Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick

"Hail to the king baby!"

Ash is back baby, so get ready to hail to the king, and, oh yeah, Bruce Campbell returns to voice Ash! This leaves just one question begging an answer; does your mother kiss that face?

That’s right, the book of the dead is in action once again, and were back to Dearborn to take on the evil deadites with out trusty boomstick (double barrel shotgun), chainsaw, and cheeky tongue-in-cheek humour, as well as some well timed one liners. Did your neck throw up? Opps, there I go again.

Fistful of Boomstick uses a very similar engine to the trump of a game that was State of Emergency, but lets not be put off, it actually works very well, especially when waves of ten or so deadites hit at one time, and just like State of Emergency it never drops a frame.

The gameplay consists of completing tasks on your to do list, which will update as you complete them, for example, it may be to find a key and once you’ve found it, the next task will be to gain access to a certain local, so you use the key on a gate, and so on. Mean while deadites are constantly trying to make your task hard work.

The beginning movie is superbly animated and voiced, and is well, well worth watching. It feels so natural and re-caps and sets the scene and mode perfectly.

There are many spells in the game, which can alter your physical attributes, like, for example, strength of a hundred men, or a nice one, which changes you into a deadite. As for the weapons, they range from a humble spade to petrol bombs and have numerous upgrades through the scientific wonders of duck tape (masking tape) engineering – nice one centurion.

Just on the note of the box presentation. In the UK (as far as I know it’s only the UK) this game did come with Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn DVD in a package, but according to my local games shop, they (THQ) have lost the rights to do this. I’m not sure if the DVD was the one with special features or not either.

I was going to get this set, but the price stickers wouldn’t come off the box package without ripping it, and so I just bought the game for £20, and have the DVD separately. Working on the theory that the box set costed £30, the DVD is worth £10, which means the game is worth £20, so be sure not to get ripped off. You may still be able to find the box set though…..

Sound - The sound in the game is pretty solid; the voice acting is a cut above the rest though, which is pleasantly noticeable - 7

Graphics - Many have criticized the colour palette saying it’s too grey and dingy, but so was the films, so I think it fits in well. Overall Fistful of Boomstick has some good, sharp texture work, and it’s noticeable - 8

Gameplay - As smooth as a cats arse with the only really annoyance being those bloody deadites when they keep on attacking, but be sure to gloat your victories by pressing the triangle button to drop a one-liner – nice face, let me rearrange it for you! Nice control layout and a well designed manual and box too - 8

Lifespan - Pretty good, as well as the main story, there is some arcade mini games (similar to TimeSplitters), as well as a concept art gallery, and behind the sense including an interview with Bruce Campbell (boy, he’s changed) – 7

Overall – 8 – Nice, defiantly worth a long look even if you aren’t ofey to the movie trilogy, a great action adventure game. Good draw……

(There is an Evil Dead game on PS1 called Hail To The King by THQ– I haven’t played it, magazines say it’s the worst game ever made, but Internet say it’s alright, does any know?)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/05/03