Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel Without a Pulse
At the risk of giving a sound bite to the publisher: if you liked Halo you will enjoy Stubbs the Zombie . That is because the game plays and feels like a Halo mod. A fairly good and innovative mod, that is. The only major difference in the way the two games are played is that Stubbs is mostly third person and is very light on gun combat, whereas Halo is mostly first person and heavy on gun play. The main reason Stubbs the Zombie is so much like Halo is because it is built on the Halo engine and it is made by Wideload. For the uninitiated, Wideload is a group of Ex-Bungie Employees that left after they helped create Halo .
My favorite parts of Stubbs the Zombie was the Zombie Army. I loved the added touch of being able to eat a characters brain and then, instead of them vanishing, they simply stood up and followed you around like... well... a brainless zombie. The Zombie Army AI was fairly simple. If they saw a live human they attacked, if they did not they wandered around trying to follow you. Nothing complex, but it was a breath of fresh air to be able to push and shove the zombies around instead of having to dodge them like in most games.
Stubbs the Zombie was also strong on humor. Most of the cut scenes were semi-funny, but I found few of them worth re-watching. The sound effects where hilarious and drew me into the game, but they got old. The one that got old fastest was hearing brains for the hundredth time. I really got sick of that gag and wish they added some new sound effects later in the game. The thing that drove the humor home was the future-50's setting in the game and the characters like the Barbershop Quartet and Quaker State Militia. I can not stress how much I loved the 50's setting. It really felt like you where battling in a 50's town of the future. Graphically that was also my favorite part.
Stubbs the Zombie may have been a blast to play but like most modern games it suffers from being too linear and short. I beat the game in under six hours and I never really left the main path. The only time I did deviate was when I got lost trying to find the next exit point. Stubbs also suffers from the main complaint I had with Halo. It feels like the level designer hit the copy and paste buttons a lot. Many of the different sections were hard to tell apart, just like in Halo. Also, I had to replay through the same area twice. The only other major complaint I had was there was no background music in most of the game.
Instead of going with the traditional 1 out of 10 rating I am going with a new rating system I have invented, the price point I would buy this game at. My price point for Stubbs the Zombie would be around $30. It is fairly innovative and fun to play, but it just does not have enough to justify the $50.00 price. I know I jump up and down about how you need to support innovative games, but I also feel game publishers need to wake up to the truth. Most games are just not worth the $50.00 - $60.00 price tag. If you rent games instead of buying games I would highly recommend that you rent Stubbs. More details about the actual game can be seen in my first impressions from earlier this week. After finishing Stubbs, my opinions about the game did not change much from my first impressions.