What an absolute disappointment. For someone who loves the Evil Dead movies as much as I do, this game is a travesty. Not even voice-over work from the great Bruce Campbell himself can save this game from the trash heap.

Where should we begin? The storyline is classic Evil Dead - clueless idiots recite the incantations aloud and bring Deadites into our realm, and it's up to our hero Ash to save the town of Dearborn, and the day in general. Let me ask you this: if you were walking around at night, and some nasty undead creatures invade your town, wouldn't you, you know, leave? Not in Evil Dead, apparently - NPCs stand around waiting to talk to you and give you clues as to where you should go next, instead of doing the sensible thing and running. I can understand the cops standing around at roadblocks, shooting any demons who get too close, but when a young woman is just kicking it outside a TV station waiting to speak with you, while just a few yards away some unfortunate oaf is getting turned into cannibal puree by some zombies, it kills the game dead. Why does it take three or four shots with my shotgun to kill an enemy, while the cops can take them out with one shot from their sidearms? Who designed this?

Graphics are just passable, and there is nothing here that screams next-generation hardware or pushes the console at all. The amount of enemies onscreen at any time is never overwhelming, and the graphics lack detail - bland, drab backgrounds provide a bleak backdrop for the carnival of wack that is Evil Dead. The camera control system is too loose, forcing you to break out the Dramamine to keep from hurling, especially in close quarter fighting. The character modeling here is laughable, with low-poly characters populating the game and polluting my television. If the engine was pumping out a serious amount of people onscreen at one time, State of Emergency-style, I'd be more forgiving. But it's not, so neither am I. While I'm bitching, could someone please explain to me why the same models are being recycled over and over and over again?

Gameplay? Boring. Get Item A to access Area B, then talk to this guy to find out where to pick up Item C. You're being led around by the nose the entire time, and enemies just spawn over and over again. The ability to lock onto a target and shoot guys from all around is pretty cool - nothing beats a no-look shotgun blast behind you to take out some zombie while Ash spouts off some snarky one-liner - but it gets old. Fast. Incredibly so, in fact. Slicing up Deadites with a chainsaw is great fun for a few minutes, but the weak controls do their absolute best to kill the fun deader than the hordes of demons running around. Boss fights? You'll plow through them faster than Rikishi goes through meat pies.

Ash deserves better than this. Gamers deserve better than this. The Evil Dead license deserves better than this. What the hell - I don't like abusing the hard work of developers, but this game is a slap in the face of Evil Dead fans everywhere. Absolute drek.

I don't like this game.