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Evil Dead: A Fist Full of Boomstick Review
Mark Simons
15/07/2003
We take a look at this action packed, zombie busting antithesis of Resident Evil
Developed by VIS Entertainment, the people behind the enjoyable but flawed 'State of Emergency', Evil Dead: Fistful of Boomstick is Resident Evil on speed. After some nicely rendered FMV you get thrown into a simple arcade style game; go here, get this, kill this, repeat, but with the amusing dialogue from Bruce Campbell there is more compulsion to play through than most games like this.
The State of Emergency engine lends itself well to the game, displaying lots of zombies on screen, neatly dispatched with firearms, grenades, dynamite, spades and most enjoyably the chainsaw - being able to fire a shotgun over your shoulder as you move to chop up a zombie in front of you is undeniably cool. The weapons are very satisfying to use; SoE had one of the most enjoyable shotgun blasts ever in our opinion, and the guns can have numerous different ammo types which can help you dispatch enemies that little bit quicker.
In addition to the earthly weapons there are spells, which are performed by pulling the right shoulder button and entering different button combinations, once you've collected the various magic books that scatter each level. The spells are quite cool, things like the ability to give yourself the strength of ten men, fire lightning at the zombies, even more impressive is summoning up a rain storm of lava or a seismic wave ? earthquake to you and me. This aspect adds some much needed depth to the repetitive butoon-bashing nature of 'Streets of Emergency' and certainly adds to the game.
As you'd expect with any Evil Dead game, the humour is nicely tongue in cheek; despite being repetitive the gameplay is made more enjoyable by the storyline, especially if you're a fan of the series. The arcade mode provides a good enjoyable score based romp with some fun weapons through the levels you've unlocked.
Technically this game won't win any prizes, the SoE engine being good for large crowds, but not so good on the details. However with a widescreen mode, crisp smooth graphics and 60hz support this is not the worst looking game we've seen. It does what it needs to and does it rather well, exactly what we need, and the controls are simple, effective and most importantly don't frustrate you like some more high profile titles we could mention...
Scripting and dialogue is generally well done; we found ourselves chuckling along to the cutscenes and some of the dialogue exchanges in the game. In the FMV cutscenes you can see various little knowing nods to films ? we always like this sort of thing. It's not the most gripping story we've ever come across, but it certainly isn't the worst, and if you like zombie films then it'll be right up your street.
