Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse Preview

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.

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.

Brainpower

Fortunately, you'll have a few new tricks to your undead arsenal by the time you encounter the rednecks, such as using parts of your gut as grenades, detaching your arm and using it to possess people, and even using your head as a bowling ball. The most interesting of these is undoubtedly being able to possess other characters with your arm. After leaving the rest of Stubbs' body somewhere safe, you'll assume control of the arm (which is able to jump and climb walls) and run around a blue-tinted version of the environment in search of a suitable host to pounce on. When you assume control of other characters, you'll be able to use any weapons that they're carrying. But because they have an undead arm attached to the top of their heads, you won't be able to fool anyone into thinking that you're actually them.

You can relinquish control of your arm's host and return with the limb to Stubbs at any time, or you'll automatically resume control of Stubbs when the host (or the arm) is killed. The possession of other characters is a gameplay mechanic that's handled particularly well in Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse, mostly because it's always available as an option but is never mandatory (at least in the levels that we've played through thus far). It's also worth noting that, although you'll never lose your arm permanently, the fact that you'll need to feast on brains between each use means that you can't just keep reusing your arm's special move continuously.

Another feature of Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse that you'll get to use infrequently is Stubbs' ability to commandeer vehicles. We've only encountered two vehicles that we could actually take the controls of to date--a futuristic hovering tank known as a "sod-o-mobile" armed with a cannon, and a redneck's tractor that had pitchforks and other sharp pointy things mounted on the front upon which we were able to impale enemies. The vehicles handle in much the same way as those in Halo, and if you're playing Stubbs the Zombie cooperatively with a friend, one of you will even be able to jump in the passenger seat while the other drives.

If you're playing cooperatively, though, be ready to deal with one or two disagreements pertaining to where you're supposed to go next. There's a lot of freedom to explore the game's expansive environments, but the flip side is that it's not always clear where you're supposed to go next. Small arrows are used on occasions when it might otherwise be an exercise in frustration as you try to figure out your next course of action, and in cooperative play they are used to show roughly where your partner is at all times. However, there were definitely a couple of occasions when we found ourselves wandering around as aimlessly as the non-player zombies often do. Ironically, it was sometimes the non-player zombies that steered us in the right direction as they homed in on the nearest brain.

Regardless of where our undead adventure took us, exploring the environments was a real pleasure. Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse has a very definite sense of style that, although less evident in the redneck's cornfields than in the city of Punchbowl, really captures the flavor of the '50s. The game is also complemented perfectly by a soundtrack of remixed '50s tracks that you'll almost certainly recognize, even if you have no idea who performed them. Stubbs the Zombie is also a very humorous game, so while you'll spend most of your time painting Punchbowl blood red, you can also look forward to one-liners from the living, a robotic gas pump that takes great pleasure in its work, and even a presidential-style address from Stubbs in front of an American flag (if you clear a particular area).

Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse, then, is a game that has an awful lot going for it, including originality, style, humor, great music (some of which you'll get to dance to via a simple rhythm game), and some of the tastiest brains ever to grace a console. Expect a full review of Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse as its October release date closes in.