Evolva entails taking a group of four Genohunters on a quest to stop the Parasite, a world-crushing organism. On the way there, you’re going to encounter both indigenous life and spawn of the Parasite. Killing both gets you genetic material, which you can use to mutate your Genohunters into having newer, stronger abilities. I was really excited about this game; imagining having a bad-ass stealthy Genohunter that runs around and assassinates, another one that’s basically a walking tank, and so on.
Unfortunately, the game never ends up that way. You’ll find yourself simply clawing/flaming/shooting your way through the enemy legions, eating their genetic material so that you can boost your stats up. The different Genohunters never really get to be, well... different, which is a shame. And the game itself basically becomes a “find new enemy to get new skill; use new skill to get past area” sort of thing. Occasionally you’ll do something different, like finding and combining plants, but never does the game really do what it could, what it should, with what it has.
That’s not to say that the game isn’t fun. It’s pretty entertaining, at least at first. And finding new abilities is always cool, because then you get to run around and find where you can use it. But you’ll never feel that the game really does something unique or mind-boggling, besides the core premise of mutation. It’s as if the developers got halfway to something really grand, decided that they couldn’t do it, and cut it back to a mission-based straightforward hack and slash title.
Controlling your teammates is simple enough, both toggling between them and ordering them around, but it’s rarely beneficial to have them do anything but follow you. Sure, they’ll get blown up by the exploding plants, but there’s sure to be food just around the corner, so why bother?
I really wanted to enjoy Evolva more than I did. The premise was cool, the backstory was intriguing, but in the end, the implementation just failed to impress. I found myself listless, looking for something more interesting in the game world, although it never showed up.
