Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick

"Not even Bruce Campbell can save this game."

THIS IS MY BOOMSTICK! And it doesn't make for a great game to play. Unfortunately. It's a video game based off of the cult horror classic, Evil Dead. It's an action game where you mow down wave after wave of the undead. Let's get into it shall we?

STORY
The game takes place years after Army of Darkness, and we meet back with our chainsaw wielding, shotgun packing, one liner dropping Ash. One night he finds himself at a bar, looking to get drunk. Meanwhile a talk show host begins discussing the Necronomicon, the evil book with the power to raise the dead. Because it sounds like a good idea, they read the spell to revive the dead out loud...on the air...all over town. This results in the entire town of Dearborn being overrun with zombies and demons from hell. Even Ash's bartender gets possessed by the ghouls. Luckily for him he happened to bring his shotgun with him to the bar. Seriously. So Ash sets out to save the town from total annihilation...again.

GRAPHICS
The graphics of the game are pretty dull. I liked some of the CG cutscene stuff, but as for the actual models in the game, it's ugly city. Seriously, Ash doesn't look like Bruce Campbell. He looks like a stiff old man whose just seen something appalling. And while I'm on his look, I find it interesting that his clothes are fine in the opening, but then when he leaves the bar his shirt is all torn up with his muscles out. Odd. It looks bad.

SOUND
The audio isn't much better. However it is better for one simple thing. Bruce Campbell. His awesome one liners made my day, and will probably keep you laughing the whole time like I was. In fact if you push a button you can make him talk out loud. We have a Bruce Campbell button! The music, boring. The enemy sounds, meh. The other actors...close your ears. The only good thing about the audio is Bruce Campbell.

GAMEPLAY
So will the gameplay make up for the bad presentation? Afraid not. This is a game in which you run around, killing zombie after zombie after zombie. The weapons you get are fun to use as well. There's nothing better than impaling a zombie with your chainsaw. You'll shoot them down with shotguns, bash them with shovels, all the stuff necessary to save yourself. But this is all you do. In fact the main enemy for most of the game is a zombie. It would be okay if they didn't keep popping out every damn second. Seriously, they never stop coming ever, and you can only hold so much ammo.

The combat is sorta fun, but what you're doing in the game isn't. You get objectives to accomplish, but you never accomplish them in the order they're listed. Most of the time you'll be wandering the environments aimlessly trying to figure out what you're supposed to do, because they never hint or tell you what to do. I remember many a time wandering around for a half hour. They don't give you a radar, a compass, or even a map. You get lost easily. You have to save the game on your own, but rather than a free normal save, you have to collect these save stones in order to do so.

I rarely saved because I didn't want to waste the stones...this resulted in frustration and anger, because I would accidently die a lot due to the stupid camera angles. This meant I would have to continue from my last save and do everything all over again. An autosave and some checkpoints would've been nice, but this game is stupid. There are 6 levels in the game. They're long because you don't know what you're doing ever, which results in wandering in circles. Only one of those levels wasn't in the town area of Dearborn. The environments are boring. It's always walking through the streets of Dearborn, killing wave after wave of zombies. The game is repetitive, frustratingly confusing, and just plain boring. I liked the special feature on the game where Bruce Campbell comments on the game, but that's the only reason I'd recommend you see this game.

IN THE END...
Though Ash says: "Give me some sugar baby", I advise that you don't give this game a single bit of it. It's repetitive, frustrating, and overall boring. So I'd avoid this one at all costs.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 11/21/06