Dan Geeks Out: Video Game Review #399: Evil Dead: Hail to the King

Evil Dead: Hail to the King

PlayStation

Nostalgia Factor:

Growing up, I was a huge Evil Dead fan. I was also a big fan of the PS1. Naturally, you'd think I would have given this game a try, but somehow that just never happened. A lot of it is probably because this game received poor reviews. I had played enough bad movie to game adaptations by this time in my life, so I probably figured that this wasn't worth my time.

Well here I am in the year 2022. As an Evil Dead fan, I feel as if I owe it to myself to at least check this game out. Mop Up Duty closes out the year 2000 with Evil Dead: Hail to the King.

Story:

The Evil Dead movie trilogy has never been known for its strong sense of continuity, and this game definitely keeps that tradition alive. It takes place several years after Army of Darkness. Ash is still working at S-Mart, but he's been plagued by nightmarish visions of his time at the cabin.

Apparently Ash just never learns from his mistakes, as he decides, at the urging of his girlfriend, that it is a good idea to return to the cabin to see if he can get the nightmares to stop. Wait, wasn't the cabin destroyed and everything sucked into the portal at the end of the second movie? Guess not.

As you could have guessed would happen, everything quickly falls apart. Ash's severed hand returns and activates the tape recorder which summons the Deadites. Ash's girlfriend is swiftly taken away by them. Ash, alone in the cabin, sets out on a mission to recover the missing pages of the Necromicon, save his girlfriend, and banish the evil once and for all.

The story takes some twists and turns. Evil Ash returns. Ash is pulled into a portal (once again) to ancient times in order to defeat the evil. Hilarity ensues.

As silly as the game's story is, I have to commend it for staying faithful to the tone of the original movie series. Bruce Campbell even returns to lend his voice to the narration of the game, which makes it even more authentic. This game definitely feels like it could have been the fourth movie in the series.

Gameplay:

After the game's nice, cinematic introduction I was fully ready to embrace it. Seemed like it was going to be a fun, off-the-wall Evil Dead experience in the vein of the films. And then I started playing the game... and everything quickly fell apart.

You start out in the living room of the cabin. There's a fire burning, a deer head on the wall, the tape recorder on the table. You can see the cellar door in the corner of the room. You move Ash around via tank controls, very similar to what you'd see in a Resident Evil game. I was nodding my head. Okay, this is cool.

A Deadite popped up out of the ground. Okay, I can handle this. I fiddled with the controls and found a way to kill it, basically by running up to it and hitting it with a bunch of melee attacks. The Deadite disappeared into the ground. I started walking around, ready to explore the rest of the cabin. The Deadite popped back up out of the ground and started attacking me again. Since I had struggled with the controls a little bit, half my health was already gone. I killed it again... or so I thought. I started to explore the cabin once again when a Deadite popped out of the ground and started attacking me. I had to use my one and only health item since I was so close to death by this point. I finished off the Deadite (or did I?) and continued to look through the living room of the cabin. Another Deadite popped out of the ground.

By this point I said screw it and ran outside, where not one but two Deadites sprung from the ground, cornered me, and killed me. Game over - not even five minutes into the game.

I tried a couple more times, with very limited success. It quickly become obvious that the enemies infinitely respawned - making it almost pointless to fight them. I didn't mind the tank controls, but the combat was very clunky and hard to pull off. I took so much needless damage just from fighting the game's controls and its enemies at the same time. I tried to adapt, running from the Deadites and exploring on my own - but that didn't work very well either. You have to come to a complete stop in order to examine things. You can't just hit the action button as you are running, like in Resident Evil, and go out a door or pick something up. So if you are trying to move quickly, as you should do in this game if you are running from everything, you can't explore as thoroughly as you need to. Herein lies my biggest problem with the game.

This is a game where you have to examine things, collect items, backtrack, and solve puzzles. I keep bringing up Resident Evil, but there's really no way around it; this game is clearly inspired by that series. It's damn near impossible to do any of the exploring that you need to do when you are constantly under barrage from the enemy. Even if you stop to fight them, they respawn in a matter of seconds - and then they are on your back again, doing damage to your character and draining your health. It is SO annoying.

I began to question whether or not I even wanted to continue playing the game. Clearly the bad reviews were correct and the game was a real turd. But but but the OCD part of me always demands that once I start a game, I have to finish it. Especially for the sake of Mop Up Duty. Think of the Mop Up Duty, Dan!

I kept at it. I took no shame in pulling up an online strategy guide on my phone. I relentlessly abused save states. If this game was going to be cheap and petty with its difficulty, I was going to fight back by being even more cheap and petty. And I did it. Eventually I beat the game.

I have to say that the game does get better the deeper into it you get. You start off with limited items and a poor arsenal of weapons at your disposal - while the enemies are very, very tough. As you make your way through the game, the enemies remain at the same difficulty level while you get tougher, collecting items, upgrades, and better weapons. I cruised through the second disc of the game, when you go back in time to ancient Damascus.

There are things about the game's design that I like. I like how the present day storyline isn't just limited to the cabin and a bunch of woods. The surrounding area is expanded nicely. There's a church with a graveyard, a scout camp, a forest maze, a bloody pig farm that looks like it came right out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The world of the game isn't too big or confusing, and all of its sections flow together nicely. It might have actually been fun to explore if you weren't constantly under attack from the Deadites.

The item system is decent. You collect weapons, health items, ammunition, and gas for your chainsaw arm. You can even forage for mushrooms and other things, and then craft them into health or fuel after you learn how to by reading in-game documents.

This game does do a lot of things right. It's just a shame that 95 percent of the people who give this a try probably won't make it through the first hour of the game. The controls and the early difficulty are just so, so horribly bad. Why did they think endlessly respawning, tough to kill enemies were a good idea? And couldn't they have come up with a better combat system? How about the ability to lock on? Half my attacks, either melee or with guns, missed their mark because you have to be lined up perfectly with your enemies in order to hit them. And you have to do it manually, with tank controls, in fixed camera angle environments. It's just not a good combination.

Graphics:

As far as graphics go, this may be one of the biggest mixed bags I have ever seen. Keep in mind that I grew up in the PS1 era. Games don't have to look perfect in order for me to appreciate them. This game is full of pixels, blurry backgrounds, and jagged edges galore. And I like it. The game does a great job of transferring the creepy atmosphere of the Evil Dead movies to life. Some of the environments I walked through were very spooky.

But I can't kid myself. This game is ugly. It's charming, yes, but ugly. The Deadites themselves are some of the laziest designed characters I have ever seen. Some of the background environments are blotchy, and it is almost like you're looking at them through multiple screen doors. Ash himself is blocky and jagged looking. He barely even has a face. The cutscenes are laughably bad as well, although I have to admit that is part of the game's charm. I don't think the characters' lips even move when they are talking, which is inexcusable for a game that came out in the year 2000.

If you're like me and you grew up in this era of gaming, you'll probably appreciate the graphics in a way similar to how I feel. If you are a newer gamer, you're going to look at this and say WTF?

Sound:

If there's a bright spot to this game's design, it is in its sound. Bruce Campbell automatically makes anything better, and you hear his voice for the entire game. I couldn't help but smile as he spouted one-liners from the movies, both as you played and during the game's cutscenes.

The music is haunting and atmospheric, really helping to sell you on the idea that you are stuck in this dreary and hopeless situation. When the action picks up, like during the boss battles, the music intensifies and rises to the situation.

Overall:

The first hour or so I spent playing this game, it seemed like there would be no other choice than to give it an F. Even Bruce Campbell's presence and they way the game captured the feel of the films was not enough to mask its terrible, terrible gameplay. I almost didn't even want to continue playing the game, it felt so unplayable.

But I persevered. As I said before, I didn't feel one bit guilty about using an online guide and abusing save states because of the flawed nature of this game. Save points are few and far between, and you die A LOT due to its trial and error tendencies. I was not about to play through the same segments of the game over and over again due to cheap deaths.

As I made it deeper into the game, I began to enjoy it more. The story takes you to some fun places, and as you get a better grasp on the combat, everything begins to seem a lot more accessible. That being said, I can't imagine playing through this game without "cheating." I can imagine it would have remained a horribly frustrating experience that would have taken far too long to get through. I wanted to finish this game as soon as I possibly could.

I really can't recommend this game to anyone else. It's a mess. If you're interested in its story, just watch a YouTube playthrough of it. As far as Resident Evil clones go, this has to be one of the worst I have ever played. All things considered, there is a small part of me that is still glad I played it and was able to satisfy my curiosity about the game. I'll never play it again, but I'm still glad I did. Kind of.

THE GRADE:

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1982 reviews:

1983:

1984:

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