Evolve preview: We have a new co-op champion © Turtle Rock Studios

When the makers of Left 4 Dead say they've made a new multiplayer game, there are two ways to read it. On the one hand, whatever Turtle Rock studios do to avoid falling into the trap of reiterating the Xbox 360's hugely successful co-op zombie romp is immediately interesting - this isn't Left 4 Dead 3, this is something new.

But the second reading is more interesting: a new multiplayer game. Not just a new title, but a whole new spin on how we think about playing with others. Something as new and revolutionary as Left 4 Dead was when it ran screaming onto 360 and PC back in 2008, waving its arms, gurgling blood and flipping established multiplayer right onto its smug, complacent face. It's a massive claim. But is it one that the studio's new four-vs-one alien hunter can really deliver on?

Well, yes. We think it is.

Each round splits the five players into two teams: the hunters and the monster. As the soldiers drafted in to protect civilian colonists setting up shop on a planet bristling with hostile wildlife, your team is split into four: a Trapper, with a giant harpoon for dragging the monster to a stop and a deployable energy dome that traps the beast in a small arena for 60 seconds; a Medic, with a ranged healing gun and an anti-material rifle that makes the monster more vulnerable to fire from the rest of the team; a Support, with a ranged shield generator to protect another team member in a tight spot and an orbital barrage for some area-of-effect punch; and an Assault, who does exactly what you'd expect him to do, only with a lightning gun and a bottomless satchel of explosive mines.

For our first round, interminable sticks-in-mud that we are, we went for the Assault class. One neat thing that Evolve does is force your four-man (or woman - there are different variants of each class and both genders are equally represented in the monster-fodder stakes) team to take one of each class, rather than four players all picking the Assault with his electro-gun and billowing round the map like an angry cloud. It's a clever restriction that forces you to play tactically as a team, especially when it comes to the gloriously frantic end-game - more on which later.

Each round opens with the monster spawning somewhere on the map with a ten second head start on the hunters, who arrive thereafter by leaping out of a flying transport and falling to the surface with their jetpacks. Straight away we saw the monster's tracks - glowing blue paw prints leading off into the jungle. Lightning gun at the ready, we charged off after it, eager to show off how little we needed the punier classes following in our wake.

Evolve © Turtle Rock Studios

As it turns out, this is not a very good way to play Evolve. The monster we were hunting, a Goliath, is a lumbering brute even in his starting, unevolved form, but can leap massive distances and scale rock faces to put distance between it and the hunters. The ten seconds he has to lose himself in the trees is ample. To track him down, the Trapper has Sound Spikes he can deploy that sound an alarm whenever the beast is close, but in these starting stages you're mostly limited to watching for flocks of alien birds that it disturbs as it barrels away from you through the undergrowth. After a few minutes of tracking, blasting through the jungle canopy with our short-use jetpacks, one of our team spotted the beast and the hunt was on.

This was where our lone wolf approach came spectacularly apart. While the other three players boosted after the creature, which was still trying at this early stage to avoid the hunters while it fed and grew in strength, we veered off to the side, planning what we thought would be a masterfully strategic ambush. "He's over there!" someone shouted over the headset. "He's jumping away!".

Ha, not a chance, thought we, turning on the jetpack's boost system and streaking directly towards into the beast's path, trigger-finger already twitching.

What fools we were. Rounding the side of a huge boulder we discovered that our plan had worked, if anything, slightly too well. The Goliath bounded over the hill maybe ten feet from us and kept coming. The half-second of voltage from our lightning gun must have felt like a pleasant massage. Even in its first stage of evolution, it was monstrous - all sinew and spikes and jaws. It batted our Heavy aside like an enormous cat with an anaemic, malnourished mouse. We flew twenty feet backwards. It kept coming. We tried using the jetpack to escape, but in our haste to charge in and save the day, its fuel had barelyto recharged. It swiped us again, mercifully knocking us out of harm's way while the team chased it off into woods. Lesson learned: monster-hunting is a team sport.

Each round of Evolve that we played followed a distinct pattern. The initial goal of the monster is to flee its pursuers and gather strength. This it does by stalking smaller creatures and bashing them to death before consuming their remains. Once the monster is sated, it has to find a safe spot to evolve, covering itself in a cocoon and remaining still - and completely vulnerable - for a short time. Every evolution gives the monster more health and more attacks, and there are three stages in total. If the monster makes it to its final form, it's presented with a new objective - in our case a generator in a factory complex powering forcefields that were protecting a handful of delicious-looking colonists.

When the monster rips its way out of that final cocoon, the shift in strategy is instant and the drama kicks up a notch. No more Elmer Fudd-ing our way through the hostile jungle - we were hell for leather to the generator, tossing out mines and jetpacking to vantage points. Then, a moment of calm. The monster was out in the woods somewhere, feeding, upping its strength for the inevitable final confrontation. And then it would be coming for us, a roaring battering ram of near-unstoppable power.

Sure enough, after a minute or so tensely scanning the trees, the cry went up - one of our team had spotted the fully-evolved creature leaping from the treeline. The Medic took shots at it with the anti-material rifle, leaving open wounds on its carapace that the rest of us could pour more hurt into. When it landed on our raised platform, now hurling rocks and breathing fire, our Trapper snagged it with his harpoon, holding it temporarily in place. But still it swung at us, an alien, gorilla-lion hybrid rampaging through our defenses soaking up everything we could hurl at it.

We were saved by the jetpacks. With a cool head and some deft control, we could - just about - keep out of the path of the monster's charges, and with the team spread to the four corners of the platform - the Medic constantly healing, the Support constantly shielding - our lightning bursts finally started to have an affect. The beast appeared weakened, visibly bleeding from the punishment. But still not anywhere near as close to dead as we'd have liked.

Finally, with the monster's focus on our Assault trooper, the Trapper of our group got a good hold with his harpoon, slowing it in the center of the platform. The Support, perched on top of a high tower, flicked to his orbital bombardment option and targeted the ground under the creature's paws. Still tethered, the creature took the full force of the onslaught, cracking, falling and finally, gratifyingly, dying under the thud thud thud of the heavy ordnance. The generator was intact. The civilians unharmed. 1-0 to the humans.

Turning the tables

Evolve © Turtle Rock Studios

But oh, how delightfully the tables were turned as we took control of the monster. Sat in our own secluded area away from the players in control of the humans, this was the real highlight of our hands-on time with the game. Where the hunters fight in a first-person perspective, the monster is viewed in third-person, giving a much clearer sense of the jungle around it. It feels powerful, animalistic - like you're really now playing on the creature's home turf. We weren't going to try anything fancy - no early ambushes, no picking off glory-hunters or unfortunate stragglers. Our strategy was simple. Run. Eat. Grow.

Knowing how the humans track the monster made for some interesting tricks as we padded through the jungle as the beast. The hunters can follow your tracks, but given enough lead you can intentionally double back on yourself, leaving them scratching their heads at an apparent dead end. And as they need to expend precious jetpack fuel to gain elevation, leaping from one tall rock or tree to another can leave the trail on the ground completely cold, giving you the opportunity to slip away to some quiet corner of the map to chew on the local fauna. The monster also has a sniffing ability, triggered with the right stick, which highlights any animals - human or otherwise - in a wide area, easily indicating when it's safe to feed or evolve.

We lost our pursuers easily enough and quickly began the hunt for food. Certain animals, indicated by a star, grant perks like increased armor or speed, but the bulk of the planet's indigenous life is there to fill the evolution meter and to replenish lost armor. Evolving or getting into a bad scrape will pull your armor down, and once it’s gone, any further damage is taken off the monster's health bar, which cannot be replenished. Lose your armor in combat and you'll need to make a life-or-death decision about whether to keep swinging to the bitter end or scurry off back into the jungle to feed and fight another day.

We had no such problems as the monster. In the whole time in the jungle, the humans caught up to us only twice, in time to score one or two glancing hits before losing sight of us in the trees. We kept moving, stopping only to eat and evolve, and soon emerged with a howl from our last cocoon.

The human players reacted as expected, forming up around the generator, but after our time in their shoes we had a plan. Kill a human player and they'll start to bleed out, during which time they can be revived by an ally who gets close enough. If they do die, they'll be replaced by dropship after two minutes. Kill all four in that window and the game ends without your having to complete the main objective, the monster presumably then free to casually pull the defenseless colonists apart like screaming chicken strips.

Evolve © Turtle Rock Studios

Instead of charging the facility head-on, we skirted around the side, smelling the puny humans and seeing their tiny, frail bodies outlined in red through the terrain. We made sure to approach from an angle that kept us hidden behind the structure, so they wouldn't see us until it was far too late.

By the time the medic with the sniper rifle spotted us, we were already clambering up the side of the factory. The other humans panicked, bunching together, and we tore into them, dealing massive damage across the squad. Two of them blasted backwards with their jetpacks to escape the meat-grinder, overshot, and fell to the structure's lower-level. The remaining two caught the full scorching heat of our fire breath.

Broken, the squad hurriedly tried to regroup, and like the helpless sheep they were we herded them, bleating, into the confines of factory - dramatically limiting the use of their pesky jetpacks. Drawing on lessons from previous rounds as the humans, we ignored the Assault, Support and Trapper classes and backed the Medic into a corner, slamming her into the ground and out of the game.

That started the two minute timer for the respawn. Indoors, the humans were a lot less manoeuvrable and we quickly caught and finished off the Support trooper on a catwalk. Then we ate the now-shieldless Assault trooper. Finally, hopelessly outmatched, the Trapper fled to an exit and blasted off into the jungle. If he could just keep out of reach of our snatching claws for 50 seconds more, his team would redeploy and they could regroup on the colonists.

He didn't make it to 10. His jetpack fuel expended, he fell impotently to the ground and we fell on top of him, tearing him to pieces and stealing the round for the monster. It was exhilarating. In all the excitement, we might even have done a little fist pump.

Evolve © Turtle Rock Studios

What Turtle Rock has accomplished with Evolve is very, very good. The four matches we played felt well balanced, and even as the monster bore down on the factory for its final confrontation, each battle could still have gone either way until the very final moments. The hunters complement each other well and each class feels fun and important to play - there was no whinging from anyone about getting stuck as the Support or the Medic.