Evil Dead: The Game: The Review

If you asked me what horror movie really sunk its teeth into me and got me hooked on the genre, I would shout at “Army of Darkness” at you before you even had a chance to finish the question. Releasing in 1992 it was the third of the Evil Dead movies. Having never heard of Evil Dead at the ripe age of 9, the name didn’t carry much weight, but wandering around the video store I couldn’t help but be enamored by the VHS box that looked like it was ripped from some obscure 80’s metal band album. I was an instant fan of Ash and his one-liners that somehow only Bruce Campbell can pull off, Sorry Jon St. John. I remain a fan of all things Ash to this day. Evil Dead is a source of comfort and a must watch multiple times a year. I always thought it was a shame that the Evil Dead series wasn’t as big in the video game world as something like Resident Evil or Duke Nukem (even though half of Dukes Schtick later on can be attributed to Ash.) Yes, there were a few PS2 era games and they are decent games for what they are, so imagine my delight when Evil Dead: The Game was first announced by Saber Interactive. My mind was instantly building up everything this game could be with more than 15 years of new types of gameplay, enhanced graphics and new characters and stories thanks to the Ash V The Evil Dead series being as popular as it was. Now imagine the crushing reality of it being an online 4v1 game, that in my own opinion has seen far too many entries come and go before this game was but a thought.

Evil Dead: The Game is in fact an online 4v1 game, where you can squad up with three other characters from the universe and take on either a player or AI controlled demon throughout various settings or take on 4 primitive apes as a Demon. As a Demon you summon underlings to attack players or possess them and let the knuckle heads fight amongst themselves. While the gameplay may seem very familiar, Evil Dead does have some aspects that make it seem like a fresh experience and one that makes it feel like an Evil Dead game instead of simply an asymmetrical horror game with Evil Dead DLC. While items are scarce in any sort of horror survival game, Evil Dead doesn’t skimp on providing the players with plenty of ammo and ways to kill the army of darkness that stands in your way. What will be a scarce resource is light or ways to create a light source. You see in Evil Dead fear is the real enemy. Splitting off from the rest of the group, running, and being in the dark all raise your fear meter. Get it too high and the demon player can see you on the map, fill it up and you are now open to being possessed. This means your teammates must choose to run from you as you helplessly watch your AI body lash out at them or they must fight you, trading damage back and forth until you are back to normal. On the other side player-controlled demon players can set traps and send out underlings to raise the fear levels of players making it easier to distract from their ultimate goal. The goal is to find pieces of the map, get the Necronomicon, get the Kandarian dagger and destroy the book. The goal is always to find pieces of the map, get the Necronomicon, get the Kandarian dagger and destroy the book… Always. And in that I found the game to get super repetitive, super quick. Yes there are solo missions, but those are mainly used to unlock characters and are mainly one-and-dones. The meat of the game is the online play. The controls themselves are a bit tanky and flat, the addition of varying finishing moves adds to the series over-the-top approach to gore but does little else. Audio and visuals do their part but neither are meant to stand out.

Overall, I found I enjoyed Evil Dead: The game in small spurts. Hopping online for one match here and there or when friends who are also fans of the series came over. It’s a budget title fans of the series don’t have to feel bad about spending forty bucks on so they can see Henry the Red fight along side Cheryl, Pablo and El Jeffe and hear lines from all the movies. The developers have laid out a roadmap of new content and we will just have to wait to see if the game itself can live on to be more than just a nice homage to a cult classic. I give Evil Dead 3.5 out of 5.