The year is 2005. Crash inexplicably won Best Picture, and Advent Rising just released and promised you a million dollars and still has not delivered to this day. But there were plenty of lights at the end of the tunnel. One of them was Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse. When it was released on the original Xbox, it was met with mostly positive reviews and was praised for its humor and varied environments while being criticized for its length and repetitive structure. Now, after nearly 16 years, Stubbs is back on modern consoles with an HD remaster. But as with many games that have gotten this treatment, has it retained some of its original magic after being six feet under for so long? The short answer: mostly yes.
Game Name: Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse
Platform(s): Reviewed on Xbox Series X (Also available on Xbox One, PS4/PS5, Switch, and PC)
Publisher(s): Aspyr
Developer(s): Aspyr
Release Date: March 16th, 2021
Price: $19.99
You take control of the titular Stubbs the Zombie after he rises from the grave to enact revenge on the people who killed him in his past life. As dour and serious as that might sound, everything is extremely tongue-in-cheek, and the jokes fire off a mile a minute. Which is great since the story isn’t why you’ll be accompanying Stubbs on his quest. There is no shortage of laugh-out-loud moments and gags throughout the eight-hour campaign, and they’re all strong. The humor is undoubtedly a major saving grace because Stubbs the Zombie would not be nearly as memorable if it played it straight.
Easily one of the strongest aspects of Stubbs the Zombie is its setting. The town of Punchbowl, Pennsylvania, is a mishmash of late-50s Americana and retro-futurism. It’s clear that this is a long-gone era, but there are also hover cars and robots walking around, which set it apart from other period pieces. The setting and overall vibe of the Fallout series is the nearest equivalent that comes to mind to put that into perspective. It still always manages to feel fresh and fun no matter which of the many settings you wind up exploring.
Throughout the game, you utilize a very colorful and often low brow assortment of abilities. As you would expect, Stubbs can munch on the brains of the unsuspecting residents of Punchbowl to replenish his health as well as his skills. Doing so also converts them to your undead horde, who can, in turn, bite and infect more people. Pretty soon, you can have an impressive posse of zombies by your side, and it’s a blast to fill the streets with the undead and continually adding more to your ranks.
Additionally, you also get the ability to throw your head like a bowling ball and then make it explode as well as an AOE fart blast that can stun enemies and make them more susceptible to getting their brains eaten. It’s all very goofy and always pretty amusing. Obviously, if that kind of humor isn’t your cup of tea, then it most likely won’t hot for you. But I am the type of person who finds flatulence entertaining, so it checked that box for me. Very few games allow you to fart at a tank so the driver jumps out at which point you can steal the tank and run the driver over with it. That alone is worth the price of admission.
With rereleasing a decade and a half-year-old game, it often becomes a question of which aspects have not aged well. Unfortunately, Stubbs the Zombie does have a few elements that have not stood the test of time. My biggest gripe with this remaster is the save system. Stubbs the Zombie uses a very wonky autosave system to record your progress. The game will save at the start of each new level, and that works just as expected, but the in-level saving is kind of a mess. It would trigger for me at seemingly random times and proved on more than one occasion to have my progress saved at some very inopportune moments. This led to a bit of frustration when my saves would happen right before a choke point where I had little heath and was stuck in a death loop until I brute-forced my way a little further.
Another issue, albeit a smaller one, would be the repetitive nature of Stubbs the Zombie. The general gameplay loop usually consists of chomping on some brains to build your zombie entourage and then making your way to the next point where a cutscene will trigger, allowing you to progress. The core entertainment here mainly comes from your own creativity with the various abilities at your disposal. This gameplay isn’t a complete deal-breaker, mostly due to the game’s overall length making it so that it never really overstays its welcome. I never quite reached a point where I was tired of a level, but I occasionally did feel like I saw everything it may have had to offer. But Stubbs the Zombie’s pacing is solid moved on right when it needed to.
Apart from the main story, there isn’t a whole lot else to dive into. With it being on modern platforms, that does bring with it achievement/trophy support which is nice for the completionists. The level select makes replaying sections for harder achievements easy to jump into, but it doesn’t add a whole lot of playtime.
Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse has more highs than lows, but those lows can get close to feeling like a slog. It’s a blast to play, even though you’ll have seen most of what it has to offer before the halfway mark. Luckily the game’s roughly eight-hour runtime makes it, so it never becomes tedious or boring, but it does get painfully close to that territory. Ultimately, your mileage is going to vary. Stubbs the Zombie surely has its flaws, but I enjoyed myself through the adventure enough to say that bringing this cult classic back from the dead was a good call.
Review Disclosure Statement: Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse was provided to us by Aspyr for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please go review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.
