Evil Dead: The Game Review Hey, and we’re back with another game, and today I will be talking about Evil Dead: The Game and also share my personal opinion.
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Now, this is an asymmetrical multiplayer, competitive style thing. You play as a group of “Evil Dead” characters running around trying to accomplish something while you’re being hunted by another player, playing as the Kandarian Demon, who has all kinds of cool abilities.
And just so you know, all the footage captured here is on PC and PS5 versions.
Now, some context with me and these types of games, there are always multiplayer versions of things that I don’t really think needed to be an asymmetrical multiplayer experience, but it’s always nice to see how at least they creatively do it.
I actually liked “Friday the 13th,” despite its roughness. And the “Predator” style of this game from a year or so back was also kind of cool.
“Evil Dead” continues this trend really. It’s a bit awkward, it’s a bit messy, but it’s fun with friends and actually just kind of fun in general.
If you’re into these types of games and you can forgive some of the stuff that typically comes with these things, you’ll have a good time for a while, but I’m not sure how long it’ll last.
In terms of license property, like movie-based asymmetrical multiplayer games, which is basically a genre at this point, it is probably the one with the most thought-out content offering and budget, but it’s still just kind of left me feeling mixed after two days of matchmaking alone and with friends pretty much nonstop. It is fun, but it’s a bit more complicated.
Evil Dead: The Game Review
Single Player Mode
It’s really gonna depend on you. So, the first thing worth mentioning here, I guess, is that there is technically a single-player mode.
It’s a bunch of small missions you select from a screen and load into and play through a few vague, “Evil Dead” scenarios.
For example, heading out to deal with Linda’s head as Ash or playing as Lord Arthur.
It is very cool to see the cabin, see the car, see everything in there, venture out onto some maps, see the spooky woods and just kill bad guys.
It is really, really repetitive and there’s not much to it.
Just some limited scenarios that are all based around the framework of the main multiplayer mode.
It’s bare bones, and I mean bare bones.
Like, no cut scenes or anything really, just like static screens that look like loading screens that tell you what to do next.
And as far as I can tell, each mission has no checkpoints and they can get pretty challenging, so if you die, they have fun playing all that again.
Also, you still need to be connected to the internet to play the solo mode, so yeah.
But I also just really like “Evil Dead,” so I found it kind of fun to just kill some time-killing stuff like Ash.
The gore is cool, the finishers are cool.
The one-liners are there, and the sound, and the music it’s there. It’s not enough, but it’s good passive fun overall. Like Ash is awesome, and I kind of just like endlessly chainsaw dudes. I can’t help it.
It’s the same reason why I liked “Fistfull of Boomstick,” even if that was a totally different type of game. “Evil Dead”‘s cool.
Anyway, the main multiplayer mode gives you some decent options.
You can play solo, you can play against AI, and you can match-make separately as one side or the other.
Characters
Characters are grouped into different classes with differences in stats and special abilities, and yeah, there are a few cool skins and on the demon side, you have three types of choices and each with a different boss character within to choose from.
There’s a surprising amount of different characters and things to try here, it’s nice.
The flow is like this, you start out in the woods, a big sprawling map with a hint of a place to check out on the map to get the first piece of a map that will tell you where the main objective items are.
Along the way, you’re gonna need to explore a bit and scrounge up weapons, both ranged and melee, with their own stats and rarity levels and health items and defensive items and ammo and stuff.
Now, once you get the full map, you then look for the Necronomicon pages and the Kandarian dagger to then go ahead and banish the dark ones in a fun kind of mini-game where you all blast them together and then make for one last defensive point hold until the time runs out.
Now the entire time, the demon player’s main objective is, of course, to kill everyone, but the big focus is to slow the players down and keep them from accomplishing their goal.
And if you’re playing as a demon you’re also getting stronger the more you play and the longer the match goes on.
Now, you are encouraged to stick together in interesting ways as the “Evil Dead” characters.
Evil Dead: The Game Review – Fear Mechanic
Like the game has a fear mechanic that is actually relevant and somewhat decent.
If you’re alone without other players for too long your fear meter goes up. Now, if you’re in the dark for too long, your fear meter also goes up.
This of course makes your screen all red, but more importantly, it leaves you more open to getting possessed by the player playing as a demon and that can cause some trouble.
Now, as you explore, you’ll find items to level yourself up on the fly and dump points into like health and endurance and stuff like that, which seems whatever but it’s actually important to do so and feels good and worthwhile and kind of makes you want to try and balance progressing forward with a little bit of exploration, there’s some good tension there.
The game flow is designed for you and your team to really comb through the map, hacking and slashing as long as everyone actually understands the rule and the flow, of course.
Player Abilities
Players have basic light and heavy attacks, a dodge button on a cool down, a ranged weapon that actually feels pretty good, aiming and firing with decent feedback.
A special ability, oh, and the finishing moves, which, again, as I said, are pretty awesome.
The actual combat itself is awkward and goofy.
It doesn’t always feel great, it doesn’t always look great, but it can still be entertaining and satisfying in short bursts.
Everybody swinging like crazy and enemies hitting you from all sides and multiple players clipping through one another doing the same finishing moves is kind of messy, but there’s something really satisfying about the blood and gore and the feedback of the hits.
Like hits feel pretty good when they land and skeleton’s heads get knocked off.
Zombie-like enemies are actually getting their meat blown off of their bones in chunks, it’s all gross. It’s good for horror fans, man.
The demon player is trying to amp up everyone’s fear so you’re really playing a dungeon master role.
You’re cruising around the map environment in first person in that classic “Evil Dead” chase camera angle, which is so cool.
And you’re planting traps, you’re spawning enemies, you’re setting little traps on loot chests and stuff and even possessing stuff other than the players, like a tree, to just suddenly scare a player, or even possessing a getaway car.
Yeah, you can possess somebody’s car and then just terrorize them with it and it’s pretty funny.
Evil Dead: The Game Review – Demon Player Role
Now the demon player role is not a complete power trip.
It’s actually really challenging and requires you to be super, super active on the map.
I’m actually not completely sold on this part quite yet. Really because I’ve only played this one a handful of times, it’s way harder to score a win here, but still, playing as a spooky tree to a scarce of people is cool.
And also, summoning evil Ash or whatever boss character you have set at that time, summoning that boss character and playing as them at the last minute with a bunch of abilities and just trying to slaughter the players is pretty cool.
Now balancing-wise, at least for me, it’s hard to judge this early on, but the problem with the game, like the main game, is the same as it is with every game like this.
You need good players on both ends who know what they’re doing.
Communication makes it flow better.
Sticking together is more fun.
When you play with randoms, sometimes you’re forced to like run through the woods cutting through everything on your own.
And that is like way, way less fun. When you get legit people, it can be a blast.
Good mindless, fun requiring a bit of coordination and it makes it satisfying to get a win, even if that win is easy.
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Evil Dead: The Game Review – Limited Objectives
You know, the other problem is the limited objectives, the maps get shaken up nicely, at least a bit.
But unfortunately, the objectives really boil down to the same thing and that can get a little old. I’m sure more is coming, something to shake up this flow ’cause it needs it.
And you know, these games are live games that change.
But for now, I felt like I needed a little bit more to keep me interested.
And the rest of the foundation is right there like there’s a lot of progressions and it’s good.
You’re gonna wanna win and level up individual characters and then spend points in a skill tree for more health, better abilities, more resistance, stuff like that.
So spend a little time with a character and you’ll realize it actually seems to make quite a difference.
That’s cool. Meaningful progression, not just skins. It’s attached to a mode I don’t see myself playing endlessly but it’s at least surrounded by a good foundation of stuff.
Earlier I mentioned characters clipping, but along with that the camera sometimes freaking out during finishers.
I’ve also gotten stuck in the map a few times at spots and it seems like the car can be trouble if it flips over and gets stuck in a certain spot.
I got stuck in between the level for half a match at one point.
There are glitches here and there but on PS5 it looks pretty decent for what it is and I didn’t have too many issues matchmaking.
Visually the woods, the rain the lightning strikes have that good “Evil Dead” feel.
The game is extremely dark though and it gives you a flashlight but it’s probably annoying to watch on YouTube.
Like if you’re looking at this video it just looks too dark.
But if you’re on a monitor or a TV at night with the lights off, it’s good.
It’s actually pretty immersive, especially with some cheesy like onscreen jump scares when a demon player jumps through you, there’s some good stuff here
Pc Optimization
On the PC side, things are a little bit mixed. I had some trouble with it on my end, it didn’t seem super optimized to me, and I had some stuttering.
I was playing on a 2080 machine, but my colleague who was actually a bit pickier than I am actually found it to be decent on his.
So of course like with PC stuff sometimes, your results may vary but the resolution stuff is actually a pain in the ass.
There’s an easy fix for it that I will link into the description, but that shouldn’t even be a thing, like what is going on, what happened? Anyway, the bottom line is if you don’t really like these types of games, this one isn’t gonna win you over.
If you play some of them and you have the tolerance for some of their problems or you know what you’re getting into and you like “Evil Dead” you might have some good fun with friends, it’s not a full price at least.
And they implemented the “Evil Dead” stuff in some creative ways, like into this mode.
Evil Dead: The Game Review – Conclusion
The big question mark is of course like I always say, will a community take to this game and how will the developers update and add things going forward? This is only the start, this is only half the battle.
That makes or breaks things. Like me playing this game and telling you about it now, you know, that’s fine, that might be immediately useful to you, but it’ll be completely different possibly if you play the game six months from when I put this video out.
You never really know, but hey, at least we have another “Evil Dead” game.
So that’s me like I said, I’m a little bit mixed, I give you some pros, some cons, and some personal opinions.
And now I wanna hear yours down in the comments. I’ve explained the game to you, the flow, the upgrades, the unlocks, all that stuff, what are you thinking, did you jump in on day one? Are you playing? Have you had any problems with matchmaking or any technical issues? Let me know.
Let’s talk about anything “Evil Dead”? Who do you like playing as, hell, why not, what’s your favorite movie? Let’s talk about anything “Evil Dead: The Game” Down in the comments, we wanna hear from you, you can also reach out to us on Twitter.
