03/30/01

Evil Dead : Hail To The King 

System : Dreamcast 

MSRP : 39.99 (if it were based on content, 99 cents, maybe less) 

Genre : Survival Horror (the horror is how this game somehow survived.) 

Ugh. No use sugar coating this turd, Evil Dead sucks mighty goat. 

The sad thing is, the game's story isn't too bad, if not a bit clichéd. Ash has to gather up the pages of that bad ol' book of nasty pointy demonic type things, the Necronomicon and bash, slice and otherwise destroy the armies of Deadites along the way and save his love interest, Jenny. 

Where to begin bashing this floater...? The graphics are rancid. Washed out backgrounds give the impression that you're playing on a Playstation, even if some of the video effects in the house are a little above par. Enemies are uninteresting, as you see the same one OVER AND OVER. Their attacks are less than unspectacular (A skeleton attacks you by...get this...doing a pirouette. YES... I'm afraid of skeletons doing ballet, but for ALL the wrong reasons.) Ash himself isn't THAT badly drawn, but he moves and attacks like he's got his "boomstick" up his ass. Jerky movements + bad graphics = no fun. 

(If you find fun in this turd of a game, please let someone know so they can break your DC. Thank you.)

Sound...Well, at least Bruce Campbell is actually doing the voice of Ash. The one liners repeat WAY too often (and that DAMN BUTTON! More on that later...) and enemies belt out absolutely the most UNTHREATENING CRAP you'll ever hear. Some of the environmental audio is nice, but not enough to save this totally hopeless disc. The other crap you don't and won't care about (like the music that for some reason feels the need to play at a completely random moment.) 

And we arrive at the worst part of the game; Controls! When you need to make a bad survival horror game, who's controls do you rip off? That's right, Resident Evil's! But apparently they couldn't even do that right as attacking with a hand weapon is pointless, even though that's really all you get (okay, so they did get that one right from RE), you run out of fuel for your chainsaw WAY too quickly and moving becomes a hazard in and of itself, so you can't even run away from your mindnumbingly pathetic enemies. You're better off closing your eyes and blindly pushing buttons. And speaking of pushing buttons, the one-liner button. What the f*** ever! It supposedly "scares off" enemies with Ash's macho taunts when they're wailing away on his defenseless ass, but trust me, it does NOTHING. You're going to get beat the living hell out of either way, so just take it, turn off your Dreamcast, break this game over your knee so no one else can play it and go purchase RE: Code Veronica. 

(Go away Bruce. Go FAR FAR away.)

If this isn't a reason why THQ should be totally banned from making and distributing games, I don't know what is. If this were a perfect world, the people in QA at THQ would be destroyed utterly with their own games. An absolute pile and nominee for "Worst Game on Dreamcast", Evil Dead I think lived up to its name. It is quite Evil, and I wish it Dead. 

The Reverend Mofat Jones really wishes THQ to burn for this and their other sins, which are too numerous to mention. When the day comes, you're first to the slaughter, guys.

(Screenshots courtesy of IGN.com)

-Mofat

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