July 18, 2003

"We zealously hate this one" - EGM

"Dead On Arrival" - GMR

"...more like a fistful of crap!" - Game Informer

What a bunch of whining shits. This is a 20 dollar game. Or for those of us in the ole Canad of eh, 30 bucks. That's not a lot of scratch man. That's a couple hours work, give or take. For about half the price of a normal game, I expect about half as much. And I got a wee bit more than I was expecting. The graphics are no great shakes, but I've seen worse on the X-Box. The levels are fairly basic and plain, and a couple of the levels share a very similar layout. The enemies are not what most people would call "polygon intensive" but they get the job done and a whole shitload of them can crowd the screen at once with no slowdown. And I'm a fan of the Ash model. Slightly cartoony and exaggerated, I think this is the best Bruce has ever looked in a video game. His idle animations are pretty good too, they change depending on which weapons you have equipped which is a little touch that one wouldn't expect to find in a budget title such as this.

The sound is nothing to write home about. The music doesn't grate, but you ain't gonna be humming it ever either. But then you have Bruce Campbell's voice work. Bruce is the only reason this game will be bought and he does not disappoint. Although his quips repeat fairly often, a few of them made me laugh consistently. "We secretly replaced this deadite's brain with a chainsaw blade. Shhhh... don't tell him, let's see if he notices." That's gold. Bruce could do the character of Ash in his sleep, but it doesn't sound like he phoned this one in. It sounds like he had some fun.

You'll have some fun too. Slaying hoards of the undead. You'll encounter a fair bit of frustration as well. When Ash is faced with only a few deadites at a time, there's no worries. He'll slice them, he'll dice them, he'll insult their mothers and sometimes for good measure, he'll give 'em a taste of the old double barrel. But when there are lots of deadites attacking from all sides, that's when things get a little hairy. Which makes sense really. So lets get into the meat and potatoes of the gameplay here. The X button controls your left arm and whatever weapon you have equipped in it: shovels, swords and various firearms. The A button controls your right arm and whatever you have equipped on your stump. You have access to more than just a chainsaw, there's mini guns and flame throwers and a thing called "the leacher". Y taunts and talks to people, B blocks, the left trigger targets deadites and the right trigger initiates spell casting. Mainly you'll be using the X and A buttons. if you have a sword or shovel in your hand, pressing the X button multiple times delivers different combos depending on what exactly you have equipped. You chainsaw also has multi-press combos. But if you hold your attack button, you'll deliver a different, more powerful blow. For example, if you hit the A button three times and keep it held on the third time, Ash will impale his enemy on his chainsaw. If you want, you can follow up with a shotgun blast. A lot of these stronger moves have a larger arc of damage, which helps clear space. But enemies can hit you out of any combo. Plus Ash doesn't become immune to damage for a short while after being hit as happens in most games so his health can deplete pretty damn quick. Luckily, Ash's spells even the odds somewhat. In another nice touch, you must enter a series of button presses to cast any spell and if you screw up, Ash screws up his incantation. But there is no invincibility spell, nor is there a healing spell. Some defeated enemies leave health behind, but it hardly replenishes Ash at all. Plus when Ash picks up items that increase his health, he gains an extra, empty bar. It's up to you to fill it. I spent the bulk of the game with fairly low health. You can also pick up health packs which you can use from your inventory screen.

The inventory screen is also where you keep all your quest items, for the very basic problem solving stuff that you run across from time to time. I.E. bits of silver for closing portals. None of the "puzzles" are very hard, and they don't take that long. Sure, they're basically just fetch quests, but i didn't mind. Cuz the Evil dead movies have involved fetch quests. Find all the pages of the incantation, go find the necronomicon, stuff like that.

Honestly, I don't know why so many reviewers are so hard on this game. The combat ain't deep, but it's fun. You can whack the heads off zombies with a shovel, man! And shoot zombies over your shoulder! Like I said, the graphics ain't that bad, you've got The Bruce doing the voice work, the fetch quests ain't that bad, I think most of the reviewers were a little harsh on this title. Especially in light of it's bargain pricing. Actually, the negative reviews negatively affected my experience with this game. All the reviews complained about the lack of replenishing items (both ammo and health). Admittedly, an healing spell would be a nice addition, but I beat this game with over a dozen health packs in my inventory and enough ammo to take on an army of armies. The second time through I had a blast, cuz I knew that I didn't have to be so frugal. Stupid, lame-ass reviewers (to be fair (and to meet my parenthetical aside quota for this review) Game Informer gave fairly decent marks to this game (the quote at the top of this review is from Reiner's sole dissenting opinion)however, they also preferred Turok to Goldeneye back in the day and just recently incensed Kelly by not offering to fellate the latest Sonic rehash/game).

And, as an added bonus, there is a special making of video included on the disk that contains a copious amount of Bruce Campbell. That is some, fantastic gravy right there. look at it this way: this game is a HELL of a lot better than the last Evil Dead, which sold for more than twice as much. Or look at it this way: after the final cinematic of this game rolled (which totally carries on in the spirit of the films) I was looking forward to hopefully playing the sequel.

- Tyler