Evil Dead: The Game got a new update this week, and in a refreshingly quick turnaround, Saber Interactive has already stamped out an annoying exploit players have been talking about since launch. That exploit in question was the act of animation canceling, a technique not exclusive to Evil Dead: The Game by any means but one that was particularly frustrating to play against within the game’s combat parameters. The same update also made a number of other changes and should be out now across all platforms.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Animation canceling, for those not familiar with the tactic, involves pressing an input and then pressing another one immediately after the desired effect from the first is achieved. In Evil Dead: The Game, that translated to using a melee attack as a human and then immediately using the input assigned to aiming down the sights of a firearm. Doing so cut the melee attack animation off right after the damage registered and allowed players to immediately use another melee attack.
If that still seems a bit unclear, the video below from Twitter user Auralnauts illustrates the issue well. By utilizing animation canceling, an opposing players was able to stunlock and defeat the demon by themselves with fast attacks before the demon even had a chance to respond.
Used in other games like MOBAs, animation canceling is viewed more as a higher-level mechanic as opposed to an exploit given that in those sorts of games, it simply allows your player to get moving faster after an input. When it comes to situations like the one in Evil Dead: The Game where animation canceling increases damage output, however, players took issue with it. It wasn’t an exploit exclusive to the human players with demons also able to utilize the trick, but it was particularly oppressive when used by the former.
It’s a welcome sight to see then that Saber Interactive responded to the issue so quickly. You can see the full patch notes for the update below with the developer officially defining this as an exploit and saying that it’d been removed.
Patch 1.0.5
Stability / Quality of Life
- Implemented various fixes to combat cheats such as speed hacks, health regeneration, fake nicknames, and character model changing. A larger anti-cheat update is also forthcoming in another update soon.
- Addressed an exploit where players could cancel animations to perform actions faster than intended
- Improved server stability
- Various bug fixes and improvements
Missions
- Fixed crashing after closing the pause menu on “Find a way out of the pit” objective in Mission 5
Demon
- Fixed loss of input bug when a possessed unit dies
Survivors
- Updated balancing to Cheryl’s healing attributes
- Updated balancing to Evil Dead 1 Ash’s healing attributes
- Adjusted values to Amanda’s Weapon Master: Pistol Skill
- Fixed an issue causing loss of input when Survivors are possessed by Demon, exit vehicles, or try to pick up full stacks of items
- Fixed an issue that caused a Survivor to be immortal at death or when using a healing item in the storm
- Fixed an issue where Survivors can deal 1M damage to Demon and deadites
Miscellaneous
- Fixed Playstation 4 Trophies not synchronizing
