who participated in Alpha/Beta testing. Remember there was a ton of it and the developers did little to nothing with them. - Broken AI director, nonstop spamming specials in a choke point on higher difficulties. - Difficulty spike from easy to normal then to hard was an erupt 90 degree incline. - Gun sound effects made guns lack punch. - Janky reload animations made guns have less personality and less polish to its design. - Some guns were obviously better than others. Which leads to unbalance and meta weapons picks... - No way to take off attachments on guns and put on another weapon. - Med cabinets were too expensive to use on higher difficulties with only 1 free use which leads to people ninja healing with them. Screwing over teammates. - NO Vote Kick on launch. Are you serious? - No PvP campaign. - Matchmaking was broken and barely useable. - No way to switch difficulties in the middle of act runs. Have to start all over at the beginning to change difficulty. - WAY TOO many checkpoints in each mission. There is like 6-8 checkpoints and each of them are like 10 minutes of gameplay. It creates a disconnection between the players and the world when you seen load screens every 10-15 minutes. - Bullet sponge Enemies and Specials. - AI director keeps throwing the same corruption cards against the team then proceeds stacks them too much. Which prevents players from counter playing with cards. Second half of an chapter of every Act will usually be the same all the time. - No memorable soundtracks in the game. Left 4 dead nailed this with a distinct tune that is present in all situation with variations. - No distinct sound or music cues for specials. no personality for any of the Special Infected. - Barely any of the crescendo set pieces had any real "wow" factor to them. Because each section of the chapter is TOO short. There isn't any kind of proper buildup. - Floaty melee combat makes it hard to register hits. Doesn't help that hit detection is unresponsive. - Janky fist melee animation makes for an awkward push mechanic which a weapon shove would have done better job conveying the feedback. - Characters weren't very likeable nor have good art design. They look too "perfect" in a zombie apocalypse. They look like they came from an Instagram photo shoot. Howard was the only one out of the group that many liked. Holly and others wouldn't shut the fuck up with the same repetitive dialogue nonstop. - A lot of cringey dialogue from Holly and Evangelo. Like it makes you want to puke... - Zombie hordes never or rarely came from behind during crescendo events. Always in front only making extremely easy to funnel hordes. - Zombie hordes are sometimes TOO small in certain bigger events and TOO huge in certain smaller events. Creating odd gaps in difficulty during runs. - Copper system doesn't seem to make sense within a real world sense. Who is leaving all this copper around? How is this the accepted currency all of a sudden. How come in safe houses people use this currency system to buy things when there is no NPC around to enforce this rule? It makes no sense. - Having a very firm stance against Modding. Wants to sell skins and season passes more. Just to name a few. I can go on forever here... Just know anything listed here might be fixed in future updates of the game. But this is about feedback points from Alpha all the way to Release that was mostly ignored by the developers by many testers.

[@HiroyaFujimiya]

The thing is.....they learned SOMETHING which prepared a lot of shills to defend the game now. There still a lot ppl on any discussion blindly defend the game, whatever the fact argument it discussed.

[@ButterPacket]

​@@HiroyaFujimiya Those kinds of people are the type who their entire existence, ego, or personality revolves around that specific "game." So criticizing the game means you are "insulting" them... One of the defense people have is that we should stop comparing the game to Left 4 Dead... But why not? L4D2 was genre defining and iconic in the zombie shooter genre. They non-stopped advertised it to be a spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead and saying some of the members are the original developers. And took the liberty of using a lot of the same formula as their predecessors. When in reality it was as simple as make a "Left 4 Dead 3." Some of their defenses say "Left 4 Dead 2 wasn't like their current legendary status at launch." True. But that game is like a decade old now, there is no excuse of "They didn't have the post-launch development time." YEAH THEY DID, IT'S CALLED LEFT 4 DEAD 2. Why is it so wrong to look at older games of the same genre and use them as benchmarks to improve on a sequel or a successor?

[@rna151]

I always respected the title's ambition but I have to echo one of the reviews I saw pop up, it just never seemed designed all that well. Most of the games I played tended towards stomp one way or the other, if the hunters had the experience and cohesion they'd corner the monster in nothing flat, if the monster had the experience the hunters would spend ~10 minutes walking back and forth without sight of it until it hit level 3 and won the game. There just never seemed to be much back and forth.

[@bransonallen2925]

Ugh that was always the worst. Literally spending ten minutes walking around with nothing to do until the monster just killed you out of nowhere.

[@viceanterra3]

This game taught me that getting random players to cooperate to the extent that the weakest link WILL DEFINITELY lose you the game is a bad idea. That said evolve is still one of my favorite gaming experiences. My favorite roles were trapper and damage. Mostly because of the characters kits. Playing the with flame thrower and the granny with the murder mech was such a good time. RIP Evolve.

[@AegisAuras]

Used to group up with my brother and best bud in this. The depth different character combinations offered was great. So many different tactics you could come up with. Balancing was definitely an issue. I remember how hard it was to win in PUGs as hunters, but when we had our pre-made group, things were much smoother. We felt like monster had a general advantage. I barely ever played monster, but when I did I remember it being very easy to succeed. The community just started to dwindle and then every match became more and more hardcore as the only people left were long time veterans. Eventually, it became hard to find full matches, and getting bots was a huge disadvantage, letting the monster win more easily. The game just sort of died in our hands and we moved on. We had a lot of memories and fun with it though. We took some of the teamwork we honed there into other games like Overwatch and Battleborn (RIP).

[@vforveranda4788]

I was one of those that refused to pay for a product where the monetization self was more agressive than the monster. Played and loved Evolve S2. What kinda killed that for me, personally, was the "new" copy/paste characters. It's unfortunite. All the 4v1's that Evolve inspired, are pretty much the same horror game with slight variations.

[@kennydarmawan13]

Finally, an episode about Evolve. That's what we've been waiting for.

[@lizardjr.7826]

Yup

[@Destroyer2150]

I'm so glad this crashed and burned. It was so funny seeing GaMeS JoUrNaLisTs (more like marketing tools) giving the game 8-10 scores. And watching the aftermath

[@kennydarmawan13]

@@Destroyer2150 me too.

[@nixmilt3040]

Absolutely loved this game, one of my favorites games of all time, so sad it’s gone

[@pauljeffers606]

online still works just click multiplayer and when it asks yes or no click no

[@ryn-kx5tv]

Same

[@nixmilt3040]

@@pauljeffers606 its unlisted on steam now

[@pauljeffers606]

@@nixmilt3040 it works for me on the ps4. so idk

[@chillhour6155]

Fortnite is probably you're goat then

[@Hollowdude15]

Awesome video nerdSlayer and i like your videos so much man :]

[@TokarevArtyom]

I would say, that evolution mode was actually most fun in a game and kept it afloat for long time. Also PVP component was trash due to absolutely no MMR to be present, making matches boring for monster (as very rarely they have good cometition) and extremely frustrating for players, that are not full premade team, as one weak link in team put everyone down. I argued at the time, that they should have focused on COOP part of game and it could be great sucess. We had much fun in COOP evolution mode. Second idiotic decision was to cut of said mode when they transitioned to f2p model. Cheaper graphics with STILL no MMR and cutting off only working mode so far was last nail in the coffin.

[@Coeaxe]

I really enjoyed Evolve, I still remember learning how to play as the monster in the beta and it was such a unique experience, hiding in the bushes while the hunters were 10 feet away lmaoo

[@An_Average_Arsonist]

Good old Griffin and his inability to sniff you out hahaha. Was always my favorite part of the game, being a sneaky boy, leaving tracks going off in one direction, then hiding in a Bush.

[@tiga8600]

@@An_Average_Arsonist till maggy comes and is like I see you while your perfectly hidden in a Bush a big giant Bush but still a bush and have armageddon dropped down on you. I remember one time I hid on the edge of a cliff in a push and the whole team of hunters just jumped right over me and it was a nice rush

[@An_Average_Arsonist]

@@tiga8600 well duh lol. Why dont you think I said Griffin and his inability to sniff you out?

[@VIN7ERwav]

nice video as always brother! keep it up! i can smell the million subs

[@spinningredchair8092]

Wraith was my favorite monster. I love his kidnapping ability, it's a shame this game died

[@ROYBGP]

Real talk. Phil Robb and Matt Colville are cool as shit. They even run dungeons and dragons on MCDM and release their own books and stuff. Phil really looks like a super chill, down to earth guy. Same with Matt. This was just sad.

[@adowner7298]

This just triggers a wave of nostalgia. I remember being really interested in the morse code easter egg and was hoping to see the Host from the prototype build would eventually be added.

[@SlightlyCivil]

I seriously miss this game. Had so much fun with it. Damn sad that it fell so far. Really am

[@darkalpha50]

There was a major gameplay flaw, if you fought someone that knew how to play monster you basically guaranteed lost as they simply ran away until they where strong enough to kill you, spent most of my games running around in circles for 10 minutes just to lose, killed the game for me

[@r.k845]

Against a team of good hunters that would essentially mean instant death on stage 3. You shouldn’t have let the monster run away considering how easy they are to catch too. The actual issue was a lack of proper tutorials to get people up to speed. You and your team didn’t know how to play the game and were punished for it. Not exactly your fault really.

[@JimJamTheAdmin]

Finally, a game I was there for before, during, and after Launch. I even read all the lore stories posted on the forums by the writer for the game!

[@lordtrevorlee]

Man Evolve to this day is still one of my favorite games ever. It had and still has tons of potential.

[@julianodobler2782]

I loved the worldbuilding of this game so much. The planets, its creatures (the NPCs) and the hunters felt pretty grounded for a scifi game, at least for me ofc. Its sad the game didnt succeded...

[@rickyrockstar1233]

I REALLY love games that center around the ideas of you being the monster and others either hunting or trying to run from you (Last Year, DBD, Friday the 13th, etc). I am so sad that this game didn't make it because it was set up to be my favorite monster game out there.

[@stevsomeguy07]

This one hit me hard. I dumped countless hours into Evolve. I loved it and saw the massive potential here. So many issues and problems however couldn’t be ignored. So sad they couldn’t make this idea work.

[@MrLolguy93]

The hype for this game was insane. Talk about a total letdown

[@mikearsen4580]

Like no man sky

[@casual1118]

@@TheBigGSN5 can't deny it runs like shit on every other platform.

[@sivel7493]

@@TheBigGSN5 Cyberpunk is...decent, but did it meet the expectations it set out? No man. But I guess unless you didn't buy into all the marketing it was putting out, you're gonna have fun but man, so much promised stuff, aren't in the game.

[@ulqinaku8471]

@@TheBigGSN5 awesome? That game is most boring and trashy game I ever played.

[@-Cyuu-]

I'll be honest it was pretty fun and I thought the classes were interesting and their roles were all different and useful in their own way, monster game was very well made, it looked ahead of its time and I just thought in general it was good. People were unnecessarily harsh on it blinded by hype. Definitely was better than back 4 blood now lol

[@notsogrand2837]

I still miss this game. Unfortunately I missed the early days but I got in it during the Stage 2 release when it went through a bunch of changes, some good and some bad. I still really enjoyed it and I'm still sad that Stage 2 never revitalizes the game for the long term. There was so much they wanted to do on the roadmap.