I played it on the "infamous" (hardest) difficulty setting with Dylan's mod and it rocks my socks guys srs. May add more details to this review in the future.
If I were a professional game reviewer, I would likely have given Evolva a 7/10, as many such reviewers did back in 2000. From an objective standpoint, it's a polished but insubstantial product with a few flaws (which I describe below). The reason I'm giving it 5/5 stars here is that I'm not a professional game reviewer, and I had way too much fun with this game to rate it any differently. This game, therefore, has my enthusiastic recommendation. Here's why. 1. The game's world is cohesive, charming, and foreign. The colors, the nonverbal cutscenes and the noises the characters make, the understated techno soundtrack, etc....these elements combine to take you on a vacation from reality like few other games. 2. Twitch-style gameplay with a lot more depth. The "evolution" mechanic is essentially RPG-style stat building. Most of the abilities are weapons drawn from the FPS template, but many of them can be combined in interesting ways. For example, you can charge up your shields and then fire a grenade point-blank, or lead your enemies in one direction and the cloak and run behind them. 3. Simple puzzles that reminded me of portal, because each puzzle presents one element you haven't seen before, and usually requires you to combine a few tricks you've learned already. Along with your constantly-improving stats, these puzzles give the game a feeling that it's building upon itself, rather than just increasing in intensity. Here are the game's flaws: 1. Not enough content. The last 2 levels are pretty weak, there's no "survival" mode, there's no editor, and the multiplayer is bare-bones. 2. Inconsistent learning curve. A lot of people get frustrated in the beginning because they expect a straight-forward shooter, and they don't like the puzzle elements. Towards the end, however, the puzzles disappear, making the game too simple. 3. Some AI gripes. The AI is actually quite good, but can't deal with a couple of situations. For example, there are a few "slippery" areas in the game, and there's even an ability you can level up to make it less slippery, but your genos invariably roll around like pinballs on these areas if you let the AI control them.
