It also means that one bad play can set you back quite a ways, no matter how close you were to finishing. Frustratingly, there are no checkpoints in these missions, despite them taking anywhere from 15 – 30 minutes to complete. The missions are fairly challenging, but reading the objective in the upper-right will help keep the player on the right track. These missions, despite being single-player against only AI opponents, still require an internet connection to play. Speaking of, there are even single player missions to complete, which can unlock four new survivors, from various eras of the Evil Dead franchise. Both the demon’s and survivor’s boosts are only for this single round, however, and everyone starts with their base stats in the next match. Survivor’s can spend these like points as well, to level up their character’s stats such as health, fear resistance, melee/ranged damage, shield capacity, and more. Survivor’s can counter the demon’s growing power by finding Pink F bottles within loot crates randomly placed around each level. Each level grants a point that can be used to unlock various boosts, or new portals that can be created to spawn more enemies players will have to fight. While survivors don’t receive much as they gather weapons, ammo, Shemp’s Cola, and other special items like amulets, the demon collects experience points and eventually levels up. The way most games played out, whichever side performed the most advantageous actions within the first phase of the round tended to win.
If at any point before this all survivors are killed, the demon wins. While these are time-limited, once these goals are complete the survivors now have unlimited time to destroy The Dark Ones using said dagger, and finally they must defend the Necronomicon while it finishes the ritual. You and a team of three others are tasked with putting together a map that shows the location of the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, an ancient Sumerian text, and the Kandarian Dagger, which are both heavily featured throughout the series. Think PinkĮvil Dead is a third-person action survival game if you play as a survivor. They do help in keeping the team of survivors together, though, and honking the horn is a good way to let others know you’re ready to move on to the next area. The very first time I got in a car in the tutorial survival mission, the vehicle immediately began to slide backwards, and I had yet to input any controls. Players can drive cars, which is usually faster than running, but unfortunately the cars drive like they’re floating above the ground, slide all over the place, and generally feel like a mistake. It would’ve been useful if the vault button could be used for jumping as well. While vaulting some objects like logs is an option, there is no jump button, which means the smallest rock cannot be hopped over. Terrain traversal can be a hassle if you go off the paths laid out for you in any map.
While the presentation of Evil Dead may be on the campy side, it doesn’t excuse occasional jank. Blasting Deadites while Back in Black by AC/DC or the aptly titled Hail to the King by Avenged Sevenfold will never get old. Having said that, though, playing such a repetitive soundtrack can get annoying, but thankfully a new Spotify playlist has also released as a tie-in to the game, which fits it perfectly. The background music also ramps up in intensity the more your character’s fear level rises. The sound design especially, beyond including lines from all characters, is creepy enough at times to cause jump scares when a Deadite leaps at you from a portal, or of course when the demon successfully lands a jumpscare attack on your character.
But it’s not hard to appreciate the production values that went into Evil Dead. Hell, I didn’t even know Duke Nukem’s “hail to the king, baby!” line was a reference to this set of movies until I played this game. I can’t recall ever seeing any of the original movies, nor any of the recent media in the franchise’s resurrection. Now, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have much familiarity with the Evil Dead franchise.