Hands-on with Evolve’s Kraken

I have played more Evolve and it’s still brilliant. At E3, Turtle Rock revealed the second monster of the game – The Kraken. Nope, it’s not large be-tentacled sea monster that will drag you underwater, in much the same way that the Goliath isn’t a tall man that you knock out by throwing a rock. I’d show you a picture but 2k Games don’t seem to have released one.

The Kraken is a flying beast that wields electrical powers. It does have a few tentacular appendages, yes, but these are more for decoration than anything else. You have wings and various other body parts that somehow combine together to throw lightning. As with The Goliath, playing the Kraken lets you wield up to four powers as you evolve.

• Lightning Strike – A delayed attack that takes a few seconds to charge up for a devastating explosive strike over a small area.
• Banshee Mines – Big floaty orby things that home in on nearby enemies
• Aftershock – A devastating AOE attack centred on your location. The intro video says that it destroys objects but it didn’t seem to damage the generator.
• Vortex – You spit a swirling glob of something that sends your enemies flying backwards.

The abilities system has changed a little since I last my hands-on preview of Evolve in February. Back then you started with two powers and gained one for each level of evolution. Now you get three points to spend at each stage, for a total of 12. You can split these however you like – start the game with three weak abilities, max out a single attack at the start of the game or split your points across two different ones. Keep those hunters guessing.

We played The Hunt again, the mode that pits one monster against four hunters. As before, the monster’s goal is to evolve twice and destroy the generator, while the hunters try to take you down. This time we were on a map called The Dam, filled with plenty of caverns and twisty corridors.

The Kraken can fly for a while, which makes it pretty easy to get away without leaving footprints. The Dam takes away much of that advantage though, as the caverns conceal the hunters from view and force you back to the ground. You’ll need to rest between flights, so you’re still vulnerable to predators and liable to scare the NINE HUNDRED BILLION BIRDS that live on this map.

[One of the ways that hunters can track you is by seeing birds startled into the sky as you clamber past them]

I’ve said before that the mobile arena is terrifyingly small as the Goliath at full evolution. That’s not the case with the Kraken. This is partly because the Kraken at full evolution is simply smaller than the Goliath. It’s also because having the ability to fly gives you a lot more space to move in, though you really don’t want to get trapped in the tunnels. Regardless, scurrying about when you’re small is just as terrifying as ever, especially when you can hear the hunters on your tail.

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