I have quit my job at the Red Cross, tired of explaining to aging, overweight women with creaky knees that no one will have the courtesy to try to die on a table so they don’t have to attempt CPR on the floor. Naturally, I won’t rest until my resume makes me look like a hard-core Looney Toon character, so I went and signed up something far more psychotic: substitute teaching. Today’s adventure: first grade. And by “adventure,” I mean I’m going to take a break from grotesque, high-strung demon-spawn that will devour your soul to talk about something relaxing: Evil Dead. And before you ask, let me point out that sometimes the only thing that held your substitute teachers back from a nice, therapeutic dismembering was that chainsaws are forbidden on school grounds. Likely, I’ll wager, for just that very reason.
To Do: Clear street of deadites so Doc and Marty can travel back to 1955 and prevent Old Biff from giving the Necronomicon to himself, thus preventing Evil 1985 from ever happening.
The Evil Dead films tell the story of Ash, who from an ill-fated camping trip with his college friends, must constantly fight back legions of demons who possess the corpses of those around him. And much like its subject material, it comes back to life every time the filmmakers try to kill it, each time just a little campier, a little more bloated, a little more disgusting and unrecognizable than the time before. After people stopped funding the films, there’s been talk of an Evil Dead 4, with director Sam Raimi telling fans they’ll just have to satisfy themselves with the three films. And two video games. And the musical. And the Ash vs the Evil Dead tv series. And let’s not forget 2007’s My Name is Bruce. So despite the fact that there’s never going to be an Evil Dead 4, there’s no shortage of cocky, swaggering, gore-themed, dad-joke one-liners recorded by Bruce Campbell himself. And to prove it, you can hear one every time you hit the triangle button in Fistful of Boomstick.
2003’s Fistful of Boomstick pretty much set up Ash’s backstory, which has become more consistent and dependable as giant perky tits in Game of Thrones. Everyone perceives him a schizophrenic, alcoholic loser, until someone unleashes the evil dead and he rescues the world, earning everyone’s gratitude just shy of actually treating him like he’s not an alcoholic loser. In this instance, a reporter interviews a colleague of the late professor Knowby, and plays a recording of an incantation over live TV. This immediately fills Dearborn, Michigan with hoards of evil demons who possess everyone in their path, thus paving the way for the 2016 election outcome. Ash immediately sets upon his quest to slaughter his way through the deadites with nothing but a chainsaw, shotgun, and the complete wares of a combined gun shop and hardware store strapped to his back.
Evil Dead has always been rather loose with the bounds of the horror genre. So too has it treated survival horror like the woman willing to take him home ten minutes after the bar closes down. Fistful of Boomstick technically bears the telltale features of survival horror, in that it limits the number of saves, controls the amount of ammunition and healing items, becomes progressively darker as though the player is suffering a minor stroke, and scatters a small junkyard around the game while demanding you clean it up. However, as with the PS One game, Hail to the King, the game feels remiss if it doesn’t hurl enemies at you with the frightening urgency of your grandma trying to stuff every last serving of tater tot casserole down your throat lest she think you waste away and starve like a Somalian orphan. Ammunition is only rare compared to the monsters, but the plethora of melee weapons negates that effect (Ash with a sword. Enough said) Save tokens likewise have the scarcity of AOL disks in the late 90s.
Coincidentally, this is also Sean Hannity’s to-do list.
In fact, the one survival horror target they hit more accurately than Bill Cosby playing beer pong with a handful of roofies is the black-on-black color palette. The game opens on a dark and murky Dearborn, and gets progressively darker, what I refer to as the “untreated diabetes” aesthetic. Praising complete and utter lack of any visual cues as a horror game staple always felt like praising rusty barbed wire and 10W-40 as a dietary staple. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that this trend led to a game like Perception,, and it surprises me even less that players
Hidden in each level are permanent power-ups. Some raise Ash’s maximum mana, enabling the player to cast spells more often. Others increase his maximum health, enabling the player to stare longingly at one more permanently empty blip on the life gauge. It isn’t just the unbridled manliness, easy access to firearms, and the denizens of hell-spawn risen in legions that make Dearborn a Republican paradise. There’s also a dearth of healthcare, thus ensuring that if you want to refill your life, you have to work harder than a Mexican laborer for those elusive health drops and just hope that the work itself doesn’t eviscerate your bowels and swallow your soul in the meantime. Fuck that. I play video games to escape real life. This is worse than playing as the merchant in Dragon Quest.
That poor car can’t even get a break in a video game.
On that line, the game seems just a little too hard, and sadly, not in a way that the developers likely intended. Imagine, if you will, two high school history teachers. The first teacher runs a challenging class because he expects you to understand the past, but also the cause and effect of various historical events. That teacher, let’s say, is Final Fantasy Tactics; difficult, but rewarding when you figure it out. The second teacher is also difficult because after giving you an assignment, he jets off to the local titty bar leaving nothing but a Magic 8-Ball for you to check your answers. That teacher is difficult because his priorities are more in line with machismo than balancing the class properly. But hey, repetition is the key to education, right? Thanks to several conveniently placed unskippable cut scenes, you’ll never have any doubt about the plot in those moments right before a difficult boss fight! Now if you’ll excuse me, the school day is almost over and I have a stack of singles burning a hole in my pocket.
Video Game Underworld 