Posted on: September 11, 2008
Average GoG Enjoyer
Games: 122 Reviews: 1
Forever Evolving
Evolva is a futuristic squad-based action game where your characters can be genetically altered by absorbing the DNA of defeated enemies and the indigenous life of the planet you're trying to save from an alien menace. DNA can also be used to boost character attributes like speed, jumping, weapon power, and armor, giving Evolva a bit of a RPG aspect. The characters morph and change in real time, sprouting claws, fins, and getting bulkier - or thinner - right in front of your eyes. They look pretty cool, and will change appearance as the game goes on, looking vastly different from level to level. It's fun to tinker with your creatures on the mutation screen, seeing how the changes you make will affect their looks and performance. The action in Evolva is pretty straightforward, but the handful of squad-based commands -- move, attack, follow, stay, etc. -- are easy to use and the AI of your team-mates is pretty good, so you don't have to babysit them. The squad control allows you to position your units to gain strategic/positional advantage on enemies, but Evolva will never be confused with Rainbow Six. There are four onscreen characters, and the computer controls the three not being controlled by you. Switching between characters is done with a simple button press, and series of windows at the bottom of the screen allows you to see what computer-directed units are doing. Evolva features about a dozen levels, and the goals are pretty straightfoward: go to "X" position and pick up/destroy something. On the way to your destination lots of fighting ensues. Enemies -- which resemble the bugs from Starship Troopers -- are pretty stupid and will usually just charge straight at you or sit in the distance and lob explosives, but there are usually lots of them attacking at once, so you'll be on your toes. There's a bit of simple puzzle-solving too, albeit not much. Outside of three tough boss fights, Evolva doesn't have a lot of memorable set-pieces, but there's enough going on to keep you busy. One problem with reaching objectives concerns the in-game compass: while it points out which way you need to go, it doesn't take into account the game's twisty, winding terrain, or whether the objective is above or below you. This leads to a bit too much wandering around, trying to figure out just how to get where you want to go. Technically, Evolva has held up fairly well over the years: it was one of the first games to use bump-mapped textures, and the characters and the environments really look other-wordly; you've never seen a game that looks quite like this. The only drawback to the visuals is how "samey" everything starts to feel after a while, and the game uses lots of distance fog to keep you from seeing too much at any one time. The audio is well-done too, with unusual ambient noises and a subtle trance/techno soundtrack adding to the mood. The single-player campaign in Evolva will take around a dozen or so hours to finish. Once that's done there's a multiplayer mode, but it's kind of tacked on: plain deathmatch that allows you to use your characters from the single-player campaign if you like. The handful of maps aren't bad, but Evolva multi-player is mostly an afterthought. Not too many people played Evolva, but it's still pretty fun. Developer Computer Artworks would go on to make The Thing (which has some similarities to Evolva) and then fold up. Unfortunate.
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