Too many gameplay flaws ruin its potential!
Taking the 3rd person (Max Payne, Bloodrayne etc) perspective with the free-looking mouse, it would suggest that it could be quite easy to control Ash. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The targeting system is supposed to allow you to aim at the enemy you want to kill and this is all well and good if you have just one bad guy standing in front of you. When faced with multiple, however, the targeting system becomes near enough useless. Ash just will not target the bad guys you try to aim at and will randomly switch targets without you evening telling him too! This makes progress in the game very laborious as you keep dying trying to pass a segment of the game where you need to kill a lot of enemies at once to progress. The restricted camera movement also limits the freedom of the mouse-look.
The graphics are again mediocre at best and the range of weapons that Ash can use is very limited. The spear gun is pretty cool though as it enables you to kill in style which is one of the game's plus points - there are some inventive ways to waste your foes. The endless supply of gas for your chainsaw is good for the gameplay as well.
Your half human, half deadite sidekick Sam is handy but he becomes an irritant at times with some annoying phrases that he repeatedly comes out with. They are funny at first, but after you have made it half way through the game you will be sick of hearing him say the same old stuff over and over. When you possess and control him, it is frustrating trying to keep him alive as the bad guys can kill him quite easily. His feeble stun attack is very unhelpful and not even worth having as it cannot kill anyone.
The slapstick humour that the Evil Dead series is well known for is maintained well in the game as Ash and Sam banter away but it gets boring and repetitive very quickly.
This game obviously hasn't been designed to break any records but it should offer a fun experience to fans of the Evil Dead brand. In my view, it falls short again, but is a lot better than Hail To The King which was just down right diabolical. The base set up of this game is very good but too many gameplay flaws ruin its potential.
DENNYLSON