It’s been a long time since The Evil Dead possessed a videogame – 2005 in fact for a full-on single-player game – and an even longer time for fans waiting for Sam Raimi himself to write and direct a new movie. While that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen anytime soon if, at all, at least the franchise hasn’t been gathering dust in some musty old tomb.
In the last couple of years alone we’ve had a reboot/remake and the continuation of Ash’s storyline in the three-season Ash Vs. Evil Dead television series, which was groovy in all kinds of ways. Now we’re finally getting a new videogame from developers Saber Interactive. They’ve chosen to bring the Evil Dead universe to the asymmetrical multiplayer horror genre. The real question is, will it do the franchise and fans proud come its May release?
Here’s what we know in the meantime.
Evil Dead: The Game clearly follows the trend of other asymmetrical games. There are five players in total: four taking on the role of would-be world saviours, while one takes on the role of the bad guy out to stop them. In this case, that disembodied force that gave the movies such cool first-person camera work as the entity sped through the woods: The Kandarian Demon.
The big draw for many is that Ash is back. Or in this case, Ash’s. The game draws upon the franchise’s main instalments: Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness and Ash Vs. Evil Dead, for its inspirations and to draw out its roster. Each cinematic instalment of Ash is presented as a playable character, each with its own specialities and weapons that fit its place in the series. More characters from the franchise are also playable, such as Arthur from Army of Darkness and Kelly and Pablo from Ash Vs., giving everyone someone they’d like to play with. Of course, if you just want an army of Ash and a whole bunch of one-liners, you can do that too.
Oh and, of course, Bruce Campbell is back voicing Ash.
Each match will give your chosen character XP to level up with and a skill tree to jump into to purchase upgrades.
In-game, there’s a mix of PVPVE in some large maps. You aren’t alone out there as the Deadites are roaming the land waiting to feast on your souls. The purpose of each match, if you’re a survivor, is to find the pages of the Necronomicon and stop the Dark Ones themselves. All against a time limit. There’ll be oodles of weapons for you to do this with. Shotguns, knives, machetes and Ash’s trusty old chainsaw will all be there along with other instruments of destruction.
Ammo will be scarce so you will have to go hand to hand with the possessed dead. Befitting the gory nature of the movies, there will be a bunch of finishers for you to use depending on your weapon that will be brutal. In a match, you’ll also be able to buff up specific stats, such as your health, defence and decreasing how much fear your character feels by picking up items that will give you stat points to throw into these various trees. These are reset per match though.
On the opposite side, you’ve got the big bad out to stop you. As the demon, you’ll be able to move much faster across the map than anyone else as you hunt down the survivors. But as a disembodied force, you’ll have to set traps and spawn other demons to do your bidding. A nice touch is that you can possess other demons and objects to do your bidding. That car the survivors are driving in? Yeah, you can possess that and proceed to eject and run them down with it. If a player’s fear meter is high enough, you can possess the heroes too and wail into them with their own weapons. Build up enough of a threat level and you can spawn in a boss character to play as such as Evil Ash or Henrietta.
If you don’t feel like playing with others, you can bot the entire experience. As well as the multiplayer bits, Saber Interactive have crafted a set of single-player missions that evoke certain moments from the movies. While not a single-player campaign per se, they’re a nice addition for those of us still waiting for a new single-player game. What’s more, the team are making certain that the game will be fully cross-play compatible at launch across all formats.
Right now Evil Dead: The Game is full of lore, items and expanded locations from the movies, making it a treat for fans of the series. It remains to be seen if this will be enough to crack the gaming world but we’ll know soon enough when Evil Dead: The Game launches on, fittingly, the 13th of May, 2022 – which just happens to be a Friday – on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, PC and Nintendo Switch.
Hail to the king baby.
Developer: Saber Interactive
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows
Publishers: Saber Interactive, Boss Team Games, Boss Team Games, LLC
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