Must eat brains! Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel without a Pulse is a very unique game idea where you get to be the zombie and eat brains to your heart’s content. You get to wreck havoc on the citizens of Punchbowl, Pennsylvania: A 1959’s town with "Star Trek" like technology.
You play Stubbs, who starts eating people’s brains during the first 15 seconds of the game. Somehow after about eating 100 people’s brains and hearing the funny reactions of the poor citizens, it still is funny! The more brains you eat, the more your "zombie army grows". However, about the only control you have over your army is to PUSH them in the general direction of the police or any other person who is out to destroy you. Stubbs can also whistle to round up all nearby zombies in case they wander off too far from where the action is.
While you might think causing pure heck in a town that is just way too perfect would be fun, but it gets a little dull after a few levels. The game is not just all eating brains; it does break up the brain eating "fest" with some vehicles and a strange dancing sequence. The most unique level I enjoyed was when my severed hand took over someone’s body. Funny that no one noticed this HAND attached to the back of the poor soul’s head…although they did notice I got a hair cut.
Stubbs being a zombie he’s got some special moves up his sleeves. You can let off a huge cloud of…um…gas that will stun out everyone in the area. You can throw your pancreas like a grenade to take out a group of enemies or even use your head as a bowling ball. The enemies don’t vary much: you’ve got the normal citizens who barely put up a fight. The police, who you would think in a 21st century town, would have at least a laser gun instead of a crappy six shot gun. At least the local Special Forces have bigger fire power, heck even the local hicks have better weapons than the police.
What makes the game short and easy to finish is the fact there are only a dozen levels and you can pretty much just stand in a quiet corner to refill your health instantly. You can always chomp down on some pour soul nearby to add to your zombie army.
Wideload games ported this over from the Xbox version to the PC…frankly it should have stayed as an Xbox version. Gone is the co-op play, also the graphic card requirements seem rather high. A Nvidia Geforce FX5200 or an ATI Radoen 9500; come on!!! Even F.E.A.R can run on a Geforce 4 TI4200 or an ATI Radeon 9000. Perhaps the high spec requirements were because of the funky "old film" filter they applied to the game?
The sound track in the game, actually I should say the sound track in the menu is amazing! Frankly the music in the menu sounds better than the in game music. At least the acting is great, some of the one liner jokes are just hilarious: Noooooo, that was my good arm! Or STOP EATING MY BRAINS!!! It’s rare that a game will get chuckles, usually when you laugh at a game it is because it is stupid…not funny.
Who ever thought Saving and Loading would be an issue in a game, frankly there is no Loading option at all in the game. If your friend wants to start playing, it will end up erasing your current game. You cannot save your progress or load spots that you want to play again, there is an auto save feature and that is it. Nothing else! Frankly it is annoying if you wanted to save say the "dancing part" and wanted to play it again later.
The graphics in Stubbs the Zombie looks pretty good; after all it was based on the Halo engine. Stubbs and the other zombies have realistic movements…well, realistic if there were zombies in the real world. Levels in the game are well designed but lack a mission…although do zombies even have a mission?
I must admit, it was pretty fun watching all those zombies "I created by eating people" causing havoc in the level I was in. A very unique idea for a game and is a change of pace where you normally kill all zombies.
Overall the game has a very unique idea, it is funny but just lacks in game play. Unless you are really into eating people’s brains over and over for a dozen levels it might get dull real fast. The lack of co-op and the ability to save and load parts you enjoyed is just strange in this day and age. If you own an Xbox, pick up that version instead of the PC or Macintosh version.
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Buy Stubbs the Zombie for the PC at
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