Evil Dead: Hail to the King

The Good
It's Evil Dead. A horror adventure set in the Evil Dead world is a fantastic idea. Casting you as Ash, the hero from the films is even better and getting Bruce Campbell, the star of the films to do Ash's voice is of course a recipe for brilliance. Many trademark characters, objects and locations from the films are in here along with great voices by B.C. and some cool atmospheric orchestral music. The game is a lot like any number of survival horror games in that the action is viewed from static cameras. The backgrounds are pre-rendered and there are puzzles to go along with the violence. As in the films, Ash has a chainsaw strapped to one arm and the other can carry another weapon such as an axe, pistol or the always trusty boomstick. Evil Dead fans are bound to get a kick out of controlling Ash and being wrapped in the Evil Dead universe but...

The Bad
...It's too bad it was a kick in the teeth. The combat in this game is awful. Enemies are constantly after you in most areas with very few sections that you can explore at your own pace. Sometimes the respawn is so quick that you've barely taken a dropped item from the last deadite when another appears right behind you. This wouldn't be so bad if the combat was slick but it's terribly wooden and awkward. The controls are very choppy, as is the whole game as a matter of fact. I was running it on a p3-800 with a geforce 3 graphics card and the game still wasn't slick. Animation and graphics are horribly low-res (can we say Playstation port?) which is a real shame as it's clear that the graphics would look a lot better with higher resolutions and better textures on the characters. The game is very short and the package as a whole reminded me very strongly of the third Blair Witch game but choppier and with inferior everything (except for concept). Even more insulting is that unlike BW Vol 3 this isn't even a budget title! We're expected to pay full price for this mess.

The Bottom Line
A terrible waste of a fantastic idea and while there is some fun to be had in here you have to look VERY hard for it. We can only pray that a new Evil Dead game will be made and the license will get the quality treatment it so rightly deserves. I tried so hard to like this game but sadly Hail to the King is perhaps worth a rent for Evil Dead and Survival horror fanatics and that's it really. Everyone else steer well clear and whatever you do... don't buy it.