Evil Dead fans will love it...despite its flaws

Fans of the Evil Dead series, particularly Evil Dead II, will seriously enjoy this game at first. It has all the elements of the movies, from zombies and a trusty shotgun (or boomstick) to the even more trusty chainsaw and one-liners. Ash, the main character, has all the mannerisms and catch-phrases from the movies, and the voice is done by none other than Bruce Campbell who played Ash in the series. Though there are many of these one-liners, even they get old when you've heard them all a couple dozen times. The other game sounds are great and play a big part in setting the tone for the game, but after a while hearing the same thing over and over and over again gets pretty boring.

The game is your typical Evil Dead situation: Zombies appear everywhere and you have to blow them away or slice them to pieces and put a stop to the spreading evil. By the way, this isn't a game for young kids, when I say slice them to pieces it's literal. You can lop off zombie heads or limbs, and one of the coolest effects of the game is when a zombie torso pulls itself towards you with its hands and tries to bite your ankles.

Your most trusty weapon is your chainsaw that replaces Ash's right hand. For those of you who are not familiar with Evil Dead II, Ash had to cut off his own hand after it became possessed. Later in the film he rigged a chainsaw to fit over the stump. There are more weapons in the game and Ash can have two ready at any time, one for his stump hand and another in his left hand. But the staple is definitely the old chainsaw, it doesn't use up precious ammo and will take down most baddies.

Everything about the game is fantastic for the first level or two. The environment graphics are okay, but the zombies and other characters are really great. Just like the movie, this game has LOTS of blood, and the greatest effect in the game is the way the blood follows the swinging path of your chainsaw. But after slicing apart about five hundred zombies and blowing away a couple hundred more with the shotgun, things start getting very repetitive. Slice a zombie here, take out a crowd of zombies there, more coming from around the corner, oh great, I'm lost. Getting lost is easy to do, especially when you're required to run back and forth on the map to carry out various objectives. The puzzles in the game, a.k.a. the objectives, are lame and only slow the game down to a crawl. The objectives are pretty much the same from level to level, you have to find one object (like a key) to open another area (like a locked gate). Finding the object is frustrating to begin with, and your reward for running back and forth across the level is...another level with another stupid objective. Oh goody.

If you see this game at a garage sale, it's worth the five bucks. Otherwise, see if one of your friends has it and borrow it. The game has no replay value, unless you enjoy the little mini-games they packed into it which is just more of the same hack-and-slash, so chances are your friend will be glad to let it go for a few weeks or maybe forever.