
Humans, to borrow a cliché from horror and sci-fi, are the real monsters. It was a phrase that Turtle Rock took to heart when developing Evolve, the studio’s first game after parting ways with Valve following the development of Left 4 Dead. Like that game, this 2015 creature feature had four players, in classic FPS mode, working together against a monstrous foe: a lone kaiju, piloted in third person view by a fifth player. This brought a marked change of pace for both sides – there’s no mistaking the difference between fighting an AI monster and one controlled by another human.
In some ways, Evolve was a high-water mark for asymmetrical design – an entire game built out of the principles of L4D’s Versus mode, which saw players controlling zombies in a first person perspective, coming from a major publisher, 2K. It was successful, too, shipping 2.5m copies in the first few months after release, with 2K declaring it a “key long-term franchise”.
Yet part of the reason it remains a high-water mark is that, today, asymmetry is firmly the exception rather than the rule in videogames – something that might be attributed to Evolve itself. In the end, 2K’s big plans never came to fruition, and the game abandoned its upfront cost in 2016, transitioning to a free-to-play model before being delisted in 2018.
この記事は Edge UK の July 2023 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は Edge UK の July 2023 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン

HENRY HALFHEAD
Where's your head at?

CROTEAM
How a gaggle of football fans became the self-appointed national dev team of Croatia

TEMPEST RISING
Heading to the future for a very '90s war

Sid Meier's Civilization VII
Anyone who's engaged with Sid Meier's strategy series during its 34-year existence knows that the most exhilarating turns in a game are the initial ones. Sure, the mid-game can be an absorbing juggling act, requiring you to manage diplomatic crises and placate the citizens of a sprawling empire, while choreographing your battalions' advance into enemy territory.

HEAVY HITTER
Doom looks to the past for its biggest and weightiest iteration yet

Darkest Dungeon II
Having marvelled at Red Hook's leftfield approach to sequel-making in E385's review, Darkest Dungeon II's Kingdoms DLC was always going to pique our interest.

ASSASSIN'S CREED: SHADOWS
Ubisoft's signature series finds itself at a crossroads. After Valhalla concluded Assassin's Creed's trilogy-length RPG pivot back in 2020, it was three years - which felt like an eternity for this once-annual series - before Mirage arrived, with its promise of a return to the concept's stealthgame roots, and no pretence to the scale of its immediate predecessors.

THE MAKING 0F... ARCO
How a ramshackle gang of indie developers formed over three continents to produce an epic reverse western

DEATH HOWL
A gloomy deckbuilding odyssey and an accidental Soulslike

Sludge Life
Peer through the haze to discover a game that makes you ask some surprisingly sharp questions