Review #476: Evil Dead - Regeneration

 And now the king is gone, baby.

Oh, I've a bone to pick with the newest addition to the mythos...

 A Fistful of Boomstick was an alright game, it wasn't the end all be all of licensed games, but it was pretty decent and THQ wasn't about to loosen its grip on the franchise, so then came Regeneration. It's a markedly different game from its predecessor, with a tighter combat system and more emphasis on action than the loose survival horror elements from the previous game.

 A Fistful of Boomstick? Never happened. Army of the Dead? Never happened. After Evil Dead 2, Ash was imprisoned in a mental institute, society thinking him crazy... but not all is as it seems, turns out the director got his hands on the Necromicon Ex Mortis and has been experimenting with it, and when all hell breaks loose it's up to Ash, and his new sidekick, half-human half-deadite all obnoxious, Sam to save the day. The humor, setting and character design is all on point and faithful to the franchise, however, Sam turned out as trying too hard. He isn't funny, him being immortal and thus dying over and over again isn't funny, him being obnoxious isn't funny. Sam's easily the weakest element in the entire game.

If there's a hole in it, you bet you'll have to kick Sam inside.

 The game tries a lot to be like Devil May Cry: Your guns have infinite ammo, you've a small variety of chaisaw combos, a few which involve pausing your button presses, and Ash even gets a Devil Trigger in the form of Evil Ash. Sadly, it falls flat on its face. The game doesn't have a strong combo system, there's no canceling, no juggling(And I tried, even with the harpoon gun, the most you can do is shoot or perform a simple combo after shooting an enemy it into the air), no nothing. Every single combo has pretty much the same outcome, whether it ends with a slash, a jumping slash or a blast, except the five-button chainsaw combo which usually ends in an instakill so there's no reason to use any other combo but that one.

 Ash gets three different guns and three different arms. The pistol, the shotgun and the bomb-lance have their different uses, but as soon as you get the bomb-lance the other two will become a bit redundant. As for his arms, there's the chainsaw-arm, the harpoon-gun and the flamethrower-arm. The last two don't have any combos and while they can be used in combat they fall short of the chainsaw, so you'll mostly be using them to solve stupidly easy puzzles, like burning gas or harpooning doors. Kind of a waste really, and it's not like you can buy new combos for the chainsaw or anything. What it all amounts to is a ton of potential, but a very lackluster execution.

Weapons have infinite ammo now, so have fun.

 And then we've got Sam, the small midget that can't be killed. Well, he can, but he'll respawn immediately. He'll aid you in combat, and he is not half-useless, but you can also kick him towards enemies, in fact, some enemies and bosses can only be beaten by kicking him into them. You can also kick him towards objects in order to solve simple puzzles. In some instances you'll also take direct control of him to, you guessed it, solve simple puzzles in order to open up a way for Ash to proceed. These moments aren't too obtrusive, but his sections aren't particularly memorable even though they are so repetitive, usually having you searching for a monster to ride so that you can destroy a wall and they always end with Sam dying in the unfunniest of ways.

  Speaking of Sam, you know how beloved escort missions are? There's four different escort sections in the game. FOUR. And you have to repeat the procedure 3 times each. Y'see, sometimes you'll come across a cyclops that must be fed, so you must find 3 souls, 1 at time, have Sam consume it, protect Sam until he gets to the cyclops and then kick him into the mouth, because that's supposed to be funny...? The game is about 10 stages long, and four of them have these dumb sections. No bueno, no bueno at all.

Bosses are easy to figure out.

 The saddest part about Regeneration is that the developers really tried. I mean, just going over the visuals you can tell that the game had a pretty decent budget, and Bruce Campbell brought his A-game, as always, to voice Ash. Even in the game's basic gameplay you can tell that they wanted to make something Devil May Cry-ish but simply ran out of budget or time to add substance to the combat. Evil Dead - Regeneration is a bit half-cooked, but if you're into the franchise it's worth a look, provided you're willing to suffer Sam.
 5.0 out of 10