Dead on arrival.
The Evil Dead film series is all about packing a visceral punch. Remember
the insane zombie-girl trapped in the basement in the first movie? Talk about
psychological impact! She was just playing Uno with her friends five minutes ago,
and now she’s spouting satanic verses and biting everyone on the arm. Or how about
in Evil Dead 2 when Ash’s own hand turns against him and kicks
his ass until he cuts it off with a knife? Not to mention the blood geyser
that rockets out of the pit in Army of Darkness.
Unfortunately,
THQ’s Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick for the Xbox packs more bore
than gore. An interesting but poorly implemented combo system, cartoony graphics
and worthless situations (here’s 20 zombies, kill ’em!) make this just another
weak game banking on a popular license.
There are two modes in Fistful Of Boomstick to choose from: Story and
Arcade. In Story mode, the tape that was played at the beginning of the first
Evil Dead is broadcast by the local TV station in Ash’s town, turning lots
of Deadites loose on a population apparently comprised of only hookers and cops.
As Ash, you must find the notes of Dr. Knowby (the man on the tape) and figure
out how to send the Deadites back from whence they came. Unfortunately, this
involves killing hordes of zombies with a limited and poorly conceived combat
system and solving lame find the key/pass/item puzzles to access the next area.
What is especially lame is that the keys/passes are either just lying there on the ground or are dropped by certain significant Deadites. For example, one Deadite you kill is the boss at the lumberyard. However, you only know this because after you kill him he drops a key. He otherwise looks and acts exactly like any of the other zombies.
And that’s one of Fistful Of Boomstick‘s main flaws: all the zombies
act like all the other zombies. There need to be fewer zombies, they need drastically
different patterns and behaviors and they need to be a lot tougher to kill.
Fistful Of Boomstick‘s zombies are individually worthless, presenting
no challenge or threat until they’re thrown at you in groups of about a dozen,
at which point they become seriously difficult to manage. I suppose that’s in
tune with general zombie theory, but that doesn’t make it very fun.
The combat system involves a right-hand weapon (your chainsaw) and a left-hand weapon (shovel, shotgun, dynamite, pistol, etc.) You can execute combos with melee weapons such as the shovel and chainsaw based on an interesting press and release system. Your basic combo is to hit the attack button repeatedly up to four times. However, if on the second or third button press you hold the button down, Ash will pull his arm back for a more powerful attack. This system works well with the shovel and is well synched with Ash’s movements. You can smack a Deadite, then whack its head off with a power attack, then charge up another finishing attack and slam the zombie into the past tense. It’s not as smooth when using the chainsaw, but at least it works.
The targeting system is actually pretty solid. You can chainsaw one enemy, press the L button and blast another incoming enemy without skipping a beat. While you can’t attack with both weapons at once, you can stun enemies in front of you with a couple quick attacks, and then shoot enemies behind you with your shotgun while the enemies in front of you gain their bearings.
These
behind-the-back shots are accompanied by the animation of Ash lolling his shotgun
over his shoulder and firing. This looks slick and is a nice detail, but the
game doesn’t go the distance and offer more of that tongue-in-cheek action from
the films. While the movies featured acrobatic zombies flipping and zipping
all over the place, in the game Deadites just run straight at you in large mobs
and killing them all just requires a decent sense of timing and rationing of
health packs.
If you aren’t killing mobs of Deadites, chances are you’re looking for a key
or spell. There are tons of keys in Fistful Of Boomstick, and you get
to look for all of them. Fortunately, most are found at objective sites, so
you don’t have to look very hard. Spells are found just as easily and are basically
smart bombs. A mana meter is charged by collecting the souls of Deadites ala
Onimusha, and spells are cast by holding the
‘R’ button and pressing the correct sequence of buttons.
However, the spell system is no fun. You just press the buttons and enemies
die, no jumping or flipping or strafing or anything. The fact that the developers
felt they needed spells should have been a clue to them that their game had
gone seriously awry. A shotgun and a chainsaw should be enough if you work at
making it enough. Attempting to make up for mediocre combat by throwing
in smart bombs disguised as spells was a bad idea.
Making the graphics so cartoony was a bad idea, too. The edges are too smooth
and the game lacks grit. The animations are pleasant, but don’t make up for
the fact that this game does not look anything like Evil Dead. It looks
more like State Of Emergency,
which makes sense since it’s running on the same engine.
Fistful Of Boomstick sounds fine thanks to good effects and the voice
talent of Bruce Campbell. The shotgun blasts and chainsaw choppin’ sounds are
cool, the music is just right and Campbell kicks ass. His part isn’t well written
in this game, but I still can’t hate on the guy.
Overall, Fistful Of Boomstick is a weak game with some good features;
namely, the combo system and the fact that it sells for only 20 bucks. Yep,
20 bucks. However, waves of meaningless enemies, stupid objectives and a very
limited shelf life make it quite evil indeed. After an hour or two, you might
want to cut off your own
hand…
