When it comes to asymmetrical multiplayer games, horror movie licenses have the field dominated as it stands. With Dead By Daylight with its cast of original and franchised characters, the indie start-up of Friday the 13th whose lifespan was tragically cut short due to an ongoing copyright dispute and, soon to come, a Texas Chainsaw Massacre game in a similar vein. Now, the Evil Dead franchise has taken a crack at the genre with gloriously gruesome results. Evil Dead feels like the perfect conglomeration of guts, gore and groovy times, featuring iconoclasts of the films and television spin-offs.
Bring on the Boomsticks!
The Evil Dead franchise is an essential part of the horror genre as a whole. Beginning with Sam Raimi’s cult low-budget original, it would go on to have three more sequels (all with Raimi at the helm), a soft reboot (with another sequel potentially on the way) and a television show, Ash vs. The Evil Dead. While the original and its reboots are played straight as horror films, the second and third instalments of the original trilogy took on a more comedic tone, transcending the borders between horror and comedy. These campy-horror elements set the tone for the game and keep the high-octane action fun and frightening.
When it comes to asymmetrical horror games, Dead by Daylight seems to have the market cornered, with their 4v1 model proving to be the blueprint for many an asymmetrical since. However, comparing Evil Dead to Dead by Daylight would be wholly unfair, as it is by and large a different experience altogether. Taking on the role of one of 4 survivor characters (including various renditions of Ash Williams reprised spectacularly by Bruce Campbell), you’re set a series of objectives such as finding map pieces and a dagger and eventually using them to banish The Dark Ones toward end game and defending the Necronomicon from a final onslaught and sealing away its power for good. Opposingly, when playing as the demons, your objective is to simply kill the survivors before they have the opportunity to banish you from their game. While the mechanics seem simple on paper, they offer much more variety than a lot of the asymmetrical already on the market. Having to constantly defend yourself from the demons’ assortment of tricks, traps, and baddies at their disposal keeps each game feeling fresh.
After an initially slow start, while you gather your tools for defending yourself against the Deadite hoards, matches are filled to the bloody brim with action and horror. Often, I found myself playing solo along with three other random players. While voice chat is optional, the in-game voice notes and emotes were enough for us to communicate efficiently. Marking critical objects, locations and weapons on the map instilled this sense of camaraderie while we were running through the nightmare-scapes. Each map feels carefully crafted, with locales taken straight from the films and adapted for ideal gameplay.
Evil Dead’s bugs are frightfully fun
However, while there is plenty to be said in praise of the game, a couple of caveats take away from the experience. While games as the survivors constantly have you on the edge of your seat and working as a team, the solo experience of the demons is a little lacking and can feel a little frustrating due to the amount of time it takes to get the game going. Additionally, due to the popularity of the survivor lobbies, I often found that I would be waiting far longer to be playing as a demon and not be rewarded adequately. Nonetheless, this is just an indication that, in its infancy, the game is a little rough around the edges. With subsequent patches, updates, and, hopefully, additional content, it could easily be buffed to perfection.
It should also be mentioned that Evil Dead, despite being much more polished, suffers somewhat from the same curse as Friday the 13th, with the occasional bug interfering with the gameplay. But, as with Friday the 13th, these unintended bugs often added a few extra laughs that, one could argue, adds to the whimsical horror tone of the series. While they’ll undoubtedly get patched, the occasional bug can be let off this time.
Verdict
Evil Dead feels like the perfect conglomeration of the film series’ mixture of camp and horror. While working as a team, matches are fun, zany and intense as you come together to reach your goal and banish the hordes of hell for good. While the opposing side may seem a little more difficult and there are certainly a few kinks to buff out in subsequent updates, as it stands, Evil Dead is an assured, fun and downright groovy multiplayer game for any horror fan to sink their chainsaws into.
7/10
Words by Jack Roberts
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