Before Sam Raimi was famous as the director of 2002's Spiderman, he created the Evil Dead Trilogy which is now considered a cult horror classic.
Although it was a low budget horror film, it is because of the hero's funny one-liners and horror comedy that made it fun to watch. In fact, many of the one-liners have been used in 1996's game called Duke Nukem 3D.
In this game, the story continues where the last film (Army of Darkness) left off. It seems that the hero (Ash) cannot forget the horrors of the deadites that continues to haunt him. Following the advice of his girlfriend, they went to revisit the old cabin (as seen in Evil Dead 2).
So, with all the gaming potential of the evil dead films, how can the game fail ? Evil Dead : Hail to the king suffers from the lack of orginality. It is basically a resident evil clone done badly. In fact, there are a few features that is copied from resident evil such as saving only if you have the tape, storing items in chests and the occasional awkward camera angles. The creatures in this are almost endless as they respawn countless times. In addition, because you do not have your 'boomstick' (shotgun) yet in the beginning, you have to rely on your chainsaw and axe which is not very effective as it requires too many slashings to kill one creature.
There are 2 settings in this game : the old cabin and later in 13th century Damscus. The action takes place both indoors and outdoorsThe puzzles throughout the whole game is simple and obvious and requires frequent travelliing between one location and the next.
Some of the redeeming qualities in this game are : the voice actor of Ash is none other than the original actor in the films -Bruce Campbell and the gameplay is short. There is even an Evil Dead 2 trailer included. But I don't understand why such a small game must be fitted into 2 cd's ? The cutscenes, although computer generated, are done quite well and there is also a nice twist to the ending of the game.
Overall, fans of the games may want to try this if they have finished resident evil or dino crisis series. There is also a sequel released only for the consoles called Evil Dead : a fistful of boomstick. But apparently, it's not very good either !