Evil Dead: Regeneration

"Finally, a game worthy to have the Evil Dead name and Bruce Campbell."

I got this game today at gamestop for $21.63. It was the last copy they had so I urged myself to get it. I've read countless reviews saying this game isn't that great. I knew this before buying it but something still told me to get it and now that I've been playing it for like 5 hours straight, I can say that I am so glad I got this game. This is worth a full 50 bucks and I would probably of even payed 50 for it. It might be a budget title price, but let me assure everyone this is NOT a budget title. Shall we goto the official review?...

Summary: This game as you all know probably (especially Evil Dead fans) this game is based on the Evil Dead movies starring Bruce Campbell as the leading role playing the hero fighting against evil and so on. If you've seen the movie, this story starts off as if the army of darkness movie never happened.. You start in the cabin in the woods before the portal and everything opens at the end of evil dead 2 movie and it's based on how it would've played out if the portal never opened in the second movie.. This is cool because the ending of Evil Dead 2 is played out in a different perspective from the beginning of this game. The graphics aren't the greatest the Xbox has seen and it doesn't even come anywhere near (Graphic-wise) chronicles of riddick, halo 2, and other graphical games such as them, but I think this game is equally fun. Everything is solid. People seemingly have been having glitches (stuff disappearing, things not working right, ect.) but I haven't experienced any glitches what so ever in my copy of the game.

Gameplay 8/10 - When the game first started, I though "man this game sucks big time", but as time went on and I got a little further I started to love it and now I can't stop playing it! This is pretty solid. You have several weapons you can get throughout the game which I think all has unlimited ammo and so on which is okay, but it can get overly easy this way. There is many things you can do and many ways you can kill things in this game. Many combos you can you, or you can use your sidekick, sam. Sam is a midget deadite who is fighting side by side with you along the way. You can use him (kick him around alot and control him) along the way and you'll have to use him alot. The game gets a little repetitive along the way.. Soon you'll be saying "I have to control Sam again and open up another passage way!?" and you use sam for almost all the boss battles. Also, Ash has the ability to transform into a evil Ash (I guess you can call it a badass deadite form of him) There are also many kind of enemies that take different kinds of ways to kill (for example, some you have to do you finisher to them to kills them and some you have to harpoon to kill) I do however wish bosses were easy, they take time to beat, but they are just way to easy to beat. They're patters are basically all the same. The game is gorey and humorous so it's a win-win combination. The gameplay may take a little to warm up to at first, give it some time.

Sound 9/10 - The sound is overall great in all it's evil dead awesomeness, but one thing I do miss is the button you can press to make him say a witty one liner to the enemy.. That is absent, but I think the hilarious arguing between Ash and Sam throughout the game takes it's place and it does it very well, but I miss my one-liner button. We all know that Bruce Campbell (The king of the Evil Dead franchise) provided the voice overs for Ash in the game and Ted Raimi, who is the brother of the genius man who directed the evil dead movies (Sam Raimi) provided the voice for Sam (Ash's little midget partner). The voicing is dead on and the sound is just so perfect that I don't see anything wrong here. (I still miss my one-liner button)

Graphics 8/10 - I admit, the graphics aren't the best and I would say that the cutscenes in Fistful of boomstick was alot more better to me. The cutscenes in this game are all done with in-game graphics which is okay, but I feel it could've been alot better. The graphics feel a little rushed and I think that the developers could have spent a little more time touching up the graphics. The environments do look nice though. The enemies and the monsters in the game also seem well done and Ash does look like he should (looks like Bruce Campbell) The graphics aren't everything in a game though so it doesn't phase me that much in this game because it's just that fun and awesome.

Controls 9/10 - The controls are tight and feel solid, but sometimes the view will change and it messes with the controls a tiny bit and sometime you may fall of a cliff or something because of that, but that because of the camera view at time. The controls couldn't be better.

The last thing I wanted to talk about was the camera angles in this game.. At times, the camera angle gets a little wacky and just looks weird. It doesn't act up alot so it doesn't really bother me that much, but it just seems weird and odd at certain times. You can't move the camera much up and down when you are moving.

Overall 8/10 - This game is worth more than it's selling for. 20 bucks is a steal for this game. I feel as if I buy another copy or something (I might actually buy my friend a copy for his birthday) It's a whole lot better than the previous titles and it's quite fun once you get into it.

Rent or buy? - I would say rent first because like I said, it took me a little bit in the beginning to like this game and some people may feel differently about this game than I do, but I love it. I didn't rent it, I went straight to buying it because I had the urge to buy it out of nowhere..

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/21/05