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> Results: Evil Dead: Regeneration
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"Well, it's not awful" - That's the thought that was running through my head for most of my time with Evil Dead: Regeneration. I have about the same opinion of the movies that this game is based (and extends) upon. If you're a die-hard fan you probably already bought it, along with all the previous Evil Dead games, no matter how poorly done they were, but for the rest of you, read on.
If you're not aware, the Evil Dead movies are about a book. An evil book, the Book of the Dead, that brings terror upon the world through its seductive power. The series' hero is Ashley J. Williams, better known as just Ash, an average fellow who is left without a right hand by the end of the second movie. He promptly replaced it with a chainsaw, and continued to battle "deadite" demons, slashing away with one hand, a double-barreled shotgun in the other, and always armed with plenty of comedy one-liners.  And that's how we find Ash at the start of the game, battling deadites outside Dr. Knowby's cabin (the main location in the first two movies), in a recap of sorts. It also serves as a handy tutorial, showing you how to wield Ash's weapons, which are promptly removed as you start the game proper, convicted of murder and locked up in an asylum for the criminally insane. Well, you can't expect to go around chopping people up and talking about demons forever, can you? It turns out though that the crazy Dr. Vingo Reinhard has been holed up in the basement of the asylum, flipping through the Book of the Dead and conducting gruesome experiments on patients as he tries to unlock the book's secrets and opening a portal to Hell. This could cause a slight "end of the world"-type problem, and with the assistance of Dr. Knowby's floating spirit head, you have to stop Reinhard and the hordes of deadites that have been unleashed, closing the portal and saving your lawyer / girlfriend along the way. You won't be doing it alone, though. For the first time, Ash has a partner, and he's not happy about it. He's especially not happy about the fact that his partner is a deadite midget named Sam, a foul little man who loves to wind Ash up. Luckily for Ash (and you), killing Sam is actually necessary in the game, and is something you do often, kicking him into enemies and switches, watching as he happily comes back to life (death? undeath?) time and time again. You'll also directly control Sam at times, using his small stature to fit through small spaces to throw some lever or otherwise allow Ash to proceed. The first time you have Sam ride a giant deadite is great fun as you smash everything in your path, but the novelty wears thin as you do it on just about every level. That's a complaint that can be leveled at much of the game, actually. There's just not that much new in each level ﾖ you show up, kill deadites, have Sam run and unlock a door, kill more deadites, fight a boss. It is quite enjoyable to go on a rampage against the evil folk, and each level does introduce slightly different enemies and ways to kill them, it's just that it's all so.. uninspired. Adding to the problems are a targeting system that only serves to frustrate with nearby enemies, jerky animation, graphics that can look decent but mostly look dated, inconsistent collision detection that will frequently leave Ash appearing to stand in the middle of objects, and lengthy loading screens every time you have to restart a level because you died. The inclusion of playing as Evil Ash is just a wasted opportunity, giving you a temporary power-up and that's it.  If this were all there is to Evil Dead: Regeneration, I'd be calling it rubbish and telling everyone to avoid it, but it has a saving grace ﾖ the voice acting shines and the dialog is genuinely funny. Bruce Campbell, the actor who brings life to Ash in the movies, reprises his role for the game. He works brilliantly with Ted Raimi (brother of Sam Raimi, the Evil Dead - and Spider-Man! - movie director) who provides a voice for Sam, and together they recorded enough lines for their bickering so that you're not constantly hearing the same thing over and over again. If you go to the trouble of collecting barely-hidden tokens in the game, you'll unlock several movies of Campbell talking about his work, including one humorous anecdote involving Friends actor Matthew Perry's low opinion of a previous Evil Dead game. Despite its problems, Evil Dead: Regeneration provides a decent dose of fun for even the casual Evil Dead fan looking for a few hours' worth of mindless monster battling, but even the budget price probably won't let a total newcomer to the Evil Dead world overlook the lack of polish. 
You won't be surprised to find out that this is a very violent game ﾖ as the player, you'll be decapitating, shooting, blowing up and impaling countless numbers of humanoid enemies, with Ash's "finishing moves" being especially graphic and shown in detail. Blood and the accompanying gore flies across the screen as you chainsaw your way through the deadite masses, and their wails and screams echo in your ears. This being said, the line between the good guys and the bad guys is pretty clearly drawn, and everything is presented in a very over-the-top style, with the cartoonish graphics serving to mute the impact, and that makes it hard to call this an adults-only game on the violence alone, even if Sam is running around popping off deadite heads. Looking at other aspects of the game, there is an amount of cussing, especially from Sam, but I didn't notice anything too hardcore. There are several lewd comments directed to the few females in the game, and even the female deadite boss has had considerable attention given to her chest. Finally, the game has more than its fair share of demonic imagery, which is understandable given the subject matter. Still, each generation brings a set of older teens running around quoting Ash, and they should be able to handle this latest Evil Dead game.
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