Evil Dead - Regeneration

The most memorable thing about this game is not Ash's boomstick but the little guy he drags along: Sam, a reanimated, stitched-together sidekick who can be ordered to attack, possessed enemies, or sent to bite chunks out of the nearest deadite. He is the one idea here that no other third-person action game of the period had, and it gives the combat a rhythm beyond simple shooting.

The setup is a loose, comic continuation of the Evil Dead films. Ash ends up in an asylum-haunted corner of Romania and has to deal with a mad doctor and the Necronomicon. Bruce Campbell returns to voice Ash, and his wisecracks carry much of the tone. Some of the jokes land and some repeat, but his delivery keeps the game close to the films' blend of slapstick and gore.

Moment to moment, the game mixes firearms, melee weapons and the chainsaw, with Ash able to juggle enemies in the air, stomp them, and finish them off in gruesome ways. Sam adds a light tactical layer: he can sit on a switch, jump onto a foe's head, or be thrown to get across gaps. Possessing an enemy turns a crowd fight into something more interesting than holding down the trigger.

It is not a polished game. Levels are linear and the enemy variety is limited, so the same handful of deadites show up again and again. The camera can be unhelpful in tight rooms, and the technical side was rough even for its time, with uneven frame rates and some dated animation. Reviews at the time were mixed, and that feels fair.

Still, the game has a personality that many bigger licensed titles lacked. It understands that Ash is a fool as much as a hero, and it lets the player enjoy that. Played now, it is a flawed but sincere cult curiosity, better remembered for its sidekick and its sense of humor than for its polish.