Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse Preview

Trouble In Paradise

Stubbs causes chaos on the streets of Punchbowl in this action-packed gameplay movie.

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Currently scheduled for release next month, Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse is a Halo-engine-powered action game in which you'll assume the titular role of a chain-smoking zombie named Stubbs. Like most zombies, Stubbs has a penchant for brains and is able to turn the living into walking dead by feasting on them. We recently had an opportunity to play through several levels of a near-finished version of Stubbs the Zombie, and we're pleased to report that life after death is even more fun than we were expecting.

Before you start playing Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse, you'll be invited to choose between easy, normal, tough, and insane difficulty levels, and then you'll be treated to a '50s-style-TV intro that introduces you to the futuristic (circa 2000) city of Punchbowl in which the game takes place. Punchbowl is a utopia of sorts where citizens will be able to go about their daily routines in a spotlessly clean environment in which robots are responsible for enforcing the law, delivering mail, pumping gas, and giving guided tours to new arrivals. Punchbowl hasn't officially been opened when Stubbs arrives on the scene, so it's not as densely populated as you might expect. But, there's no need to worry, because there's never any shortage of bodies for you to take bites out of.

Stubbs the Zombie's tutorial comes courtesy of a bright-pink "guidebot" who gives you a guided tour of Punchbowl while prompting you to try out the different moves available to you at the start of the game. Besides moving, looking, and jumping (A button), the only moves you'll really need to worry about at this point are your basic attack (X button), eating brains (Y button), and unleashing your undead flatulence (B button). The first two should be self-explanatory, although it's worth noting that most of the clean-living folks you prey upon in the game will turn into zombies regardless of how you kill them. It's still worthwhile to consume brains whenever the opportunity arises, though, because it's only by eating that Stubbs can build up his flatulence meter and gain access to other special attacks later in the game. Your undead flatulence attack is basically a cloud of gas that stuns any living caught in it, making their brains much easier targets for you and any zombies that you have following you around at the time.

Your zombie brothers and sisters like the taste of brains just as much as you do.

The zombies that you "create" in Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse have the same motivations and afterlife goals that you do, which basically means that they're hungry for brains from the moment they reanimate until they die, again. The only control you'll be able to exercise over other zombies is to whistle when you want them to follow you, and to shove them when they get in your way or when you want them to go in a particular direction. We've found the shove command to be particularly useful, not only because it ensures that you'll never get stuck behind a colleague, but also because it's possible to send a group of zombies into a dangerous area ahead of you so that you can effectively use them as shields. Left to their own devices, zombies will invariably just head toward the nearest brain or, if there are none nearby, shamble around aimlessly.

Having a group of other zombies fight alongside you will become increasingly important as you progress, not only because you'll find yourself up against larger groups of enemies, but also because the enemies are a lot tougher. The Punchbowl cops armed with Taser gloves that you face in the first couple of levels, for example, aren't nearly as difficult to deal with as the riot police whose helmets and shields make them almost invulnerable to your regular attacks. Tear off one of their arms when they extend it to hit you with their clubs, though, and you can beat them down with it--turning them into an armored zombie in the process. Outside of Punchbowl, you'll encounter a well-armed redneck militia whose main weakness is that their '50s-era rifles and shotguns require constant reloading. Their chainsaw-wielding heavies don't have that problem, though, and are even tougher to deal with than the riot police in the city.