A new Evolve 'Hunting Season' is about to get underway, as 2K Games announced today that four new Hunters and a new Monster are coming to the game, beginning with the Assault class bruiser Lennox. Lennox will be the first Hunter in Evolve to bring a melee attack to the party, thanks to the Plasma Lance that's part of her "Thunderchild" mechanized suit. She also packs a hard-hitting Autocannon and a Thunder Strike attack, for those less up-close-and-personal moments.
"The new Monster and Hunters coming to Evolve in Hunting Season 2 are some of the most unique characters our team has created," Turtle Rock Studios co-founder and Design Director Chris Ashton said. "Each of these characters introduces combat mechanics that are brand new to the Evolve gameplay experience."
Unfortunately, the new Hunting Season brings with it a new Hunting Season pass. 2K hasn't announced pricing but the original season pass, which I suppose we should now refer to as the Hunting Season 1 pass, carries a regular, not insubstantial price of $25. Worse, the Season 2 content won't all be released at the same time: Lennox comes out on June 23, but the rest of the characters have to wait for indeterminate points "prior to the end of Take-Two Interactive, Inc.'s fiscal year on March 31, 2016."
That's more than nine months away, and while it's always nice to have new stuff to look forward to, I'm not entirely confident that anyone will be bothering with Evolve in nine months. Steam Charts indicates that its 30-day average player count is just north of 600; that's down by more than 100 over the past 30 days and doesn't put it anywhere close to the top 99 on Steam, which bottoms out with the 2013 edition of Tomb Raider, currently being played by around 2500 people. That's not to say that Evolve is a bad game, but numbers like that—especially for something that's still selling for $60/£35—really don't inspire great confidence in its longevity.
Update: The story originally indicated that Hunting Season 2 required a purchase of the season pass, but the new characters will also be offered for purchase individually.
