20 heroes who deserve better games

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No actor is more beloved by nerds than Bruce Campbell, and none of his characters are more beloved than Ashley “Ash” Williams, the hero of the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness trilogy. Although the last of his movies was released in 1992, Ash has since been in three games, all united by a single common thread: they suck.

Ash is a wimp-turned-super-badass with a chainsaw for an arm. How do you mess that up? Well, if you’re the three separate developers who’ve worked on the series, you assume that the license alone will be enough to sell the game, and you crank out mediocre-at-best games that ape Resident Evil and State of Emergency. At least the third game, Regeneration, had an original hook, in the form of a half-Deadite little-person sidekick Ash could kick around, but it wasn’t enough to make the game interesting.

Above: OK, sure

Ash’s movie trilogy is about as (intentionally) schlocky as it gets, but it’s still awesome enough to get nerds excited. Why can’t we have Evil Dead games that do the same? That’s not really so much to ask, is it?

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After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.