Evolve Preview: The life of a medic

Standing in line at the jam-packed Evolve booth — behind me a 20-foot Goliath monster — I was handed a wristband with the word “medic” on it. I won’t lie, I was bummed. Medics generally aren’t the star players, despite their importance. I assumed the same would be true with Evolve.

Who knew I’d be so wrong?

Being a medic in Evolve is absolutely the leading role next to the monster. A bad medic — one who strays away from the team or gets downed quickly — effectively makes for a bad team. A good medic? That’s when Evolve is at its best.

Our group of four took to the lush terrain in one of Evolve’s several maps. Beside me stood a trapper, an assault player, and supporter. Across from me, grinning profusely, the player controlling the Kraken — the most recently revealed monster.

Evolve absolutely lives up to the hype in terms of gameplay. The controls are silky smooth and laid out where you’d think each button press should be. More so, I was stunned by how vertical the map is. I was able to use my jet pack to traverse over the map’s largest outdoor structure with ease. I was even able to land atop it and use my medic’s sniper to deal some damage while staying clear of the Kraken’s aerial attacks.

Shortly after that, things started to go downhill for our group. The Kraken was able to take down two of our players inside a tight cavern, forcing me to come out in the open to revive them. That played right into the monster’s hands, as he was able to zap me from a distance. The damage forced me to abandon the revive and split from my teammate to avoid getting downed.

Unfortunately, we learned that running away can actually work in favor of the monster. While we were busy evading the Kraken, he was busy taking down the remaining generators en route to an easy victory. Oops.

I left the Evolve booth with a smile on my face. I hadn’t enjoyed online teamwork like that since my Left 4 Dead days. Evolve has the promise to be a critical and commercial success. More importantly, it has the promise to possibly usher online gaming back into a friendlier time where people talked and worked together for the better of the game. Let's hope that proves to be true.