We last left you in the year 1984, so let us now jump forward to the year 2000.  The films Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness have been released.  A little company called Heavy Iron thought that the world needed a new game continuing the Evil Dead saga.  And so they gave birth to Evil Dead: Hail to the King.  It takes place eight years after the events in the movie Army of Darkness.  Ash is now back working at S-Mart and has met a new girl named Jenny.  He continuously has nightmares about his past and Jenny decides that he needs to face his fears and go back to the cabin. 

You may be able to foresee that things do not go well for our hero, you are playing as in the game.  As Ash, your evil hand that you lopped off from Evil Dead 2 turns the tape player with Professor Knowby’s reading of the Necromonicon.  The evil dead rises again and takes Jenny leaving you alone to defend yourself from the malicious terror that has been unleashed.Ash isn’t really looking his best on the Sega Dreamcast…

I liked this part because they do the whole “work shed” thing like in Evil Dead 2, where Ash runs to the work shed and assembles his chainsaw arm rig.  That was kind of cool for me to see.  You find a note from the professor where he tells you that you need to find the missing pages of the book of the dead, starting at the church for help.

Now…to the gameplay….

Anybody ever play any of the original Resident Evil series?  If you have, then that gives you an idea what the controls are like.  If you haven’t played those games, allow me to try to explain.  When you push up on the d-pad, Ash will move forward in whatever direction he is pointing. To make Ash move in a different direction, you have to push either left or right on the d-pad.  This can make things rather difficult, especially with the fixed camera and the change of angle shots. You can get disoriented very easily at times.Another iconic Evil Dead view

As for the menus, they are also very similar to the ones in Resident Evil.  You have your main inventory, where you have all your weapons and items you pick up.  Then there’s the text menu which contains all text based items you pick up. You have a map…pretty sure that’s self-explanatory.  Finally you have a chest and a save option.  The chest option is only useable when you find a storage chest.  These chests can be used to store items to free up your inventory.  If you do store something in a chest it will appear in every other chest you find.  Now, the only way you are able to save your game is by finding save tapes (again just like Resident Evil).  You can also only save your game at the storage chests.

Let’s talk combat shall we?  I’m going to be honest with you guys here…the combat in this game is horrid.  Before I continue to discuss the details of the combat I would like to say something about why I think the combat sucks.  This is a “survival horror” game, meaning you are trying to survive with limited resources/weapons to defeat enemies, so having difficult combat game play could be understandable.  One thing that makes the combat so difficult is why you are attacking the enemies, they are still able to damage to you.  And there is no good way to avoid their attacks while attacking them.  Also I would like to mention it takes forever to kill even the common enemies in the beginning of the game. This would be understandable if you could avoid the enemies to conserve ammo/gas/health, but there were multiple times while playing where I was walking down a narrow path and enemies spawn directly in you path, leaving no way for you to get past them without fighting them.

Anyways…on to the weapons…

You are able you use two weapons at a time.  You have your trusty chainsaw for your right hand weapon and you can switch between weapons that you use with your left hand.  You begin the game with an axe and a pistol with a small amount of ammo.  You do get your boomstick later in the game as well as an assault rifle.

Your chainsaw does actually have a gas consumption bar that you have to refill when you run out.  The chainsaw is not always running.  You have a choice to turn it on to do more damage or just use it as a standard melee weapon.

Over all, Evil Dead: Hail to the King is not an awful game, but it’s definitely not the best of the horror survival games that were available at this time.  It is a fun game to play for a while if you are an Evil Dead fan, just to hear the cheesy Ash banter, which is delightfully voiced by Ash himself, Bruce Campbell. This game was available on the PlayStation, Dreamcast, and PC.  If you want a survival horror game to play on any of these platforms, you would be much better off playing one of the Resident Evil or Silent Hill serials.