Evil Dead game impression: a bloody good time with friends

Evil Dead – The Game , Saber Interactive has created a new, asymmetrical horror video game that pays tribute to the classic Sam Raimi horror series. The game evokes the difficult balance of blood-soaked horror and sardonic humor of the original trilogy, which is no easy feat. It helps to be a friend, just as the characters of the title franchise.

Combining elements of survival horror games like Dead by Daylight and action horror games like Left 4 Dead, Evil Dead: The Game‘s main mode is called Survivor vs. Demon. In it, you either play on a team of four survivors or as the killer looking to pick them off one by one. This mode can be played in either PvP and PvE depending on how patient you are for online play. PvE includes playing against AI killers or human teammates. Either way, you’ll need an online connection.

Image: Saber Interactive

Survivor vs. Demon features nine starting survivors across four classes: the team-centric Leader and Support classes as well as the more offense-minded Hunter (the ranged specialist) and Warrior (a melee-focused option). Each class has an Ash Williams. Ash from Evil Dead acts as a support, while Ash from Army of Darkness serves as a Warrior. Bruce Campbell voices all Ashes, bringing his trademark charm to the franchise in many versions (including Evil Ash or Tiny Ashes). And Bruce isn’t alone; the voice cast is filled with actors from the movies and show. This all helps to immerse the players into the Evil Dead world.

As survivors, you must traverse the large map that the game launched. You will need to find the pieces scattered across the map and also look for useful loot or weapons. Once you have found the missing pieces, your goal is to capture the Necronomicon pages and Kandarian Dagger using two different king-of the-hill sequences. Then you will need to protect the Necronomicon against hordes. This involves a lot more than just using the map to find objectives. It also requires you to communicate as a group to ensure that no one is left behind. The game’s fear mechanic (which is similar to that in the excellent Phasmophobia), which makes players who are alone and/or in the dark more vulnerable to the Demon, further encourages sticking together. It is difficult to locate everything on the large map. However, there are some cars that can be used to alert the Demon of your position.

The experience of playing as a Survivor is different from many other games in the genre. For one, you can actually fight back, which adds both a sense of agency and dynamism to your attempts to make it out alive. You must also make time to loot and level up while you are completing other objectives.

As one of the four survivors in an online multiplayer game, you have to communicate and trust other players. If you have a group of friends to play with, that’s hopefully not a problem for you; the game lets you party up and queue together or set up a private lobby.

Image: Saber Interactive

If you don’t have a group of people to play with, Evil Dead: The Game still has options to support communicative multiplayer. Although the game supports voice chat, there is no push-to talk option. However, I was able to play with randoms and no one ever used it. Instead, players relied heavily on the game’s ping system as well as the general safety-in-numbers approach. Although we were successful in achieving our objectives together, it was difficult not to think about how much fun it would have if the entire party could voice-call with one another.

On the flip side, your goal as the Demon is simple: Kill the survivors before they complete their goals, or destroy the Necronomicon if they manage to find it. Although each of the Kandarian Demons can have unique abilities, they can all possess or control Deadites, which are basically zombie minions that are spawned onto the map, Survivors and cars. They can also attack nearby survivors with trees. All three can spawn portals to summon additional Deadites and place traps around the map. They also have the ability summon bosses. Demons earn the resources to use these abilities by collecting red orbs around the map, which they can only do while not inhabiting a body. In their soul form, they can zoom around the map at high speeds, recalling how the camera depicts the demons’ movement in the Evil Dead movies.

There’s enough depth in the gameplay on both sides of Demon vs. Survivor to reward experimentation digging into it. It’s a compelling environment with clear objectives and bloody combat that provides enough support to make it accessible for everyone. The inherent terror of this situation is what makes it so difficult. If you have a group of friends or don’t mind queuing up with randos, it can be a blast.

But there is also pure single-player content in Evil Dead: The Game beyond the PvE version of the online game mode. This comes in the form missions. These are separate scenarios which play out like more action-heavy scenes from movies and shows (the first involves you finding Ash’s head decapitated). Playing these missions unlocks characters you can use in the online game mode.

Image: Saber Interactive

The mission select screen presents each of these scenarios as VHS covers like you would see at a rental video store (remember those?). This is a wonderful fit and it’s great fun to put yourself in the movie scenes. But the missions are just long and difficult enough to make you wish there was some sort of a checkpoint system (too many times I would slog through 15-20 minutes only to die at the final encounter and have to start over). As it stands, the missions feel more like add-on content meant for unlocking characters rather than the pieces of a substantial campaign mode in and of itself.

All in all, Evil Dead: The Game is a solid addition to the asymmetrical horror genre, bringing in elements from adjacent genres to build a thrilling and fun group experience. It’s also got the blood and guts and creepy atmosphere you’d expect from the source material — one of the Demons has a mechanic that jump-scares a player like those old prank internet videos. When you’re playing as a Survivor, there’s always the sense that the Demon is lurking right around the corner (and the game’s audio certainly plays that up).

Crucially, the game nails the unique tone of the cult classics. Bringing back many of the actors (especially Campbell) goes a long way, but the sounds and sights of the game immediately evoke the movies, down to the eerie details in the infamous cabin in the woods (that cellar door!) or how the characters function mechanically (the Necromancer can summon a skeleton flautist to power up attacks, like in Army of Darkness). But before you dive in, double-check whether you have a crew that will help you make it out alive.