The game puts you in the shoes of Ash Williams and his friends as they go on vacation to a log cabin in the woods. They find the Necronomicon Ex Mortis, also known as the book of the dead. They also find a bunch of recordings of the cabins original owner, an archeaologist who dug up the book. Chaos ensues after they read from the book and unleash its evil. But if you want the plot of the story, just go see the movies. Here you get simple one to two sentence loading screens between each mission, which is unfortunate, because the games trailers made it seem like there would be simple cinematic cut-scenes, which would have been great in this art style.
The gameplay is simple dual-stick combat. You roam through the forest fighting off possessed plants, deadites, and evil priests using an axe, a chainsaw, and your faithful boomstick. Sadly, the gameplay is a bit lacking. The controls feel very wooden, and it’s hard to aim exactly where you want. The boomstick doesn’t have much impact, and the axe often requires you to trade blows with enemies. It is possible to hit and run with the axe to avoid damage, but the stiff controls make it a difficult feat. It can still be pretty fun though.
The game is also nice and gory, with an interesting mechanic of having to wipe blood and giblets off of your screen in order to see. It’s a nice touch, but it can get annoying after a while. I love the art style used in the game. I don’t know what it is about this series that makes really cartoonish art styles work so well, but it really captures the spirit of the franchise. The recently released Army Of Darkness: Defense also had a cartoony art style, though very different from this one, and both games use dialogue and music directly from the films to appeal to fans, which works pretty well. Still, I was expecting a bit more from this one. It’s a $3 app, which isn’t too bad, but I expected better for my money. I still really enjoyed the game simply because I’m a huge fan of the movies, but I have to recommend it with some caution. Check it out.
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