You've gotta love commitment! This game has the best presentation I have ever seen!!
You assume the role of Stubbs the Zombie. As the game’s literature states (I’m not really quoting here, just summarizing): Edward “Stubbs” Stubblefield was a traveling salesman in 1933, during the darkest days of the depression. The only thing he could rely on was his unnatural bad-luck. One day this strain of misfortune reaches its ultimate conclusion when Edward is shot in the stomach and buried in a shallow grave somewhere in the remotest areas of the Pennsylvania countryside. Now it’s 1959 and the site where Stubbs was buried is now a quasi-futuristic burg known as Punchbowl. Punchbowl is the brain-child of Andrew Monday, the world’s richest man. He has an obsession with technology and he created Punchbowl as the shining Utopia to which all cities of the world should look for guidance. This includes robots (the gas station “pump-bots” are the funniest of them all. If you play it you wil see what I’m talking about!) and flying cars. Stubbs is now loose in this city and is ready to inflict chaos and destruction upon its inhabitants.
However, there is a love-story type plot in which Stubbs seems to fall in love with Andrew Monday’s mother. Relax, she looks like she’s every second of 20...no biggie. You spend the bulk of the game tormenting Punchbowl and ultimately turning it into a Zombie Apocalypse while trying to get to Mrs. Monday. It’s not very complicated but it comes with a nice twist at the end.
The story may be simple but lets get into the game.
The meat of the game is pretty straight forward. You are “here”. You need to be “there”. Between the two lie a multitude of hapless victims to destroy. Every time you kill someone (without the aid of a vehicle or weapon) they become a zombie who is now just a simple piece of AI that does nothing more than attack living beings and eat brains. Every time they kill someone that victim becomes a zombie, too. In no time you’ll have your own horde of mindless zombie minions munching their way through Punchbowl. Doesn’t that sound Neat-o?! It gets a little repetitive after a while and “commanding” the zombies is restricted to pushing them or calling them over to you. They never gave me any real trouble and proved to come in handy in over-crowded areas. They swarmed humans and helped me make short work of them. Nice touch! This does get repetitive after a while but fans of campy horror will love this game’s fractured take on the 1950's.
The developers have granted Stubbs with a few abilities to make your zombie rampaging even more enjoyable. These abilities include Unholy Flatulence, which stuns all nearby foes making them much easier to feast upon; Gut Grenades, these are explosive organs which Stubbs pulls from the gaping hole in his side (remember the shotgun wound that killed him) and lobs at people; his severed arm, this roams around independent of his body climbing walls and walking on ceilings which allows him to possess anyone at any time; and Head Bowling, for this Stubbs removes his own head and bowls it at the competition. You can detonate the head causing even more peripheral damage as a bonus. All of these things are charged and replenished by Stubbs’ brain eating. If you need more Gut Grenades or another shot at using your arm then just munch a few brains and recharge your system.
The arm itself was a good tool which offered up many innovations in the realm of stealth and tactics but it is only necessary to use it a couple of times. They didn’t elaborate on it too much. And stealth is rather hard because everyone notices the victim has a severed zombie arm attached to his head. The head rolling and other stuff is pretty fun but the basic mechanics of the game remain the same: “Whack ‘em till they’re dizzy and then eat their brains”. This is repetitive but the game is pretty short (too short) so it works out in the end.
However, the game throws you one hilarious twist early on. You clash with the head of the police in Punchbowl and he keeps mentioning that he’s going to “dance on your grave”. He isn’t kidding. When you finally meet him you find out that he’s roughly 4' nothing and has a fetish for dancing. You now land yourself in a short, but quite pleasing, rhythm game with the four main walk buttons functioning as your input keys. You face off against the chief in 4 rounds which are fairly easy even if you’re new to the rhythm game scene. However, it’s a fun break from brain munching and they do work in a quick parody of Jack-O’s “Thriller”. I thought it was perfect with the game’s out-of-sorts, what-the-hell-is-going-on-here presentation.
Let’s head over to the audio realm now and see what Mr. Sound has for us!
The game makes great use of music. A bunch of (sadly) Emo artists and similar bands lend their talents to the soundtrack by re-recording old songs from the 50's such as “Mr. Sandman” and “Lollipop”. This is a great touch. Occasionally you find yourself in a situation with this music playing while you’re munching on brains. The voice-actors are very well done and I have no complaints about any of the audio. I’ve always been of the mind that when audio is done correctly you don’t notice it, but the first time they screw up you know it! This is a nice strong and stable point for this game. Kudos!
Now, this is where the game really shines and the reason I have taken to it so well...PRESENTATION!
This game takes place in a 1950's-ish city built to be the model for the way everything will be working in the year 2000. The game adheres to the old 1950's zombie movie styling right down to the film grain present even during game-play. The clothes and voice acting are almost satirize of their real-world counterparts. Even the instruction manual carries on this tradition. The game remains committed to this bit from the title screen clean through the credits! This is an excellent touch and adds a level of unbelievable humor to the game. I have to tip my hat to the crews responsible for this aspect of the game. It is truly the game’s strong point. Its dedication to the genre and campy presentation make this a must-have for any fan of 1950's horror.
All in all this game is a refreshing departure from the myriad FPS, MMORPG, and RTS games which dominate the PC line-up. If you can find this game at a cost of $30 or less than I advise you to get it, post-haste. The only reason I put this price cap on it (and in my opinion the only short-coming to this game) is that it is quite short.
Also, because this is a multi-platform game from its initial release, expect to have that same raped and violated save feature. However, the auto save works often enough so it isn’t as big a deal as it is with other games. All in all I loved this game.