

For some, it may be the suspense and horror that comes with fighting for survival in a game world overrun by undead zombies. There are many reasons why people might enjoy playing zombie games. These games typically involve scavenging for supplies, weapons, and other survivors in order to stay alive. Zombie games like Resident Evil, Dying Light, Zombie Army, Dead Rising, Dead Island, Days Gone, Death Road, and World War Z can be either first-person zombie shooter or zombie survival horror games. But at the same time, this is just a mindlessly fun game where you can run around chomping on brains, and that sort of thing never goes out of style.Īspyr provided us with a Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse Switch code for review purposes.Zombie games are a genre of video game where the player takes on the role of a character who must survive in a zombie apocalypse. Is that causing me to overrate Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse a little? Perhaps - as we learned from another relic/artefact of the same era, great soundtracks can help overcome a lot of flaws. Death Cab for Cutie doing “Earth Angel”! A cover of “My Boyfriend’s Back” by The Raveonettes! The Flaming Lips! Cake! The Walkmen! Ben Kweller! As someone who was very into these bands the first time around, having them pop up in this context spoke to me on a deeply personal level. On the flipside, however, the game feeling like it’s from 2005 stems from the fact it has an absolutely incredible soundtrack, full of ‘50s covers by the hottest indie rock bands from 2005. I’ve been playing a lot of PSP games in light of the impending store shutdown, and while Stubbs the Zombie is probably better looking than most of those handheld games, it’s a close contest. On the looks front, I won’t lie: this is a pretty ugly-looking game. It’s kind of timeless, as these things go.Īs for the game looking and feeling like it’s from 2005, that’s more of a mixed bag. Stubbs the Zombie’s core gameplay of rampage around area, eating every human you can find, has aged a lot better than, say, a 3D platforming collect-a-thon. While I’ve complained in the past about games that overly rely on players having fond memories of the original to overcome obvious shortcomings, that’s not the case here. That’s not inherently a bad thing, mind you, more a statement of fact. And, well, it does: Stubbs the Zombie looks, feels, and plays like you’d expect a 2005 game to look, play, and feel. With that kind of background, you might expect the game to feel dated.


In other words, it’s a 15-year-old look at how people were looking back at the world of 50 years ago. On top of that, this 2020 version of the game is a straight port of the 2005 Xbox minor hit. In the game, of course, you play as the eponymous zombie, wreaking havoc in a stereotypical version of a 1950s town. There are multiple layers of nostalgia going on in Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse.
