NFOpocalypse

Superior [ Epic ] Legendary

Being a creative medium, a fresh idea like Spore is well-received in the game industry (even if it’s tantamount to a five-part minigame).  Long before YouTube was flooded with “Creature Creator” penis-monsters, evolution was the focus of a now obscure 1993 title published by Enix known as E.V.O.: Search for Eden.  Combining Platforming with Role-Playing, creationism with evolution, and science with mythology, this classic game remains distinct and downright fun.

E.V.O. is divided (like Spore… interesting) into 5 segments or evolutionary periods: Fish, Amphibian, Reptile, Early Mammal, and Late Mammal.  Each of these stages leads to totally new evolutionary options, earned by eating the meat of defeated creatures.  If you’re anything like me, you’ll enjoy experimenting with the various combinations and by the end of the Fish period, you’ll be hooked.  The bosses at the end of each era are challenging fights, and while the storyline is nothing special it at least scores points for providing a good background for the unique mechanics.

This game shines largely because it actually makes you willing to grind.  For most games, I get sick of level-grinding pretty quickly.  It’s not that I’m not patient enough; I just find the mechanic overused and unchallenging.  With games like this, the naturally absent difficulty of grinding goes unnoticed thanks to the incremental reward system of the evolutionary process.  In essence: it works in the same way MMORPG grinding works.

But of course no game is perfect.  E.V.O. does suffer from some painfully easy moments and a piss-poor soundtrack (as in: two bars of noise looped indefinitely).  Many of the levels in this game can be basically skipped by dodging\jumping over your opponents and every boss can be reduced to a matter of time rather than skill using the trick of refilling your life gauge with minor evolutions.  Even on Bolbox, the deciding factor can be whether or not you farmed enough EVO Points prior.  Also, the evolution system doesn’t offer real variety because each category has a clearly superior option.

This game is an excellent early model for the Platforming-RPG hybrid, and remains one of the best and most original.  To take a stab at saving the planet throughout the eons, you’ll need a ROM and Emulator because Nintendo has yet to give us a Wii VC release.  After you’ve beaten it (eight hours’ work) you’ll wonder like the rest of us why there hasn’t been a sequel.  E.V.O. clearly warrants a return visit.

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Tags: action rpg, company-almanic, company-enix, company-squareenix, emulation, erdtirdmans, platformer, reviews-buy, ROMiniscing-epic, rpg, single player, snes

This entry was posted by ErdTirdMans on Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Action, Adventure, ROMiniscing, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.