Evolution 2: Utopia is the latest game to try and make the third person shooter work on mobile. It’s surprising this hasn’t been nailed yet, given how it’s much easier to create a control scheme for third person shooters on …
Evolution 2: Utopia is the latest game to try and make the third person shooter work on mobile. It’s surprising this hasn’t been nailed yet, given how it’s much easier to create a control scheme for third person shooters on touch than it is for complex first person games.
This attempts it by keeping things simple, with you taking minimal control of the character. You’ll make him dash between cover, switch targets with the help of some slick slo-mo, and unleash your powerful weapons like grenades and rocket launchers.
The actual shooting and reloading happens automatically, with the exception of the sniper rifle. You have to aim that manually and pull the trigger yourself, which is easily the most exciting part of the experience.
That simplicity works both for and against Evolution 2. The good: it works, never feels fiddly, and you’ll feel like an absolute god pulling off headshots with a sniper rifle, taking out multiple enemies with a well-placed grenade, and blowing up a boss with a single shot of your rocket launcher.
The downside though, is that Evolution 2 plays all of its cards far too early. After just a few levels, you’ll have seen pretty much all it has to offer and it’s, admittedly, not a lot. No matter how short the levels are, there really isn’t enough to them to justify shooting your way through hundreds of them.
There are a few carrots to encourage you to keep playing, like collecting new partners that will join you in battle, weapon and armour upgrades to increase their power, and equipment to craft like grenades and health kits.
You can also head on over to the lab and research new technology. This includes research gatherers, new weapons and armour, helicopters, and more. Research takes time though, and speeding up all of this stuff is likely where premium players will drain all their cash.
You’re going to have to really enjoy the base game to find any of that stuff a real draw and the lack of depth really hurts its longevity. Just a few short levels in we already found ourselves losing interest.
There is some variety to the enemies that will shoot, and it does lead to some slight strategy. Ultimately though, it just boils down to getting out of the way of things and prioritising which enemy to shoot first.
Granted, visuals are far less important than gameplay when picking a new game to play longterm but it wouldn’t be fair to not at least mention that Evolution 2: Utopia is a looker. It’s not quite up there with the best on mobile, but it runs in 60 FPS.
Overall, Evolution 2: Utopia is largely inoffensive. It all works: the controls are decent, there’s plenty of upgrade paths to dig your way through, and battling enemies feels quite satisfying. Ultimately though, there’s just not enough variety to the action to keep you interested long term.
