Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick

"Say It Ain't So, Bruce!"

The ''Evil Dead'' franchise has followed the adventures of the shotgun-wielding, chainsaw-armed demon hunter Ash over the course of three movies and a Playstation video game, and now the PS2. ''Fistful of Boomstick'' also marks a major change in the story as Ash is thrown out of the haunted woods and into an apocalyptic urban environment--but a monotonous combat system, a fragmented story, and a lifeless performance by Bruce Campbell make it the least interesting entry in the series.

STORY: 5 out of 10

Whereas ''Hail to the King'' had a great story marred by clumsy gameplay, this game takes the opposite approach, sacrificing story for the opportunity to slaughter hordes of zombies. There are some clever ideas, such as the book being recited over a television station and the cool twist ending, and it's certainly epic in scope, stretching across four different eras in history. But it spends far too much time on irrelevant plot strands and not nearly enough on the main story, such as the goals of the villains.

A major portion of the game, for example, involves Ash pursuing a villain through various eras of Dearborne's history, but we never really find out why the character's travelling through time. Even such seemingly simple issues as whether the human villains are supposed to be possessed or not is left vague, with different scenes in the game hinting at different answers.

Furthermore, the story makes too many careless mistakes about the series. Professor Knowby is described at one point as a crazed hermit living in the woods, instead of the respected college professor he actually was, and the game says that he always believed in the Necronomicon's power, something any Evil Dead fan knows is ridiculous. The cabin in the woods is moved from the Appalachian mountains, its location in the films, to the outskirts of Dearborne, and the infamous Book of the Dead, the focus of the Evil Dead series, is bizarrely absent in this game.

Worst of all. the deadites themselves are greatly weakened, reduced from superhuman, constantly mutating demons that taunted and played on their victim's emotions, into mindless scrambling minions. Perhaps this was necessary to make the mass-slaughter aspect of the game work, but it's sure to disappoint fans who fondly remember such eerie deadites as Linda, Cheryl and Henrietta.

Whereas ''Hail to the King'' felt like an Evil Dead movie, this feels more like a mediocre fanfiction.

GRAPHICS: 7 out of 10

Well, the graphics are indeed better than ''Hail to the King,'' but by a surprisingly low margin, considering the jump from 32 to 128 bits. Ash himself looks more his evil mirror self from ED2 and HttK than Bruce Campbell, and the deadites in each level are reduced to four or five character models which are constantly repeated. The buildings and city layouts are bright, sharp, and simple, and, although the series finally gets the dynamic graphics engine and moving camera angles that it should've had from the beginning, it's never really used for any dramatic or cinematic effect during the game.

This doesn't hold true for the pre-rendered scenes, which are done very well and features a CGI Ash that looks uncannily like Bruce Campbell, along with other remarkably lifelike characters. Those are the most enjoyable parts, but, apart from the opening and ending, there's only one such sequence.

MUSIC AND SOUND EFFECTS: 7 out of 10

I didn't think it was possible, but the Man Himself, Bruce Campbell, has seriously let me down: most of the time he sounds like he's just woken up and desperately needs a cup of coffee. Sometimes his bored tone works, especially when his lines were meant to convey detatched sarcasm, but his serious lines, such as ''I'll follow you to depths of Hell'' or ''touch her and I'll kill you'' are delivered with such an obvious lack of enthusiasm that it's hard to believe this is the same actor who fought a vicious, and totally convincing, battle against his own right hand.

Of course, it's not totally Bruce's fault--he doesn't have much to work with here. There are a few funny lines, but when at one point the villain says ''spare me your feeble insults,'' I found myself agreeing with him. Ash's virtually nonstop one-liners fall so flat most of the time that he ended up reminding me of another horror icon undone by his own wisecracking pop-culture jokes: Freddy Krueger.

The music and sound effects, however, are the saving grace of this game. The music is a moody, fast-paced orchestral mix that's very reminiscent of ''Army of Darkness,'' and the changing battle themes in each era help capture the mood of the setting. The fiddles in the colonial era's battles are a personal favorite, and each of the boss themes are effectively sinister.

The sound effects are also done well, with the roaring whine of the chainsaw, the thunderous echoes of the boomstick and the high-pitched crack of the handguns all captured perfecly.

In the end, the high-quality music and effects ended up saving the game from Bruce Campbell's acting...definitely not a promising sign for the future of the ''Evil Dead'' franchise.

GAMEPLAY: 6 out of 10

The basic controls are easy to learn and the auto-target feature is a much-needed addition to the series. But, like the story, the gameplay is very vague, with few clues to lead you between the objectives. Much of the challenge is simply running around a level trying to figure out what it is you're supposed to do next; Ash's notebook, meant to provide a list of objectives, is of little help, offering such vague goals as ''find parts for the blacksmith'' or ''cut the power to the museum.''

The bosses are equally frustrating; each of them has a ''trick'' that has to be exploited to beat it, but the game offers virtually no hints about them. It's up to the player, after countless reloads that involve sitting through unskippable cut scenes, to eventually figure out that you have to use the shovel to bat a monster's energy bolts back at him, or that you have to toss dynamite into a boss's mouth.

The battles with standard deadites are the core of the game, and, while not nearly as painful as HttK's interface, they're only mundane at best. Despite several different combination chainsaw attacks, there's only one move that's practical during combat, and the spellbook, a potentially powerful weapon, is so awkward to use that it'll often go untouched except for puzzles that require it.

Likewise, the game offers a huge variety of weapons, but most of them are so slow or unwieldly that you'll find yourself relying on the old boomstick and chainsaw for most of the game.

REPLAY VALUE: 5 out of 10

Fistful of Boomstick has virtually no replay value. It's possible to miss certain weapons, such as the sickle, sword and gatling gun, and beating the game is far easier once you've memorized the locations of deadite swarms and important items such as health kits and save tokens, but there are no secrets to uncover, special features to unlock, or alternate endings to earn.

There is, however, the ''arcade mode,'' which challenges the player to battle against deadites in a kind of one-player deathmatch limited by weapons and items available. But the battle scheme just isn't enough fun to justify replaying a level for no other reason than to kill deadites for a high score.

OVERALL: 6 out of 10

This just isn't a good game for anyone. While ''Hail to the King'' sacrificed gameplay for a story that kept absolutely true to the series, ''Fistful of Boomstick'' tried to have the best of both worlds. Its gameplay is an improvement over HttK, but not enough so, and its story works neither as an entry in the Evil Dead series nor on its own. Instead of a bad game with a good story, Fistful of Boomstick is a mediocre game with a mediocre story, a game that will please neither Evil Dead fans nor gamers.

Buy it only if you absolutely have to own everything in the Evil Dead series.

Rent it only out of morbid curiosity.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/27/04