If you’re picking up Evolve tomorrow, you’ll need to set aside time to download a 3GB day-one patch.
Turtle Rock Studios’ cooperative multiplayer shooter releases this Tuesday on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, but not all of the developer’s final tweaks made it in time for launch. That’s why there’s a large 3GB patch ready to download, which should improve your experience of hunting and being hunted on the planet Shear.
GamesBeat’s review-in-progress for Evolve is already up, and our full review will arrive after it’s been possible to test the game on live servers.
It’s becoming increasingly common to see these big day one patches for triple-A games. Evolve’s major alpha and beta testing periods prior to release showed Turtle Rock a lot of areas that needed fixing — with the last testing period occuring after the game had gone gold — meaning it was finished and sent off for manufacturing — and that’s why the patch is so large.
The patch addresses several balancing issues arising from testing, including powering down the Wraith, one of the toughest monsters you’ll encounter. In the beta, the Wraith was winning over 71 percent of her battles, but Turtle Rock reckons it’s got this down to around 50 percent with some tweaking.
Turtle Rock has also worked on improving load times and matchmaking across all systems, as well as addressing various bugs that the testing periods identified.
The Elite skins that you can eventually unlock for your characters and weapons have also been completely reworked, based on community feedback. “We’ve updated or outright replaced the assets that were already in the game,” according to Turtle Rock.
Finally, the patch adds connectivity to Evolve’s companion app, Evolve: Hunters Quest. Available on iOS, Windows, Android, and Amazon Fire devices, it includes a “match 3” game that lets you earn experience to carry over to the main game, and it lets you watch game replays remotely.