Kiss My Boomstick! (Evil Dead - A Fistful of Boomstick (PS2))

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Evil Dead - A Fistful of Boomstick (PS2)
Date:	13/03/06 (151 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Loads of mindless killing

Disadvantages: Graphics a bit dated

At long last we finally got ourselves a PS2 last Christmas. Primarily for the kids, I just couldn’t resist the urge to buy a game for myself. As most folks know by now, I’m a big fan of horror flicks so, whilst The Evil Dead wouldn’t exactly be my favourite movie, the whole tongue-in-cheek, zombie slashing genre really appealed to me (that reminds me - “Brain Dead" is on this week).

"A Fistful of Boomstick" is the follow up to "Evil Dead: Hail to the King", THQ's previous Evil Dead game. It’s a first person shoot ‘em up which suffers from the lack of 2-player option and/or Internet play that I could see. To start off you get a double-barrelled shotgun and an arm-mounted chainsaw to mirror the movie character and make the player feel right at home. Other weapons encountered along the way include dynamite, Molotov cocktails, an assortment of handguns, a flamethrower, and a Gatling gun. Ashley Williams (Ash) is the central character from the Evil Dead movies and voiced by the wise-cracking Bruce Campbell. Ash finds himself dealing with an army of virulent zombies known as deadites. The undead are running riot in Ash's hometown of Dearborn, Michigan and it's up to Ash and his ever present machismo to send the deadite horde back to hell (of course).

With six different levels along with an arcade option, the Evil Dead game provides plenty of scope to wile away a good weekend slashing and killing deadites. As you progress through the levels, you’ll encounter different versions of Dearborn including Civil War Dearborn and Payne Museum. Whilst the settings are all pretty similar with an almost identical template, the progression to different versions of Ash’s hometown adds an interesting dimension to the gameplay.

There are lots of different ways to succeed and a plethora of weapons to choose from (see above). Your mission takes the form of a “to do list” which gets updated regularly. Most of the levels end in a boss fight although the solution to succeed is often relatively simple. There are spell options as the game progresses and I particularly liked the possession spells where you get to possess a Deadite or some other creature of the night in order to crack a mission. The music is appropriately demonic with an organ backing and the like although the sudden increase in tempo always gives away the latest zombie attacks.

For the most part, the game is mindless fun. The deadites are, on the whole, pretty slow and relatively easy to dispatch and there are plenty of save tokens to keep you going. Every time a deadite is killed it leaves plenty of blood and innards to explode briefly onto the screen. This loses it effect pretty quickly but it’s still good fun to begin with and never loses it’s appeal when deciding whether to run or stand and fight. You may tire of Ash’s cheesy one liners but they made me laugh for the most part and the likeness to the famous zombie killer is pretty good. The plot is reasonably coherent with links to the Book of the Dead (The Necronomicon) and the story does take a few twists and turns that may surprise some players. I really enjoyed playing this PS2. It is just an excuse for a mass gore-fest but, hey, what’s wrong with that?! (us Brummies can be quite psychotic at times *grin*)

I’m afraid I’m hardly an expert when it comes to comparing graphics and speed of play but they looked good enough to me although I suspect that there are plenty more advanced games around these days. Then again, this was released in 2003 don’t forget! Please note that this is a certificate 18 and so not for children (and I didn't let my 10-year-old lad play it at all *cough*). I bought this for £4.99 from Comet but feel free to shop around online.

Thanks for reading

Mara

Summary: Review of the game