ighting evil is hell. Just ask Ash, the once and future supermarket clerk forced to wage an unending battle against the undead in the cult movies Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. In the first two movies of the darkly humorous trilogy, Ash heads out to an abandoned cabin deep in the woods, where he and his friends read from the Necronomicon and summon up hordes of evil dead. His girlfriend is killed, he's forced to hack off his own hand and he gets thrown backward in time to the Middle Ages. There he fights a seemingly final battle against the evil and makes it back to his own time.
The computer game Evil Dead: Hail to the King picks up where Army of Darkness left off. Once again, an unspeakable evil has infected the world out at the old cabin, and once again Ash heads back--girlfriend in tow--to send them back to hell. The game uses a third-person perspective that's almost identical to the popular PlayStation horrorfest Resident Evil. The main character is viewed from numerous angles that shift as he moves around the screen and from scene to scene. There are a handful of keyboard controls that allow Ash to move in the standard compass directions, as well as wield his two weapons. The first of these is always his chainsaw, which replaced his severed hand in Evil Dead 2; the second is one of several weapons: an axe, a pistol, a shotgun or a rifle. Power-ups for all of these weapons, save the axe, can be found in the game.
Ash also benefits from his classic one-liners, like "Hail to the King," "Say hello to disco for me" and--of course--"Groovy." These can be uttered in rapid-fire fashion thanks to a dedicated keyboard key.
As with Resident Evil, the character moves around simple maps with gorgeous, but largely inactive, backgrounds. And like that game, players can save only at certain locations, and even then only if they've found "save tapes." An inventory screen manages the various tools and aids--crowbars, bologna sandwiches, first aid kits and more--that Ash finds. It also allows him to combine his items in unconventional ways, such as using mushrooms to create fuel for his chainsaw.
This Army of Darkness proves lite
The developers of Evil Dead: Hail to the King had everything to lose. They were basing their game on cult movies so intertwined into the psyche of Western civilization that people quote lines from them without ever realizing they're quoting lines from them. And they had a movie trilogy rich in dark humor, twisted creativity and a near-endless supply of one-liners.
They had it all to lose ... and they lost it. The problem isn't the material--Hail to the King is loyal to the movies (to the point of a time jaunt later in the game) and makes good use of their strengths. The settings are appropriately dark and oppressive, and the series' signature humor is sprinkled liberally throughout. What cuts the legs out from under this game faster than Ash's chainsaw through a Deadite, though, is its abysmal gameplay.
The game obviously tried to emulate the success of Resident Evil by mimicking its interface, but Resident Evil succeeded in spite of, not because of, its weird 3-D perspective. In Resident Evil, the zombies leapt out at unexpected moments and forced players into the uneven shock-and-stop pacing that typifies horror movies. Playing Resident Evil at 2 a.m. with the lights out was a spooky, utterly enjoyable experience.
Evil Dead keeps the controls, but loses the frights. It sends an unending torrent of Deadites at Ash, a torrent that can only momentarily be turned aside by his biggest--and most ammo-hungry--weapons. Anyone foolish enough to stand and fight the Deadites quickly runs out of bullets and gas, forcing them to attack with Ash's sorry axe and dead chainsaw. The end result is that the Deadites aren't scary, they're annoying.
The fighting itself is little more than unimaginative brawling. Battles consist of pounding the attack keys and hoping that the Deadites fall before Ash does--there's no strategy or talent involved. And although Ash has plenty of one-liners to fall back on, he makes the same pathetic grunting sounds every time he gets hit ... and he gets hit a lot. The annoying save options, which allows players to save only at predetermined locations, is just as annoying as it is in Resident Evil, and Ash's ability to interact with his environment is extremely limited.
Fans of Evil Dead may like Ash enough to rent it in one of its console-game iterations, or to pick up the newly released PC version on the discount rack. Everyone else should save their cash and rent the original movies instead.
-- Kenneth
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