Evil Dead: Hail to the King is a Resident Evil style action
adventure that picks up eight years after the events of Army of Darkness. Featuring
an abundance of puzzle solving gun shooting and chainsaw using Hail to the King
sports voiceovers by Bruce Campbell in addition to a wide variety of
recognizable enemies, upgradeable weapons, monster-specific fatalities, and a
non linear game design for multiple story paths. Sadly for Evil Dead fans, the
PlayStation 2 version of Hail to the King was cancelled not too long after work
on the Dreamcast version was completed. An official reason for its cancellation
was never given.
Evil Dead: Hail to the King attempts to marry the concepts of the film series
with the style of play found in Capcom's Resident Evil games. you view Evil
Dead from a variety of fixed camera perspectives, kill monsters with your
shotgun and chainsaw, and store away items those that you don't have enough
room to carry in a mysterious box that magically reappears in several different
places throughout the course of the game. The gameplay in Evil Dead differs
from Resident Evil in that it favors action over puzzle solving. To its credit,
the game provides ample amounts of ammo and health. It's unlikely that you'll
have to replay a section of the game more than once to make sure that you have
enough bullets and first-aid kits to get through a tough spot, which happens
frequently in the Resident Evil series.
Evil
Dead's fixed camera angles often defer to cinematic perspectives instead of
those that are actually useful in a fight. This means that you'll often find
yourself on a path or in a room battling a Deadite and you won't be sure if your
attack is lined up correctly your foes, however, don't seem to have any trouble
lining up their attacks. This is a classic example of a graphical problem
affecting gameplay, although the visuals in the Dreamcast version of the game
do possess many nice touches outside of that. The game's rendered backgrounds
are excellent looking and work well to re-create the mood of the Evil Dead
films. They're also given a semblance of life through the use of short video
loops that create the illusion of movement such as the shadows of trees swaying
in the wind. You may have seen this effect before in games like Eidos' Fear
Effect, but you've never seen it look this good. The player and creature
character models are rendered well, although they stand apart from the
background in a way that's slightly disconcerting. Subtler visual effects such
as the chunks of gore that drip off of Ash's chainsaw after a battle with a
Deadite and leaves picked up by the wind are also noteworthy. All of these
elements combine to give Evil Dead: Hail to the King an almost photo-realistic
look at times. It's a shame that its bum camera angles and jarringly basic
character animations detract so much from what is an otherwise sharp-looking
game.
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