Ken Plays: Evolve Big Alpha (Alpha Key Giveaway)

7:59 PM article , evolve , gaming , opinion 0 Comments

     First day of November (GMT+8), Evolve opened it flood gates and launched their Big Alpha test. While gamers still need a key to get into the alpha, it seems that a lot of online personalities/publications are giving upwards of 20,000 keys to those who are interested. I, too, got my hands on a key and have been playing the game for a few hours now, and here I am to share my opinion about the game with you guys.

     Unlike almost any multiplayer online alpha/beta test, Evolve's servers are apparently up to snuff to the point where after the alpha launched they were still giving out alpha keys like it was nothing. I really like how confident they are with their servers, probably a good sign of confidence for those who are looking to buy the game on February 10.

     Performance wise, Evolve is quite the taxing game. My GTX660M could barely run it on 1080p Low. It would probably be fine on lower resolutions but yeah, I would recommend a desktop GPU, probably GTX560 and above if you are wanting to play the game in its full glory.

      Gameplay wise, matchmaking is made very easy. Arrange your preferred role in numerical order and the game will try to match you into a game where you can play your preferred role. One thing I would like to note though, is that players won't know what role they are taking before going through 2 loadscreens, so it's almost like going into the game blind. The game will also sometimes drop you into ongoing games, which is not a big problem for hunters, but for monsters, I would think that is a major disadvantage. All these issues will probably be addressed in the full release, but for now it is pretty annoying. The alpha also has a system to deter leavers, where they impose a matchmaking pause for leavers.

     In the game, you either play as one of the hunters, or the monster. For the most part, I took the role of assault, where my responsibility is just to tank as much damage as possible with my shield and shoot lightning! The support has a mini-gun and is able to cloak the entire team, the medic has a sniper rifle and is able to heal (duh), and the trapper can shoot harpoons to slow down the monster and deploy mobile arenas to restrict monster movement. Teamwork is pretty much essential in this game. For those who have played Left 4 Dead before, just think of it as facing a very buffed up Tank, but this time, you have technology on your side.

     Overall, I have to say, the game is pretty much mindless fun. Of course, players can also look into deeper strategies like where to place mines, or how to throw hunters off your trail et cetera. Will I buy this game though? I probably would but first of course I would need to build a rig (coming soon) to get the full experience and of course I would like to see how polished the end product is before I make a decision. Oh well, let's not frustrate ourselves with that and end this post with a alpha key giveaway! Key in one of these keys into where you would normally activate a Steam key and you are set! Happy hunting!