Evil Dead: The Game has taught me it’s not the winning that counts; it’s the number of times you steal someone’s car and waggle your incorporeal buttocks in the window. At least, that’s the way I’ve chosen to play it, and while my victims may not be able to see my invisible entity mooning them, I know those bumcheeks are there and that’s enough.
I do, sometimes, play Evil Dead properly, but at the very least, every second Survivors vs. Demon match (no surprise which side I’m playing as) turns into a warped game of Grand Theft Auto. And why not? Evil Dead’s car possession is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
For the uninitiated, Evil Dead: The Game is based on the Evil Dead horror franchise, as the title suggests, and it tasks four survivors with tracking down both a mystical dagger and the lost pages of the Necronomicon, fending off the zombie-like Deadites as they go. Those survivors must then use those items to banish the Deadites’ demonic overseer from our world.
Assuming the AI’s not in the driving seat, a fifth player takes on the role of the big evil and has to prevent the survivors from succeeding, either by slaughtering them or destroying the Necronomicon. Yes, fiction is woefully inconsistent on whether destroying a magic tome banishes evil or just means you’re stuck with it.
The cars — some placed at strategic locations, others scattered around the map — aren’t technically critical to the survivors’ success. But they’re very, very handy for bypassing all the Deadites lurking in the dark, and any survivors who ignore them are likely to have a bad time. The demon player can also take possession of the cars (If it’s good enough for Christine, it’s good enough for me.) and drive off in them. That’s why, after playing a couple of “proper” Survivors vs. Demon matches, Operation Bad Valet began in earnest.
My plan was to relocate every car on the map, thus depriving the human players of their precious transport. I didn’t know exactly how many there were, but I imagined amassing a vast collection of meticulously parked vehicles. And once my task was complete, I’d sit there cackling while the survivors were forced to trek through the Deadite-filled forest.
I got as far as stealing three cars before I realized that, even if I picked up the regenerating energy perk, there was no way I was going to be able to pull this off. In Evil Dead: The Game, possessing anything — Deadite, human, or automobile — costs energy, and every second you stay in control, your energy is being sapped.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t just use the cars to mow down the survivors, I tried. I drove at full speed into Bruce Campbell’s Ash, but instead of the explosion of viscera I was hoping for, he was nudged slightly backwards without so much as a chin-shaped indentation on the hood. Evil Dead: The Game urges you to “Unleash Your Road Rage,” but the damage cars inflict on survivors is so infinitesimal that it’s best left as a last resort.
I was disheartened, but that’s when I made my grand discovery. I’d resolved to at least drive a couple of cars into a canyon when I saw the survivors race past in another vehicle. A grin spread across my face. “What if,” I thought, “I follow them, and when they step out to hunt for pick-ups, I race off, leaving them stranded?”
That was the idea, and I still do that on a regular basis. Being an invisible entity, unless you use your powers, the other players don’t know you’re there. Many times I’ve snatched a car, driven it off into the forest, then raced back to watch the survivors gawp at the empty space. My only regret in that respect is that, as the bad guy, I’m not privy to their voice chat — I’d love to hear what they’re saying to each other.
But that’s not the game-changing revelation I stumbled across. Racing alongside the still-occupied car, I was suddenly greeted by the “possession” prompt. I was sure it was a bug, and even now, I’m worried that developer Saber Interactive is going to patch it out. But I hit the possess button, and to my utter joy, two things happened.
Firstly, I found myself in possession of the car. Secondly — and this is the bit that makes me smile even now — the human survivors were suddenly on foot. Yes, it doesn’t matter how fast the survivors are racing through the forest; you have the demonic power to eject them from their car. With this discovery, my primary objective became trolling the living daylights out of survivors.
Whenever I see survivors going for a car, I wait for them to get inside, but before they can drive more than a couple of inches, I possess the vehicle just long enough to boot them out. I then relinquish control and watch them try again. Sometimes they try again straight away; sometimes they wait a moment or two. If I’ve racked up enough energy I can repeat the same prank two or three times.
And if not? I roam around additional energy and catch up with them later, again dumping them out on some lonely forest road. It’s petty, yes, but also hugely satisfying. Every now and then, someone manages to put a stop to my shenanigans. During the course of a recent match a survivor leapt in the car, but instead of driving in a straight line, the person just kept going round and round in circles. I gave chase, “Yakety Sax” playing inside my head, and eventually caught up; fortunately, I was too busy laughing my face off to feel any shame at my temporary defeat.
Is going Grand Theft Evil Dead going to win me any Evil Dead: The Game matches? No. But it gives me a grin every time, and given that the Evil Dead movies have the evil messing with the protagonists’ heads, I’d say Sam Raimi would approve. Bruce Campbell, maybe not so much.
