Evercore Heroes is a competitive PvE game in which each match sees your squad of four participating in missions against hordes of AI-controlled enemies, but you're doing so at the same time as three other teams all on the same map. So it's a little PvP too in terms of each match being a race between four different teams. It's a creative idea for Vela Games' debut title, upping the ante of PvE scenarios with the competitive drive of PvP. This setup works--I left a preview event for Evercore Heroes wishing I could play just one more match, which is my go-to benchmark for whether a free-to-play multiplayer game has that magic touch to make it in the increasingly crowded live-service market. If you can make your players go, "Okay, one more game," then you've stumbled onto something special.

In Evercore Heroes, you play as one of several Heroes--there will be 14 at the game's launch--who fall into your traditional roles of damage, tank, or support. Your team of four then loads onto a map alongside three other teams. Each team has free reign to do what they want to prepare for the first wave of enemies coming to destroy your spawn point. You could capture an objective to secure resources to upgrade your characters, for example, or kill a miniboss to upgrade your chosen hero's unique abilities.

As you race around the map, you can see the opposing teams completing objectives as well, represented as small glowing sprites within your world. Once a task has been completed on the map, it counts as completed for every team, so your squad has to decide whether it's worth racing against the other teams for the bigger payoffs or completing the smaller, often-ignored objectives. You can also use special PvP items like a frost grenade that can stun all the opposing players around you, slowing them down on whatever objective you're trying to finish first.