Evil Dead: The Game

[Neon Ignition]

I've read that this is a fair bit like Dead By Dawn that I tried once and didn't really get along with. The closest to a horror PVE that's really worked for me in third person was the Friday the 13th game which did a good enough job of creating the panic of Jason hunting you down as you all scrabbled to get what you needed and escape. This is similar but leans more heavily into the team play aspect.

Whereas in F13 everyone would sneak around and then start to come together sometimes later in the match here every tends to stick together. With these games I feel they're often ones you have to get in at the ground floor, if you wait till all the kinks and content have been fleshed out the community will make it hard to enjoy. At the moment everyone is new, learning the ropes and thankfully largely ignoring group chat. You have four classes of character with various perks depending on you overall rank and you can unlock additional characters too. Everyone seems to often lean to wanting to be Ash but there's pretty much a version of Ash in every class so it doesn't overly lean play and the differences aren't so big that whatever you pick feels like one class has a key advantage over another.



Each match plays out the same. There are three map pieces to collect that your told the location of and once they're collected you then have a page and a dagger to trigger and fend off enemies from till you claim them. After that there's a boss to take down and that is in turn followed by protecting the Necronomicon till it closes the gates to hell. A fifth player controls the lead enemy force and has to stop you, levelling themselves up so they can possess players who have let their fear bar rise too much or objects like trees and cars. That or unleashing enemies etc.

The game is quite good looking and the map is a decent size with around 12-15 locations in it covering a bit of town, swamp etc and the infamous cabin. The studio will be releasing additional maps for free down the line, likely the main town and locations based on the other films in the franchise.



My team won the first match and got taken out on the second halfway through. You very much need everyone to grab the initial map pieces fast early on as allowing the demon player to level up will see you all get pummelled. The map conditions change too, sometimes its rainy, sometimes snowing etc so as it stands there's a risk it could get overly repetitive or samey but at up to 30 mins per match you should get a healthy amount of hours in before that happens too much and hopefully the content won't be too slow rolling out.

I haven't tried the single player missions that unlock additional characters like Pablo, I've heard they're way OTT dialled for difficulty so waiting for familiarity seems best.

So far though, as far as this type of game goes, it seems...

[QualityChimp]

Saw a trailer for this yesterday and it stopped me scrolling as it looks decent!

[Neon Ignition]

After having a few games of being a Survivor I tried being the Demon last night. You fly around like the camera POV demon in the film collecting little ref orbs that give you points you can spend to lay traps and spawn enemies etc as well as possessing cars, trees, enemies and Survivors. The more you do and the more you injure the team the more you rank up and can do more things. It's an interesting switch up and felt fairly balanced against the team. I think I prefer being a Survivor but the flip side is that you're match isn't dependent on other players approaching the game in the proper way.

[Brad]

Excellent poll options mate.

[Neon Ignition]

This is already starting to slip as an experience for me. For some reason the general random players you're mixed with are now fixated on staying with the spawn area and fighting the deadites that spawn which results in a fail state. No objective chasing at all meaning you have zero route to do well. I'll give it a bit longer but another online player base might be killing their own money spend again here

[Neon Ignition]

Spent a chunk of the weekend on this again. I don't want it to get too old but am mindful of staying away so long it becomes unplayable by being too far behind other players when new maps hit so I figured I'd push my character till they reached level 25 (the max level per character) and then have a break and after the weekend I'm on level 24.

A mixture of good and bad games but enough to really map out the gameplay loop of the game. It's very well balanced but in a way that doesn't really invite a variety of match experiences. The gameplay loop for match wins seems to be:


-From the start of the match head to the nearest building(s) and grab what you can including a melee weapon and firearm
-Then stick with the group and head to each destination grabbing the objectives asap with any upgrades and stat boosts as you go aiming to be reaching the boss section before the Demon player gets past Match Level 15
-Focus on draining the boss and dodging, breaking for enemies only when necessary

It sounds simple but if a player breaks from this or the group focuses too long on scouring or the demon player ranks up near Match Level 20 fast then you've lost. It's one specific play out that nets you a win so the match outcome is very much out of your hands for the most part. The only deviation in play experience is to be the demon. It's fun but the delivery of new content will be how this survives.