Evil Dead: Hail to the King
Kill it! Kill it! What do you mean it's already
dead?!?
April 24, 2001 -
I loves me some Evil Dead. I remember the first time I saw it, way back
yonder when I was a kid of only nine. Okay, well my parents didn't let me
see it then, but a few years later my best friend's older brother rented
it just to scare the hell out of us 12-year olds...and it worked. Evil
Dead made me a lifelong fan of the Evil Dead series, as well as the
team-up of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell -- even the ill-fated
The
Adventures of Brisco County Junior. With that said, I was
really looking forward to playing Evil Dead: Hail to the King. I
mean, I played the Playstation version, and sure, it was complete
crap...but come on, the PC can make anything shine, right? Right? Ugh!
I can truly say that I found THQ's Hail to the King even scarier than I
could have ever imagined...but in a bad way. First off, this game just
looks horrible. Not only are you stuck in incredibly awkward camera angles
as you make your way through the game, but the pre-rendered backgrounds
just look hideous. I thought one of the advantages to using pre-rendered
backgrounds was so you could create an incredible visual experience
without slowly down the game engine through overuse of polygons. Instead
the mottled, blurry backgrounds hardly look like they were improved over
the Playstation version. The low-poly character models look pathetic as
well, and the stiff, jerky animation hardly gives the impression of life
-- even if Ash is the only live one in the bunch.
The sound is almost as frightening as the graphics. Although the
orchestral, gothic soundtrack is well produced, the bland, canned sound
effects hardly evoke the eerie mood they're supposed to, rather they'll
make you laugh and tilt your head quizzically in disbelief that this could
have gotten through QA testing. Bruce Campbell's voice-overs are just as
uninspired. I don't know what happened to Bruce on the day they were
recording his tracks for the game. Usually Bruce has a powerful,
expressive voice, and, after hearing him in a few games now, I believe his
voice-work is some of the best in the biz. However, something just wasn't
clicking for him when he was recording Ash's voice for Hail to the King.
Instead of the enthusiast, energized Ash I remember from the movies, Ash
comes off as bored and flaccid, even in the face of a horde of undead who
want to eat your face. For example, his raucous, "Come get some!" from the
movies turns into a slightly bored, monotonous , "Come get some..." I
guess, if you really wanna, but I'm more interested in my shoes right now,
and I don't care if you want to eat my brains, go ahead if you must.
The suckage wasn't just saved for the visual and auditory portion of
Hail to the King, though...no, no. Gameplay is equally as tedious. Again,
the awkward camera angles, although cinematic, don't help an already
ungainly combat system. You figure Ash would be a major ass-kicker with a
chain saw strapped to hi hand, but instead it takes about 10 hits before
you can plow through an enemy. This wouldn't be so bad if your undead
attackers didn't constantly respawn, but seeing as they do, you hardly
ever have any down time when you're not attacking and being attacked,
which makes for one unhealthy Ash after a while, and one bored gamer in
even less time. The combat might not be so bad if you could actually plan
out what you were doing and create a brilliant strategy for destroying the
unending forces of evil, but combat essentially boils down to Ash swinging
his chain saw wildly while running, and jumping back quickly to avoid
getting hit. Yawn! Sure, you have other weapons in your arsenal, but none
are as powerful as the chain saw, so why bother.
Gameplay itself is repetitive as well. Evil Dead is one of those games
where you have to slowly scan across every wall pressing the "action" key
to find hidden treasures since many of the items you'll find aren't
represented by an icon -- most are, but some aren't. Then, when you
finally do find a certain object, you usually have to run to the other
side of the haunted forest through the aforementioned never-ending
onslaught of undead.
So just in case you couldn't tell by now, I wasn't very impressed with
Evil Dead: Hail to the King. You know how Highlander 2 actually made
Highlander worse? Well, I could say the same about Evil Dead: Hail to the
King...but I've already forgotten I played it.
-- Tal Blevins
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Utilitarian menus are simple to navigate, but there just aren't many options here, like the ability to change resolutions. Thin manual is useful, but fails to explain some important basics.