Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead feels like a throwback to the nascent days of the 1990s. A video game tie-in to a famous movie property packed with familiar imagery compressed into 16-bit sprites. Much like the best of those titles, it's an experience that is better than expected but still has a questionable price tag for the content provided.
Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead Review – Klaatu Barada Necktie
As the name implies, Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead is based on the bloody horror comedy series. Ash Williams, boomstick enthusiast and slayer of evil is caught in a conundrum. An all-powerful eldritch horror from beyond mortal ken, known as The Overlord, has stolen the Necronomicon.
Using this forbidden tome of ancient power, The Overlord plans on plunging the world into a living nightmare filled with demons and death. Thankfully, Ash is still the same braggadocious, hard-drinking, chainsaw-wielding badass who is no stranger to carving up monsters.
Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead is an arcade platformer. You'll alternate between navigating dangerous platforms, fighting demons and deadites, and picking up collectibles along the way.
Ash's moveset is familiar and functional. You have a melee attack, a Ducktales-esque plunging attack, a dodge roll, and a chargeable shotgun blast attack. There are consumable weapons you can pick up to help in a fight like kandarian daggers, nail guns, and oil lanterns. Ash even has a Mega Man wall kick, letting him scale up narrow passageways with ease.
Retrorealms Ash vs. Evil Dead has some light RPG elements. Killing enemies and finding hidden collectibles earns you cash which you can spend on certain upgrades. These include health and ammo upgrades and new moves like a spinning slash or a rising uppercut.
Lastly, the game has a unique selling point with the nightmare realm. At the push of a button, you can temporarily switch to a nightmare version of the level. This contains tougher enemies as well as hidden passages and platforms that can lead to hidden rewards. Those rewards include three Necronomicon pages tucked away in each level, and special golden tickets. Golden tickets can be spent to unlock special 3D props from the Evil Dead series. If you want to find everything, you will need to be quick and careful.
Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead Review – Good? Bad? I'm The Guy With The Gun
If you're a big fan of the Evil Dead series, Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead is a nostalgic treat. The dialogue perfectly emulates Ash Williams' B-movie charm. The game is packed full of locations, characters, and boss fights from the Starz series. For example, Ash's healing items are his “Pink F” cocktails and levels end by getting into Ash's iconic ride, The Delta. There are even enemies based on the goofy deadite puppets.
It's the kind of fan service that helps gloss over the game's tissue-thin plot. In arcade fashion, you just hop from location to location with bosses popping up because The Overlord summoned them. For a game based on Evil Dead, that campy, “don't think about it too hard” energy works for the experience, but it does make the story feel light and frivolous.
Thankfully, the visual presentation is spot on. Wayforward continues its stellar reputation of detailed, expressive sprite animation in this game. Every character moves fluidly and gracefully. Areas are packed with background gags and colorful pop. Also, as befits something based on a Sam Raimi property, fights end in ludicrous explosions of pixelated blood and gore.
As for the level design, it is brisk and breezy. The nightmare world mechanic introduces some light exploration, risk, and reward. There's a decent mix of verticality, environmental hazards, and enemy variety to make each section a solid challenge.
The difficulty curve can be annoying. There are sections of the game that can feel patently unfair about halfway through. Medusa head enemies. Precision platforming challenges over deadly spike traps. Monster closet ambushes. The list goes on.
Exacerbating these frustrations is the game's lack of checkpoints. There is a single checkpoint in each level, and unless you pumped all of your resources into health upgrades, you may see certain gauntlets more often than others.
Lastly, if you strictly care about content by volume with your purchases, Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead may ask too much for too little. I ended up rolling credits while getting most of the collectibles after about 75 minutes of gameplay. For a price tag of $24.99, that can be a bit steep, even for retro arcade fans.
But, these issues aren't exactly dealbreakers. Since the game is trying to emulate an old arcade game, Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead encourages replayability. In addition to finding all of the hidden tickets and Necronomicon pages, the game has a scoring system. If you enjoy doing no-hit runs or speed runs, this game can go from a one-hour experience to a five-hour experience easily. Just know what you're getting into before checking out.
Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead Review – Did Someone Say Crossover?
I must also mention that Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead is just one game in the Retrorealms series. Furthermore, if you purchase other games in the Retrorealms line, you can play as different characters in those different arcade titles. If you own Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead and Retrorealms: Halloween, that means you can play through Haddonfield with Ash or stab up deadites as Michael Myers.
This applies, to downloadable characters as well. For Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead, you can play as Kelly Maxwell. Aside from some dialogue changes and sprite animation, her playstyle is similar to Ash's. She's mostly there for completionists.
The idea of mixing and matching horror icons in these different arcade games is a nice conceit, but I am concerned it prioritizes fan service over gameplay polish. While I enjoyed my time with Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead, it's the kind of light experience that I don't think will be livened up with other replayable characters. And if other titles are similarly priced, it may be the wrong kind of horrifying for the player base.
Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead Review | Final Thoughts
If you're a horror fan who is content with a short runtime and a dubious pricetag, Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead is a bloody Halloween treat. But like any sugary Halloween treat, it's one you should savor, lest you end up with a stomachache and buyer's remorse.
Retrorealms: Ash vs. Evil Dead was reviewed on PC with a copy provided by the Developer over the course of 2 hours of gameplay - all screenshots were taken during the process of review.
