Stubbs the Zombie

Another zombie entry...sorry. Anyway! Have you heard of this game? Very few people have, and most have forgotten already.

Stubbs the Zombie (Rebel Without a Pulse) was a failed Bungee-offshoot game, released shortly after Halo 2 (maybe before, but whatever). In it you're a stylish zombie with an abnormally good IQ for a rotting brain-eater who infects and leads your brethren to complete destruction of a 1950s themed Utopian metropolis. When I read about the game, my eyes grew wide with eager anticipation-- it was an original idea! Where your buddies would be blasting zombies in some other game, you're gnawing on throats or eating brains.
Outside, with feet sliding on the rain-slicked driveway, I ran to my car and drove to purchase it, and before long I was at the main menu. So it began. In a matter of moments you've found vibrant colors and stylized, humorous citizens just waiting to be partially consumed, so you shamble rapidly in their direction only to find out a horrifying truth: this game is awful. The controls are good, and familiar, but don't seem fitting for this game...the reason why is that they're the exact same controls as in Halo.

Moving in Stubbs reminds me of the Ice Temple in Link to the Past, where your feet skitter aimlessly and unnecessarily as you cross the zone. Attacking is primarily melee-based, and we all know that Halo featured the awkward B-button swing whose only purpose felt like to appease the cries of "He's right there! Why can't you just hit the bastard!?" many people shout in first-person shooters. So you can swing your hands, grab people, and that leads to biting heads to infect your victims.
The other moves you can do...well, you can throw your spleen as a grenade. Shocker. The other move, however, caught me off-guard: your hand can skitter around on the ground in an excellent imitation of Thing. This is actually a pretty cool feature, but ultimately fluff in the long run. Only the spleens and infection are important, because your human opponents carry guns and you don't run. By infecting nearly all the unarmed civilians, you've built up an army of seven to fifteen zombies all under your command. I'm not saying you can exactly order them to attack the enemy of your choice, but their numbers are overwhelming to all but the most well-armed, and because it's by our Halo-makers vehicles have to be included. Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe the only real difference with the vehicles is a re-skinning and slight frame editing. That's where the spleens come in handy...there and large groups when you're outnumbered.

Basically, it had potential and threw it away by not bothering to work with a new control scheme. The game is incredibly charming, yet this hardly-tweaked recycle of Halo bothers me to no end. To be honest, I'm letting my disdain for all things Halo to skew my review; however, this game is NOT worth buying, and that's me stepping back and looking at everything as objectively as possible.