A faithful asymmetrical recreation of the classic film franchise.
Evil Dead is the latest 4v1 asymettrical horror title, this time coming from World War Z developer Saber Interactive.
In the wake of hits like Dead by Daylight, Friday the 13th and Predator Hunting Grounds, how does this new licensed property fair? The answer, really, relies on your knoweldge and love of Sam Raimi’s comedic horror franchise.
Multiplayer
Evil Dead taps into every iteration of the franchise: the original The Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, the comedy-focused Army of Darkness and, finally, the most recent Ash vs Evil Dead television series. In its bread and butter, the 4v1 online multiplayer space, heroes from across the works need to work together to shackle the evil MacGuffin Necronomicon and rid the Kandarian demon menace the nefarious book has brought into the world.
Compared to the likes of Dead by Daylight, there’s a lot to manage within Evil Dead. Survivors will need to find melee and ranged weapons — and ammo for them — alongside health-recovering items in cola, shield-providing amulets and matchsticks to bring some light into the world. With supplies in hand, you and your team will need to first find three portions of a map that will then lead to a Kandarian dagger and the missing pages of the Necronomicon.
While the map pieces are simply there in the world to retrieve — and you’ll get an idea of which portion of the map to search before an on-screen indicator actually shows you where they are once you’re close — the final two obtainable items require a big fight. Once triggered, your team will need to hunker down and tackle all the Deadites that the player controlling the evil force can throw at you.
You’re not done there; with all items accounted for, the team of four will finally need to use the dagger against the dark ones — essentially holding down Y while avoiding their projectiles and any Deadites that spawn — before a final encounter where you need to guard the Necronomicon as you contain it.
Ideally, your team needs to move as fast as it can to get the job done before the Deadite-controlling demon can get too powerful, but you need to juggle this brute force attack with proper resource management. A gun isn’t very useful without weaponry, and you’ll definitely need health items as this is a very combat-focused title. If you lone wolf a scenario, you’ll need to be awash in matchsticks as a Fear Level will constantly build if you’re away from your teammates. If you don’t manage that bar, you’ll set up yourself to be possessed by the evil player.
If you’re on your own and the demon player finds you, you’re essentially toast, at their whim as they spawn baddies that will whittle away your resources. If you’re felled, you can be revived, but that requires another player to prop you up or either collect your soul to be redeployed at an altar. Vehicles can help bridge distances between players (which can always see one another on the map), but they will alert the demon to your presence.
Finally, heroes are split into different categories which offer unique abilities. Leaders fill their Fear Levels slower and can buff the abilities of those around them with the pushed of a button (provided it’s not in cooldown), Warriors have additional health and can deal more melee damage, Hunters can carry more and have additional stamina, and finally Supports spawn with items, can carry more items and can help to heal teammates.
Match completion (and successes) award XP, which can then be funnelled back into your character. Each will have their own progression, but so too do you as the overall player; you can redeem your global XP to feed back into whichever characters you choose.
Survivors have a multitude of skills and special moves to level up, and you can certainly create a character that employs a much different playstyle than another. If you’d rather be a ranged player and attack with well-placed headshots, you can do that… though I’m far happier getting up close and personal with a fireaxe. When it comes to combat, you’ll need to not only wear down an opponents health bar, but a balance bar that means you can deliver a crushing finishing blow in the right conditions.
In terms of the player in control of the demon, you’re tasked to collect infernal energy, represented by red orbs, across the map. Three different demon types have different abilities, with some more tank-like and able to dish out damage, others that possess units with ease and another that has some electricity-based powers.
Demons can possess evil trees, take over vehicles and infect chests with mini Ashes or Ash’s evil hand rather than helpful goodies. Unable to see the survivors at first, once the demon has an idea of where opponents are, they never really can be lost. The key to the demon is to collect energy, spend it wisely spawning or possessing units and creating boss spawns at chokepoints or, even better, when a survivor is off on their own.
While demons power up by completing necessary actions, survivors need to find Pink F vials within chests. They’re marked by a distinct audiable trigger and it’s important here to point out that once found each survivor that hits up the chest will receive levelling-up items; they not exclusively the property of the person who finds them. In short, mark each chest you find and encourage your teammates to collect its goodies; you’ll need the extra boost as the match progresses.
The result is sometimes overwhelming. If you have players that don’t fully understand each and every bit of the gameplay loop, you’re likely going to have a difficult time; they’ll either be of little use or simply just die across the map with little chance of being picked up or revived. Resources are also extremely limited and your team of four is basically forced to aggressively grab whatever they can. If one player happens to have all the matchsticks and gets separated, you’re in strife.
Teamwork and communication is key, and we all know how the internet is. I think friends gathering together will have more fun that those solo-queuing into games (that is, unless those solo players take up the mantle of the demon).
While things seem largely balanced, it’s far easier to play as the demon once you know what you’re doing as there is so much less to have to juggle all at the same time. Survivors may be handling rounds of demons well, but they mightn’t have time to try to get to a light source, so even those that are in control will soon lose that as they can be possessed and used as a weapon against their teammates rather than an asset.
There are netcode problems which are hard to ignore; Deadites will occasionally warp around you as you’re trying to make contact with their heads. More frustratingly, you’ll walk up to a fire source and hold down the Y button to light it only to find that nothing actually happens after all that time. In this instance, carefully watch your character — if the “light” interface is showing progression but your character isn’t trying to spark a flame, the game hasn’t registered your intent properly.
Issues aside (though please work on them, Saber), fans of asymmetric horror will find a lot to love in Evil Dead‘s multiplayer, as will those who hold Evil Dead near and dear to their hearts. If you’re both? Even better.
Single-player
Single-player is meant for Evil Dead fans. Saber does a tremendous job across the board by making this entire package feel like a love letter to the franchise. Visuals and its soundtrack perfectly nail this, and portions of single-player do as well.
Players have options when it comes to solo play; they can team up with AI opponents to tackle “multiplayer” (as can human opponents take on an AI demon if they’d like). True single-player comes in the form of five missions which recreate iconic moments within the Evil Dead franchise. They make me yearn for a proper single-player Evil Dead game at the same time they make me want to tear my hair out.
Simply put, when it’s back to basics — Ash or Pablo against the Deadites — it works. When it becomes an annoying exercise against a tanked-up boss at the end of twenty minutes of checkpointless gameplay, it doesn’t. The ends of missions feel cheap and unbalanced, and I’m not the first to hope that Sabre will revisit their composition. It’s a shame, because the majority of the experience is a nostalgic and enjoyable romp.
Despite their chaotic state, the missions are key to those completionists and Achievement hunters out there — you’ll find characters like Ash vs Evil Dead‘s Pablo are locked behind them. By far, the mission titled “Kill ‘Em All” proved the most frustrating… so much so that we’ve made a guide for it here.
Overall
It’s sometimes a little rough around the edges, but there are some amazing selling points when it comes to Evil Dead. It has the look, feel and sound of proceedings down pat, even down to the movement of the evil presence as it stalks Ash and his friends in the cold, dark woods.
Priced at $60 AUD, it’s a little too underdeveloped to recommend as a single-player game, but Evil Dead fans who don’t mind online play will find themselves dropping hours and hours into this. Those who enjoy 4v1 games will certainly enjoy this as well.
Evil Dead The Game is currently available on Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4 and PS5.
Evil Dead was reviewed using a promotional code on Xbox Series X, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.
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Evil Dead13 May 2022PC PS4 PS5 Switch Xbox One Xbox Series S & X
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