Dated, shallow, but great co-op fun
Stubbs the Zombie is a tale of, well, a zombie apocalypse in the 1959-of-the-future, centered in the town of Punchbowl. One day, after having suffered some unfortunate incident while doing his traveling salesman work, Stubbs is brought back to life as a zombie. As he rampages violently through the city proper, and the neighboring region to some extent, he zombifies countless civilians, police, rednecks and whatnot, all in the pursuit of the apple of his eye, with a little revenge on the side.
The core gameplay of Stubbs the Zombie takes place in third person. At his disposal, Stubbs can kick and scratch his opponents, eat their brains for a small health boost and energy toward his unusual set of tools, which include an exploding spleen, atomic flatulence, a left hand that can possess the human brain, and a detachable head thrown like a bowling ball and set off like a spleen. You can also rip off the arms of some enemies and use it as a bludgeon, and if you possess an enemy with a gun, you can employ their firearms against the enemy.
Anytime you or your zombies kill someone physically, by scratching or eating their brains, they get up and join your legion of the dead. Numbers are important in the game because Stubbs isn't a particularly dangerous fellow by himself. His projectiles are limited to eating brains to fuel them, and so it can take a few good coup de gras to regain your handy tools, and while you can zombify most enemies, many of them will immediately resist a forward assault, leaving you to try and circle around them to eat them, or risk not getting the brains to quickly kill your foe and gain an ally.
When you have a good number of zombie fellows, they'll usually engage the nearest enemies to do the same thing as you: eat brains and make more zombies. However, these zombies are quite literally brainless, as they will tend to wander off aimlessly if not immediately attracted to an enemy. To combat this to some degree, Stubbs can whistle to his allies to get them to follow him. This mechanic, though, doesn't always work as intended, as the button is the same as the "eat person" and "shove zombie" commands, and while shoving a zombie is great when you're stuck, which happens, it's not so hot when you need zombies to help distract that next group of men toting guns.
Now, while I've played the game strictly on the next difficulty up from default, I can't vouch for the difficulty of the game on standard, but if it's anything like I'm experiencing, the weapons are weak as hell and the enemies are a bit too accurate. Possessing an enemy is great. You get a slightly faster character who has a firearm, and has a separate health value from yours, but in the time it takes to get your hand secured atop the enemy's head, a moderate group of shooters could ruin your possession, and I've found they're practically a necessity once the rednecks become a part of the equation, as they wield shotguns and rifles. Again, chalk it up to my desire for a challenge. I haven't had a whole lot of trouble playing the game, though. The first few sections were a breeze, for the most part, so the default is probably quite easy.
The visuals in the game, though, are nothing to get worked up over. They're rather bland, and with the exception of the nifty '50s-of-the-future vibe to the city and Stubbs' art direction himself, it's downright ugly. Especially the farms. The grainy filter used to disguise the mess doesn't make it much better. A nice touch, however, is that the enemies you've killed do rot as they come back to life. The one place the game shined for its time, though, is the animation. Stubbs' undead gait looks nice, as does the awkward stumbling as you change direction quickly. That was a bit of a nice surprise. The animation is also shown off a bit in the out-of-place, but still fun-as-hell dancing minigame.
The game also features a few vehicles to pilot, including a Sod-o-mobile that fires globs of dirt at your foes, a tractor with sharp farming implements attached to the front, and a tank, which I haven't experienced yet. The vehicles handle just like you'd think they would, considering the game has a pedigree of Halo behind it. You point in the direction you want to drive and push forward on the stick, with the exception of the Sod-o-mobile, which hovers.
All in all, the game is a lot of fun, with a surprising amount of strategy involved in employing your zombie cohorts correctly, and with two players, it's double the mayhem. I give 3 and a half stars for a generally fun experience only marred by poor firearms and ugly graphics. It's still worth it for 15 bucks, though.
