Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick

"This... is my BOOMSTICK!!"

Ahhh the good ol' deadites are back to catch an ass whoopin from humanity's savior himself, Ash. It all starts when a Professor Eldridge and a TV show host named Trisha, decide they want to hear Dr. Knowby's tape recording while live on the air. So once again evil is unleashed in it's purest form as the deadites begin to take over your town. Your adventure will take you through 3 different time periods, you'll get loads of cool ways to hack and blow up your foes, AND you get to hear some of the greatest one liners from Ash yet. Let's delve into the world of Evil Dead....

Graphics 7/10

The character model for Ash looks great, however, sadly this is where the greatness kind of stops as far as graphics go. The deadites look plain and very un-detailed. The Backgrounds also look very plain and repetative. The other ''Main'' characters (such as Trisha and Eldridge'') look decently well, but not nearly as good as Ash. This game had alot more potential as far as graphics go. The Playstation 2 is capable of pushing more than what this game does. Probably the saving face for me giving this a 7 and not a 6 is the CG rendered FMV's. They look quite good and I was impressed during the openeing sequence. Although Ash does look a little.... not like Ash in them.

Sound 8/10

You can here every flesh ripping swing with the chainsaw, every shotgun blast to the face, and every line in the book. The sound on the game is great, voice overs are done especially well, although Trisha can be very annoying (but I won't hold that against the game). The music is another high note, it works perfectly with the mood and tone of the game.

Game play / Control 8/10

The button lay out is very easy to get used to. It doesn't take long before you can hack apart deadites without thinking about it. The control is decently responsive, and my only complaint about the movement is when starting to run from a stand still, it takes a second before you begin to run. You start off almost walking. This can be a major problem when you are surrounded and need to back off to cast a spell or start using your boomstick. I've made it a habit to run around with L1 pressed as that locks on to the closest enemy. This way there can be no suprise attacks from behind by unseen deadites. Despite some peoples complaints about disappearing and reappearing deadites, I've had nothing like this happen to me. The game play has been smooth and easy to follow. The puzzles in the game are a bit simple, and the majority of the game is running around completing tasks such as finding key, finding silver to close vortex's, and finding people.

Replay factor 5/10

Nothing big comes off from beating the game. Could I see myself playing through this multiple times? Well no... maybe two times and that's about it. As much ass as Ash kicks, I can only take so much of repeating one liners. The arcade mode can get old very fast as well. Not much in replay value here.

Fun factor 7/10

With the addition of spells, as well as many neat weapons to dispose of your foes with, this makes for quite a fun game. And at the low low price of only $20 I'm very happy with my purchase. The only thing keeping me from giving this an 8 or even 9 in fin factor was the replay value. There's just not much to do in the game after you've beaten it once.

All in all Evil Dead: Fistful of boomstick is a decent game and is leaps and bounds over Hail to the King. Fans of the series will most likely be pleased, but for the casual gamer/fan of the series it may be lacking in many departments.

My suggestion... go ahead and spend the $20 to buy it. It's well worth the purchase price.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/25/03, Updated 05/25/03