Stubbs the Zombie Review

Stubbs the Zombie is an enjoyable game that lets you live out the life of a zombie in a B-grade movie. It isn't without some problems, and it is a bit short, but fans of the genre will find something to like.

(Reviewed using a Pentium 4 2.0GHz with 1GB RAM, 256MB ATI Mobility 9800, SoundBlaster Extigy with 5.1 sound)

Stubbs loudly proclaims that it's based on the Halo engine and produced by the same person who produced Halo.  That pedigree is not as bulletproof nor is it as positive as the publisher hopes for.  Stubbs does not feature destructible environments, decals and its particle effects only linger for a short period of time.  As in Halo, the environments are scaled bizarrely.  The rooms, doors, walls, stairs, all feel way too big.  Of course, in a game like Stubbs one is not supposed to build a heavy layer of verisimilitude, but the player is never lost in the game's atmosphere.  You play Stubbs instead of experiencing it.  That being said, there are some great little details, asides, and in-jokes to keep things fresh. 

Gameplay is very simple, as the controls are limited to a half-dozen buttons.  Stubbs has some weaponry at his disposal as he progresses through the game: a severed arm that can be used to possess enemies and their weaponry, "gut bombs" that act as grenades, and a removable head that detonates on command.  Going into much detail about Stubbs' arsenal would spoil some of the more-humorous parts of the game, so those details will be left up to the player to find.

From an overall perspective, Stubbs is a bit uneven.  In fact, the hardest part of Stubbs comes in the middle of the game.  Gameplay stops at various hidden hotspots to show a cutscene, some of which are too long, jarring the player out of the game.   This is akin to fighting the two power armors in the courtyard in FEAR only to step in a particular location to have an event triggered, and a cutscene beginning before the battle is finished.  With such an awkward way of triggering events, it takes the enjoyment of surviving a particularly tough battle victorious.

The game is addictive, even if it gets repetitive after a while.  Stubbs is also awfully short, but a longer game might have caused the simple gameplay to wear out its welcome. You also never feel part of a bigger story, just a pile of pixels whisked from one location to the next.  The control scheme is simple to pick up, and of course, configurable, but control response is sluggish.  This makes firefights a pain and makes some of the minigames impossible.   The graphics are OK: a bright, vibrant, colorful atmosphere that seems to channel Crazy Taxi.  There isn't, however, a lot of variety to be found, and the level maps seem all to be constructed with primitive shapes and repetitive textures. 

Tactically, there isn't much to Stubbs.  Combat basically amounts to bull-rushing law enforcement to overwhelm them with your zombie horde before they can take you down.  The only weapon you can use is when you "liberate" an arm of your foe and use it like a baseball bat.  Otherwise, you can detach your arm, use it to possess a character with a weapon, and then you have full control over that weapon.  With the sluggish controls, firefights are frustrating as you just spray lead wildly hoping that your crosshairs will line up with a target eventually.  Similar to Gun, you don't have to aim dead-on, anywhere in the vicinity will do.    While this does make it easier to hit a foe, it doesn't really make up for the sloppy controls.  The AI is reasonably smart and will cautiously approach you, using cover and frequent dodges to prevent you from dispatching them.  Your zombies act like their movie-genre counterpart, and will approvingly rush at any live human with arms outstretched.  You can control them by shoving them in the correct direction, or by looking directly at them and whistling to call them over.  Since your victims also become zombies you can control, it is fairly easy to create an army of the dead.  This is great fun for fans of zombie movies--particularly tounge-in-cheek ones--but it does lend itself to a combat formula: send zombies in, bull-rush the humans, create more zombies, repeat.

Stubb's most effective weapon is the limb of an enemy

Stubbs' sound is pretty well done.  The voice acting is appropriate and usually humorous, although the same lines do get repeated time and time again.  The soundtrack features updated songs from the 50's and is very well done; probably the best soundtrack ever produced for a game.  If there were more variety in the lines that the characters speak, it would get a perfect score.

Since Stubbs is so short and does not come with a multiplayer component, nor does it come with any un-lockable content, there isn't much of a reason to play it through more than once.  It is fun the first time through, however.

As another point of note, Stubbs requires some pretty hefty hardware to run efficiently.  On a machine that was just a couple of notches above the minimum requirements, Subbs had horrible draw-rate lag--making the bad controls absolutely horrible (the game was reviewed on a machine with higher attributes).  Plus the first half of the game almost plays as an extended tutorial, something that could have been handled in a less annoying way.

The bottom line is that if you love campy zombie movies, especially those that inject a strong sense of humor into the film, you'll find much to like in Stubbs.  If you don't you won't.  There is just enough fun to overlook most of the game's flaws, but you'll probably only notice the subtle asides and references if you've seen a lot of zombie movies--things that add flavor and really make Stubbs worth the price tag.  That said, the shortness of the game and the lack of any expansion once completed (multiplayer, un-lockable content, et cetera) make a full recommendation impossible.  The environments feel much too "video-gamey" for a game released in 2006--a game released 15 months after Half-Life 2, and six-months after FEAR.  Unless you are really looking forward to playing out a Living Dead experience, you may be best served to let this one hit the bargain shelf.

The Good:

- Inventive Theme

- Streamlined Gameplay

- Somewhat addictive

- Outstanding sound and music

The Bad:

- Can be repetitive

- Environments too big for character models

- Repetitive textures

- Much, much too short.

- Bloatware: this game requires a machine with a lot of horsepower, but that huge footprint on resources does not show up in the quality of the game or in the intelligence of the AI.