Remember when everyone said play-to-earn was dead?
Yeah, me too. I stopped believing in “the next Axie” somewhere around the third rug-pull of 2023. Then, out of nowhere, a looter-shooter drops that actually looks… fun? Not just another pixelated farm with a token tacked on. We’re talking proper movement, real gunplay, four completely different combat suits, and a presale that’s already pulled in over $364,000 in the first days. The project is called EV2, and for once the hype feels dangerously close to justified.
I’ve spent the last week digging through everything I could find — whitepaper sections, dev AMAs, early alpha footage, discord voice chats at 3 a.m. — and the more I learn, the more this feels like the first web3 shooter that might actually stick the landing.
Why EV2 Feels Different From Day One
Most crypto games make the same mistake: they build the economy first and bolt a mediocre game on top. EV2 flips the script completely. The team keeps repeating “action first, web3 second” and — shocking twist — they actually mean it.
You drop into massive maps that feel alive. Loot spawns everywhere. Every weapon can be torn apart and rebuilt with attachments, elemental effects, and mods that genuinely change how the gun feels in your hands. It’s the kind of mechanical depth that made Destiny or Borderlands addictive, except now your rare drops can actually live on-chain and matter outside a single session.
The Four Combat Suits That Change Everything
At the heart of EV2 are four distinct combat suits, and picking one isn’t just cosmetic — it completely reshapes how you play.
- Brute — the walking tank. Massive health pool, shoulder-charge that deletes people, minigun that spins up like you’re the Terminator. Perfect if you just want to run straight at the problem and make it explode.
- Cloaker — invisible predator. Short-range teleport, backstab multipliers, silenced weapons. The first time I watched a Cloaker wipe an entire defending team by blinking through walls I actually laughed out loud.
- Engineer — deployable turrets, repair drones, shield bubbles. Turns any control point into a death fortress.
- Striker — pure mobility. Grapple hook, double jump, wall-running. Basically Spider-Man with an assault rifle.
Because every player picks one suit per life, matches turn into this beautiful chaos of counters and mind-games. A Brute pushing the objective suddenly has to worry about an invisible Cloaker on his six. An Engineer camping the Pit gets flushed out by a Striker grappling straight onto the roof. It’s rock-paper-scissors on steroids, and it feels incredible.
Havoc Mode: Team Chaos Done Right
Havoc is the main team mode — two squads fighting for rotating control points while the map slowly fills with high-tier loot crates and artifacts. Holding the central Pit gives your team massive score multipliers, so every match devolves into this glorious mess of attacking, defending, flanking, and betraying your own spawn timer.
I’ve already seen Brutes used as living battering rams while Cloakers slip behind enemy lines to steal artifacts. Engineers turn choke points into kill zones while Strikers rain grenades from rooftops. Forty players on the map at once and somehow it never feels empty.
“We wanted matches where you could win by being the better shooter, the smarter strategist, or just the absolute gremlin who steals the winning artifact at the last second.”
– EV2 lead designer in community AMA
Fracture: Pure Survival Greed
Then there’s Fracture — 25-player free-for-all where glowing cubes spawn across the map. Collect one of each color and you become the “Marked” player: your position is revealed to everyone, but finishing the set triggers massive rewards. Die and you drop everything.
It’s basically The Hunger Games with crypto loot boxes. Do you play safe and grind cubes slowly? Or do you hunt the current Marked player like a pack of wolves? The tension when someone finally completes the set and the entire server converges on their position… I’ve never seen anything like it in a crypto game.
The Web3 Layer That Doesn’t Suck
Here’s where most projects lose me — the tokenomics. EV2 actually keeps it simple and useful.
- EV2 Tokens expand your inventory (starts at 200 slots, can go way higher)
- Used for crafting rare mods and elemental infusions
- Pay entry fees for high-stakes tournaments (with massive prize pools)
- Potential future NFT weapons and cosmetics (team says “only if it makes sense”)
No insane inflation. No mandatory grinding. You can play completely free and still have fun — tokens just remove friction and open up deeper progression. In my book that’s exactly how web3 integration should work.
Presale Numbers Don’t Lie
Stage 1 price: $0.01
Raised so far: $364,000+
Tokens sold: 32 million+
Next stage jumps to $0.025. There’s a $500,000 affiliate reward pool and roughly 300 days left in the full presale, but anyone paying attention knows Stage 1 probably won’t last another week at this rate.
I’ve watched too many “100x gaming gems” crash and burn. But when the alpha footage already looks this clean, when the community is full of actual gamers instead of just token farmers, when the team ships updates faster than most AAA studios… you start to wonder if maybe, just maybe, this one is different.
Look, I’m not telling you to ape your life savings. Crypto is still crypto. But if you’re tired of jpg monkeys and yield farms, if you miss the days when logging into a shooter actually felt exciting, then EV2 deserves a serious look before that price chart becomes vertical.
The looter-shooter renaissance might actually be here. And for once, the blockchain part doesn’t feel like it’s getting in the way.
That’s kind of wild when you think about it.
