Evil Dead: Game Review
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need to know
what is it? A one-on-one multiplayer horror extravaganza in the Evil Dead universe.
Expected payment: $40
Developer: Sabre Interactive
Publisher: Sabre Interactive
Comment on: Windows 10, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super, Intel Core i7-9700 @ 3.00GHz, 16GB RAM
multiplayer game? Four survivors against one killer
Association: Official website(opens in a new tab)
The idea of an “Evil Dead video game” has a distinct mid-2000s flavor. B-movie franchises have traditionally been fresh meat for enterprising publishers and developers looking to make a quick buck, which is to say, I didn’t have high hopes for Ash’s latest venture. Evil Dead is a frosty low-culture classic, and I’m ready for another sloppy dig considering how brutal the gaming industry (Ghostbusters, Rambo, The Sopranos) has treated its contemporaries. What I didn’t expect was that Evil Dead would be the best multiplayer horror experience since at least Dead by Daylight. This game is absolutely exhilarating – it’s one of the true left-field sleepers of 2022 – and I’m eager to let it eat my soul.
Sabre Interactive, the studio behind Evil Dead, apparently took its main inspiration from Dead By Daylight. Four players were chosen as survivors – they were all split from the rocker-wielding zombie killers in the movie – and a fifth player took control of an invisible demon who zoomed across the map and opened the way to The portal to hell, wishing to wipe out all creatures. The good guys need to travel through a haunted forest and find a series of artifacts to defeat the forces of evil in 30 minutes. The dungeon master attempted to incapacitate the team before it was completed.
All of this culminates in the final endgame sequence, and if demon players haven’t defeated the protagonist, they’ll have a busy chance to destroy the excavated Necronomicon before they’re banished back to the underworld. If you’re a DBD veteran, you already know the core rhythm here. Survivors will spend a lot of time looting, as wielding extra ammo, weapons, and health potions protects them from onslaughts. At the same time, evil players will accumulate experience points and equip talent structures to break through these defenses.
The difference is that Dead by Daylight takes the form of a simple, murderous manhunt—more Jason than Freddy. You hunt down humans with a variety of custom killers and throw their battered corpses on meat hooks before hunting down more fresh blood. The only challenge is how to effectively control the victim. Evil Dead, on the other hand, puts you in control of an entire ghoul camp. The three factions that come with the game contain three different units (basic, elite, and boss monsters), each with their own individual abilities. At any time, Demon players can jump behind the wheel of a summoned NPC that is besieging Ash and Company. The modularity of everyone’s strategy approach is almost overwhelming, and since demon players can really have a survivor up to certain thresholds, they need to always have a clear understanding of each other’s mechanics. Evil Dead offers such a high skill ceiling for licensed games that it can truly function as an eSport.
It’s a video game that lets you augment your undead horde with flute-playing skeletons.
When everything comes together for demon players, you’ll track down heroes on atlases, in booby trap rooms, and draw rifts in reality, slowly eroding their resolve. Party members are often at risk of being possessed, which means there are always exposed sides out of sight. Do you know how League of Legends teamfight snowballs can turn into disaster once one side is ready to go? Evil Dead kind of feels like that. Seasoned demon players will likely understand the roles of all friendly characters, so they can focus on healers and support to back off in the chaos. Crafted survivors know to lay down their guns when they are vulnerable to domination, starving the demons of precious ammunition. It’s the same cat-and-mouse dynamic I’ve enjoyed in other horror games, but multiplied to the highest point of the galactic brain.
Evil Dead can be a bit overwhelming for anyone expecting some goofy, gory fun. I’m the killer workhorse in Dead by Daylight, and I was totally stomped on the first few rounds of my ride in Dead by Daylight. (I eventually turned things around, but not after getting some metagame tricks on YouTube.) In these kinds of games, the pressure to play the main character is significantly less than the pressure to play the villain. Evil Dead urges its players to stick together, which often allows more talented party members to compensate those new to this particular underworld. Saber ensures that the protagonist always has a chance to walk through the back door to victory; if someone dies during the party, they can be resurrected on the stone altars scattered across the arena. But the demons are spinning the plate alone, desperate to stop the Gray family from snowballing to victory. There are so many fast-paced decisions to be made and so many strategic issues to consider that a round of Evil Dead often leaves me feeling as exhausted as after a self-made StarCraft duel. Trust me, I mean it as a compliment.
(Image credit: Sabre Interactive)
But there are also plenty of times in Evil Dead where its brilliant cinematic embellishments overwhelm any minimization I’ve made on the stats screen. Little Red Henry is alone in the woods, on the verge of a complete freak. I set a dozen devious traps in his path, making him kneel as he stumbles like a child in a haunted house. Henrietta is the leader of the warlord faction and one of the greatest Evil Dead villains of all time, and in doing so she just squeezes life out of the player’s skull. It can only be stopped when she is under attack, making it a particularly satisfying fatal blow when everyone else in the party is knocked down. Demons can have getaway cars rusting in the forest, meaning the conflict could be interrupted by a Mike truck burning towards survivors. Multiplayer horror games need to retain their fantastic teenage thrills while handing more agency to humans, because no one wants to experience the gloriously terrifying Evil Dead universe purely through icy, numb mechanics. Saber threading the needle and wrapping all the goofy tendrils in the collection in a package with tons of competing intrigue. It’s a video game that lets you augment your undead horde with flute-playing skeletons. It’s hilarious and often the difference between winning and losing.
Sabre also recreates the ’80s red jelly guts that made the film so iconic. Blood splatters abound, and the developers have done a great job detailing the kind of charming cabins and funeral campsites that are central to Evil Dead’s aesthetic. In the heat of battle, when a group of chattering Viking skeletons pours out of the rift, sometimes you just want to sit back and watch the action as if it were the climax of a Total War campaign. In all of my games, the frame rate has been locked at 60fps, which is impressive considering how many zombies you’re likely to be managing at the same time. I found some cluttered stutters while exploring – some hotkeys didn’t fire and some floating animations – but overall the Evil Dead pack is airtight, especially compared to Dead By Daylight, which Still flagged for some round-breaking bug six years after its release.
(Image credit: Sabre Interactive)
Evil Dead certainly doesn’t feel unfinished, but it seems like the first step toward a bigger goal.
All that said, Evil Dead is a multiplayer game. There are a few cosmetic-related single-player challenges on the home screen, and a bot-only mode for tentative zombie slayers, but if you’re playing this game in the expected state, you’re evaluating other Souls screens. This means that Evil Dead is bound by a meta-progression system, offloading layers of talent points to your favorite demon tribe or heroic survivor, slowly granting them higher perks. I feel like Saber would love to build Evil Dead into a durable MOBA-style platform; filtering for new characters with every patch. But the movie contains a fairly small universe, and there are already four different versions of Ash Williams to choose from on the character selection screen. I’m not an expert on Necronomicon chronology, but I don’t know how much more juice can be squeezed from the source. I’m generally not a fan of judging games based on their growth potential, but honestly, after playing around with the 13 heroes and 3 terrifying forces in the retail code, I’m already hoping more games are coming.
This is the nature of game development in 2022. Countless great multiplayer experiences have been launched, and hopefully they will attract audiences so the team can keep working on it. Sometimes it works, sometimes you find yourself waiting 20 minutes to get into a Spellbreak match wondering what to expect. Evil Dead certainly doesn’t feel unfinished, but it seems like the first step toward a bigger goal. Saber has a great multiplayer game that aspires to be the best in the hobby and wants players to pay attention.
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