Evil Dead Games: Evil Dead Regeneration

What's goin' on kiddies? Welcome back for Day 4 of Evil Dead Games. Well shockingly enough we will heading back to THQ to bring us another heaping of blood, gore, one-liners and decent creature creation and once again published some more chainsaw and boomstick. Produced by (get this) Cranky Pants Games (Red Faction II, Evil Dead: Regeneration and Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon) . This is Evil Dead: Regeneration.

They think I am crazy.  Just because I hacked up my friends and girlfriend.

Feeling again the vibe of an action hack and slash game again this almost feels like an alternative reality or Earth where Ash did not end up going through the temporal portal that sent him to 1200 AD at the end of Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn. Instead he is captured by the state troopers and dropped by at the Sunny Meadows Asylum.

Locked away in the wacko basket for the criminally insane, the truth as always far more worse than anyone suspected. Ash (voiced again by Bruce Campbell) is visited by his lawyer Sally (Nika Futterman of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, The Last of Us, Tenkai Knights, Sofia the First and Dead Rising 3) and is convinced he is stuck here and no one will believe when Sally slaps Professor Knowby's diary down on the table. Sally points out that Ash's shrink, Doctor Reinhard (Jim Ward of Spirited Away, Spider-Man, WALL-E, Despicable Me 2 and Batman: Arkham Knight) seems to want to keep Ash who survived two encounters with the Evil Dead that he may lead to some of the incantations that he may be useful.

Okay bub, yer goin' down.

Reinhard releases the evils with the book but needs the necessary passages from Knowby's diary and the asylum is flooded with the Kandarian demons taking over inmates and guards alike. Ash jumps to attention and steadies himself for the craziness to ensue. After fending off the deadites and the level boss he is visited by the ghost of Professor Knowby ( Jim Ward of Spirited Away, Spider-Man, WALL-E, Despicable Me 2 and Batman: Arkham Knight ) who tells Ash he must close the existing portals that Reinhard has opened in order to stop it from taking over the world but he will need help. Yeah, finally after 3 movies and 3 games prior Ash gets a sidekick in the form of a midget that was made partially deadite by the name of Sam (Ted Raimi of The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Intruder, Army of Darkness, SeaQuest 2032, Wishmaster, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess and Spider-Man). So grabbing his clothes, boomstick and chainsaw Ash is ready to give the deadites the business end of each and save the world.

The overall gameplay is similar to Fistful of Boomstick for the hack and slash options. There plenty of little puzzles to solve and fighting off the hordes of deadites is not unusual but different levels offer up different weapons including a harpoon gun and a flamethrower. While killing a friend, colleague or fellow survivor in game is considered a huge taboo, Sam can die over and over again in some of the most goofy and comical means like chucking him at deadites or kicking Sam in through doors to unlock them.

Unlike the previous games Ash seems to have unlimited ammo and gas for the boomstick, harpoon gun, flamethrower and chainsaw which really takes away any feeling of desperation and doesn't make you have to be as observant as you did in Hail to the King. He has a rage meter that fills up after x amount of enemies are slain allowing him to invoke Bad Ash and just slaughter anything in his way and also means his life meter won't ebb down as quickly.

The graphics are fair, the soundtrack is great and the gameplay is decent but it really is more silly than scary this time around. The story wasn't bad and I did like the absence of the Army of Darkness story arc making him a little less confident. All in all not a bad game but not a whole lot of re-playability.

You're toast. No bones about it.

Part 2 Week: The Hills Have Eyes Part II

Welcome back movie nuts to Day 4 of Part 2 Week and let me just say...  this one was a bit difficult to get through.  Oh, it wasn't gore splattered against the lens, the cliche lines being spouted or even an exorbitant amount of nudity.  It just felt long, uninteresting and frankly I could have been spending time learning how to knit, of which I have no desire to even do.  That in mind, I was a bit surprised and did a bit of research on the old IMDB site to get the skinny to why this follow-up to a genuinely creepy film fell on its proverbial ass.   This is The Hills Have Eyes Part II.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Craven.

Foster: Sue, it ain't natural to be in a place without a spoiler.







Our film opens at a psychiatrist office with Bobby recalling  barely surviving the first encounter of the mutantinous Hill people of Death Valley.  This is a flashback sequence interspursed  with new close up panned daily footage with Bobby still at his wit's end coping with the loss of family and taking lives of the Hill loonies eight years prior.  One would conclude to NEVER EVER TAKE A TRIP in California again but alas our plucky survivors Bobby (Robert Houston of The Hills Have Eyes, The Great American Girl Returns, Shogun Assassin and Growning Pains) , Ruby now calling herself Rachel (Janus Blythe of Phantom of the Paradise, Eaten Alive, The Hills Have Eyes and Soldier's Fortune) and Brenda (Suzie Lanier-Bramlett of  Barnaby Jones, Electra Woman and Dyna Girls, The Hills Have Eyes, Madame X and The Night the Bridge Fell Down) are touring across California with Bobby's rocket fuel formula for the motocross bike team he now owns.  Well, not the people themselves.  I am pretty sure he just owns the bikes and the logo.   The formula is almost out of test phase and should put them on the gravy train with biscuit wheels...   until...  the team is due to race in the very same frickin' desert all the nightmares began!!!

Hmm Slash and Gollum's love child really got messed up.

Yeah that seems like a fairly safe place to camp out.  Hell Rachel even took Beast, that huge dog the Hills had as her own lovable pet.  Along the way they meet Jane (Colleen Riley of Soap, Breaking Away, Deadly Blessing and The Renegades), Sue (Penny Johnson of What's Love Got to Do with It, Molly & Gina, ER, 24 and Castle) and Foster (Willard E. Pugh of The Color Purple, Robocop 2, CB4 and Air Force One) hitch hiking so of course let's pile them in.  We need a higher body count, don't we?

The motor-cross doofus duo Roy (Kevin Spirtas of The Young and the Restless, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Bloodstone: Subspecies II, Bloodlust:  Subspecies III and Valley of the Dolls) and Harry (Peter Frechette of Grease 2, Profiler, Inside Man and The Savages) screw up in their directions and take a short cut across the old bombing range , thus jacking the gas tank causing a steady leak.  We see an old abandoned mining ranch so of course the Scoobies want to investigate...  None of that, we should find a gas station nonsense, phone booth, cops or some hope of civilization.  Nope, let's go to the creepy mine up the stretch of the hill.   Yup they run into the Hill folks and all hell proceeds to break loose.

Now just a few comments and observations at this time.  Firstly, the principal photography (daily shots) was not finished because our director Wes Craven was shooting it and was yanked from that project to get A Nightmare on Elm Street up and running.  No sooner was that a hit at the box office the producers felt Craven could finish their insipid sequel but not to waste any more time with filming it further.  Yeah, he had to use film stock of the original and pad the film out in order for it to be long enough to meet the requirements.

Craven has gone on record saying he was desperate for the scratch and really needed it for future events.   Let me point out that unlike most sequels the violence level is fairly tame, the nudity is actually mild almost nonexistent and even the swearing is really not there.   Unfortunately, the crux of the continuous story makes little to no sense with Pluto surviving a fairly malicious dog attack in the first flick, why our survivors could not have taken any route but through Death Valley or have just shipped their bikes via train?

Now what was filmed looks gorgeous throughout Griffith Park, San Bernadino and a lot through Joshua Tree and again lovely cinematography but seeing this was not a documentary on the adverse and harsh conditions atomic mutation can do on an indigenous family, well it really doesn't matter then.  You end up with a garbled, lost and unsolvable project.   Think Laid to Rest on accident and there you have it.

Jason Vorhees joins the Hell's Angels!!!

PC Games of 1997: Diablo

Welcome back boys and girls for Day 5 of PC Games of 1997 and I had to save the greatest time waster of them all.  The penultimate of dates broken, ladies unloved and meals missed.  From a company’s humble beginnings as Silicon & Synapse (sounds like a firm specializing in breast and brain augmentation)the years of Battle Chess and Castles  to the company we better known as Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.  Creators of such games as: Warcraft, Warcraft II, Starcraft, The Death and Return of Superman and Justice League Task Force came a hack and slash adventure game to the likes we had not seen with graphics and excellent voice work.  So grab your mana and health bottles, sharpen your broadsword and prepare to do battle with those denizens of Hell.   This is Diablo.

 

Um... there is a plot device scrolling over our heads.

Uldyssian: Damn you!

Lucion: Thank you, I already am. Shall we go spoil?

In the world of Sanctuary, beneath the town of Tristam lurks Diablo, the Lord of Terror. Eons ago the war between Heaven and Hell raged on. Angels and demons slew one another by the hundreds until the demons were exiled to the mortal realm.  Three terrible Lords of Hell sought victory over mankind through temptation and influencing their decisions, sowing the seeds of distrust and hatred amongst the humans of Sanctuary until a gathering of mages trapped the lords in soulstones.  Diablo’s soulstone was buried deep under the ground in the land that would be known as Tristam a large monastery built over the wretched soulstone to guard and keep the stone from ever seeing light.

Screw doing good.  I'm gonna loot!!

Many generations later the monastery sat in ruin and Tristam was raised up over the ruins and the monastery was leveled for a cathedral.   It would have been nice of the ancestors to leave any notes, scrolls or etchings on the importance of the monastery.   Slowly Diablo gains power over the town and proceeds to warp the good king Leoric and creates terrible wars all the while filling the caverns and catacombs underneath the former monastery with horrible, formidable creates to guard Diablo while he regains his power.

With no king, law or even an army to defend this once happy and prosperous town many of the villagers up and left this township of terror. 

The standard classes of adventurers are pretty limited to Rogue, Warrior and Sorcerer.  Each powerful in their own right but require improvement throughout the leveling.   All items give off a certain color scheme glow to establish how they can be used and by whom.  The colors are white for the normal items, blue for the magic items and gold for the unique items.   They also show how durable each item is and how they can all wear down from too much use and the weapons show all the pros and cons of each melee, blunt and range weapon.  

While this RPG hack and slash is primarily a single-player game it was set up for a LAN (local area network) Multi-player of up to a whopping 4 players and had its drawbacks.  For example: Kill parties laying in wait for that poor noob that greets fellow players so they may kill him/her and strip the body of its belongings.   Also the Cheat Engine (a game editing program) was commonly used to overamp one’s character to make him/her an impossible level and have a wide array of weapons for the sole purpose of killing off fellow gamers, I.E. game killer or jerk off.

While slaying the undead, various monsters and demons is a boon and the story was sound I am certain many friends and families were worried to the gamer that was camped at his/her computer for hours at a time but then again it was not EverQuest (The Silent Killer).

Ahh glad I went without breeches in Hell.