Evil Dead: The Game PS5 Review. After a lengthy hiatus from the world of games (bar an appearance in Dead By Daylight by Ash), The Evil Dead is once again summoned to cause havoc with players. This time by doing what Sam Rami’s films did best – pitting friends against each other with gleefully sadistic mischief.
Evil Dead: The Game takes the increasingly popular 1vs4 multiplayer dynamic and puts a distinctly Kandarian spin on it. This is both a celebration of all things Evil Dead and an intriguing multiplayer game in its own right. At times almost as endearingly ramshackle as the film that birthed it.
Evil Dead: The Game Review (PS5) – A Groovy Multiplayer Romp Let Down By Minor Issues
Captures The Spirit Of Evil Dead In Spades
Like series hero Ash Williams constructing his chainsaw hand, Saber Interactive follows up on the fine work it did on World War Z by taking its best ideas from that experience and fusing them onto an asymmetrical multiplayer body. The results are pretty groovy.
Four players take on the role of survivors, with several versions of Ash among those to pick from, trying to find the necessary tools to close the demonic portal that has spewed Deadites forth like a heavily clogged sewer pipe that finally succumbed to the pressure.
Matches see the survivors searching for missing pages that then reveal the location of the Kandarian dagger and book to take on the malevolent Deadite presence and banish it from our world.
All the while they must fight off possessed humans out to stop them, and avoid the Sauron-like eye of the player controlling the Kandarian Demon, who has no physical power to wield, but can cause plenty of damage in other ways.
The player controlling the demon goes around the map collecting red orbs to give them enough power to make a physical impact on the world. At first, this is done by summoning traps (unseen from the survivors’ POV) that allow demons to pop out of portals and for trees to become temporarily sentient.
Teamwork Is Paramount To Surviving The Demonic Hordes
As the demon invokes more terror into the survivors, and the longer the match is drawn out, the more points the demon player can put into adding new abilities and strengthening them. Suddenly possession of terrified players is on the table alongside the ability to summon a boss unit, and up the amount of demonic power that can be held in reserve.
It takes the concept of Turtle Rock’s ill-fated, but important, 1v4 trendsetter Evolve and gives the player more flexibility to ascertain what abilities will be important for the particular match they are in. No matter how quick and smart a team of survivors might be, the systems in place give the demon player a good shot at taking them out at any time.
The key to survival/victory is about teamwork ultimately, and more than some of its asymmetrical peers, Evil Dead: The Game insists you’ll have a very hard time as survivors if you split up, even if it seems like the thing to do.
For the player controlling the demo,, creating instances where you can pull the group apart is so delightfully in keeping with what Evil Dead does best, and I can’t deny it made me cackle with devilish glee any time I managed to pull it off.
It’s Fun To Be Bad, But Playing As Humans Has Its Charms
Not that playing as humans is without its charm. As a survivor you’re not exactly helpless because these are a tough group of folk, who can tool up with a variety of guns, melee weapons, and tools to battle the Deadite horde with in gloriously grisly fashion. It’s definitely a deliberate choice to make combat feel closed in, messy, and a tad unwieldy, and that takes some getting used to, but boy does it add a sense of desperate survival to the dicier battles.
There’s a delicious pace to matches for survivors, where they can’t be sure if the demon player is on to them or not, and the risk grows with every loud noise. With such big maps, often blanketed in darkness, the fear levels of survivors come into play.
The longer they spend in darkness the higher their fear meter goes, making them vulnerable to possession if and when the demon finds them. To combat that, light sources are fairly commonplace, and matches can be picked up to light certain dark spots.
Of course, the more players end up fighting off the Deadites and the demon, the more of an effect it has on their psyche.
Unlike other asymmetrical multiplayer horror games, Evil Dead: The Game brings classes into the survivor pool, with different characters suited for particular roles in a group dynamic such as warriors and support units.
So for instance, my favorite character to use is Ash vs. Evil Dead’s badass Kelly, and she’s a hunter type, best deployed to take out Deadites with guns, so when playing a match or upgrading her overall skill tree, it’s smart to focus on the things that make it easier for her to give it the old kaboom to the undead.
It pays to try a few types out though, as your favourite character may not be the right play style for you. However you pick, you’re fairly rewarded for fulfilling what that class should do at the end of matches.
Evil Dead: The Game Is Let Down By Relatively Minor Gripes
There could be fair claim that what Evil Dead: The Game currently offers is a tad light. Two maps (very big maps with randomised objective points, though) and a fairly humble character set do feel a little lean, but it’s clear that Saber Interactive wants to build on this, and helping sweeten the deal is a selection of single-player missions based on events from the films and the show.
The missions don’t require other players (though annoyingly do require a connection to the game’s servers) and play out particular sections of The Evil Dead and beyond. The opening mission sees the Ash of the first film leaving the cursed cabin in the aftermath of his hand loss.
This mission, and all those that follow it, are tough as nails, and do at least serve as a strong introduction to the plight of playing as a survivor in the multiplayer portion.
At present, Evil Dead: The Game suffers from the same kind of issues as pretty much any online game at launch. In the first day or two, getting into a match was near impossible, but happily that has become a far less frequent issue the further we get from launch. I also wasn’t particularly pleased with the matchmaking, which seems a little too basic at present. Just because one player leaves before the beginning of a match, you shouldn’t have to start from scratch.
The PS5 version is what I played, and sadly, it didn’t make any real use of the DualSense controller. The game looks good, and runs fairly well, but playing on PS5 didn’t really offer much in the way of extra bells and whistles.
I don’t want to end on a sour note because when the chips are down, Saber Interactive has absolutely nailed how an online Evil Dead game should feel. Flaws and all, the spirit of Sam Raimi’s beloved horror opus runs through this game.
Evil Dead: The Game is out now for PS5, PS4, PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One.
Review code kindly provided by publisher.