Saturday, November 3, 2012

Level Up: Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick



Oh, and yeah, my sponsor had to drop me after they had to pay for all the damages caused by my sudden mutation. Interestingly enough, turns out a cure for it is readily available, which is why you don’t see any real monsters running around. Though my recording studio was totaled, which is why I’m recording in my back up studio in a cabin up in the woods. Speaking of which, let’s talk about the Evil Dead. Starting as a small independent project by Sam Raimi, the Evil Dead has become one of the most iconic horror series out of the 80’s. Its unique blend of horror elements and comedy in all three movies made it easily adaptable, seen in the long series of Army of Darkness comic books (which I am a fan of), a stage musical and 3 standalone video games to date. So let’s take a look at one of them with Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick, available for the PS2, but I got it for the Microsoft X-box.
The game plays out as a flashback with Ashley J. Williams (our hero and player character) telling the tale of what’s happened. Sometime after the movies, Ash finds himself at a bar in the town of Dearborn. By coincidence, a local TV show is airing a special talking about the Necronomicon, the book that caused all of Ash’s problems. Once they play a recording of passage from it, the dark forces are unleashed. Ash, with boomstick in hand, has to fight his way across town to the TV station and our adventure begins.
The plot is basic as it’s pretty much just “evil demons are attacking”, but my main problem is how different it feels from the movies. The films had an amazing amount of creativity, insanity and personality that made them memorable, but the story of A Fistful of Boomstick is simply lackluster. It really tries to play it too safe and sticks with things already done before. Sure, everything is accurately portrayed, but it feels watered-down. It really gives the feeling of a “fan game”, but from a group of people who did it just to make a game rather than out of love for the series.
The game play isn’t really anything special, but rest assured, it is still fun which is what I expect from THQ (especially given the source content). As Ash, you’ll walk around, talk to people for clue and try to complete goals. As the dead take over the town, you can use your trusty double barrel or a variety of other weapons you’ll find to mow them down. You also have spells that you can use to spice things up or make certain scenarios easier on yourself. Really, when you get down to it, it’s just a basic “ranged attack, close attack, special attack” set up, but with enough variety and well done puzzle-adventuring that makes it far from monotonous.
Where I do have to take off points is in the feel of the world, as it seems very fake. The houses, the streets, the amount of people… it all feels very “empty”. It sometimes kills your suspension of disbelief and sense of panic and fear when you’re walking down a street where the deadites have been attacking, but the building and streets are untouched, there are barely any other people and only the occasional deadite pops out. It becomes obvious that the makers of this game didn’t really give it their all.
As you can kind of tell, Evil Dead: A fistful of Boomstick isn’t the greatest game ever with it’s biggest flaw being that it plays it too low key. With something like the Evil Dead series as your source material, you really should go big or go home, but instead it seems like a cheap, hollowed out version of what could have been a much better game. But I have to admit, this game is right up my alley. Not only is it based on a series I have become a fan of and includes the voice of Bruce Campbell himself, but I enjoy the simple and basic game play sometimes. (Heck, at least the game isn’t pretending it’s something amazing, which annoys me more). No, this game isn’t the greatest thing ever made, but it really is a lot of fun in terms of game play with a story that will keep you playing and it has decent graphics and audio. Worth checking out, especially if you’re an Evil Dead fan. I give Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick 7.5 levels out of 10.

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