An appropriately mindless good time
Stubbs the Zombie in: Rebel Without a Pulse is a pretty good game from the last generation that was a bad buy back in the day, but a good deal in the modern era. It consists entirely of a campaign you can play through by yourself or in two player co-op, but that's all it needs, really. I played the XBox Originals version, which is an emulated version of the original XBox game played on an XBox 360.
Story: The game begins without any setup whatsoever - a well-dressed zombie pops out of the ground in a retro-futuristic city called Punchbowl, Pennsylvania and immediately begins eating people's brains. The only way you even know the name of your character is because it's in the name of the game, it is never spoken at any point. It turns out there is a backstory, but other than touching on it briefly halfway through the campaign, the game ignores it until the second last cutscene, at which point we learn it isn't very deep anyway. It's fortunate, then, that the gameplay is so good.
Gameplay: In general, your objective is to run around eating people's brains, which turns them into mindless zombie minions, who can then themselves turn more people into zombies. Other than unarmed civilians, every enemy must be struck by melee attacks a number of times before you can feed on them, unless you can get behind them, making flanking manouevers incredibly effective in co-op mode. Levels are mostly linear paths to the exit with large numbers of armed humans in between you and the end. Occasionally a level will have a specific objective other than consuming the brains of the living, and these objectives are always clearly laid out for you and explained nicely. One specific level, however, is very unclear as to how to go about finishing. It leads up to a tank endlessly circling a four-way intersection, the other three roads of which all lead to dead ends. So my partner and I assumed we had to kill the tank. After a dozen or so failed attempts, we fell back on the old co-op exploit: he hid in a safe place far from the tank, and I would charge in, throw an organ grenade or two, die, and then respawn next to him. Rinse and repeat until the tank dies. But that wasn't the end of the level, and being able to drive the tank didn't help, either. It turned out that there was a small, unobvious door near one of the dead ends, and we were supposed to sneak past the tank to it. But it looked just like all the other scenery doors, apart from a dim red light above it. Adding insult to injury, the second after we finally noticed the door, the game threw an objective indicator on it, apparently having decided we had been stuck just long enough. Fortunately, this was the single major snag in level design, all the other levels are pretty well laid out. Stubbs has a few nifty zombie powers at his disposal; he can fart to stun any humans around him, allowing him to immediately eat their brains while simultaneously preventing them from attacking, he can throw his putrid organs around like sticky grenades, he can detach his left hand and use it to control the minds of humans (and thus use their guns against other humans) and he can sever his own head and use it like a bowling ball to knock enemies on their ass, an ability you will almost certainly never use again after trying it out once after you get it. Still, three good abilities out of four isn't bad.
Controls: I really like the controls in Rebel Without a Pulse. They're carefully designed to take advantage of every button on the XBox controller so that you never have to switch between abilities; every gruesome trick in Stubbs' arsenal is available to you at all times. Ironically, the controls are probably better on the 360 controller than on the original XBox, the incredibly useful Hand can be sent out with a press of the convieniently located right bumper, instead of the out-of-the-way black button. Melee attacks are mapped to the X button, Y is the interaction button (used most often to eat brains) and, in the style of a shooter, L throws gut grenades while R is reserved for pulling the trigger on guns when you're possessing a human.
Graphics: The graphics are pretty good for an XBox game from 2005. It uses the same game engine as Halo: Combat Evolved, but the graphics style is somewhat more stylized than that game, so it holds up slightly better, although it did inherit a few bad points from that title; lip synch is nonexistent, characters' mouths move like they were ventriloquist dummies, making closeups in cutscenes somewhat jarring. Hands are entirely unanimated, in that old, frustrating style where everyone seems to be wearing mittens. It's more noticeable in Stubbs than in Halo because characters in this game aren't constantly clutching rifles. Stubbs in particular never moves his fingers, so in cutscenes it looks more like he's pantomiming his actions, not performing them.
The Good: The singleplayer campaign begins with a fairly excellent optional tutorial that holds your hand through a starting area to make absolutely sure you know the controls. Gameplay is shockingly unique, and a lot of the time the game can be really, really funny, particularly the overacting of people being eaten and the scenes involving antagonist Andrew Monday's personal security force, who dress like a barbershop quartet for some reason. The actual act of eating people's brains never gets old, and there's a wide variety of locations for you to wreak undead havoc in. Messing around with the different firearms the humans carry by using the Hand is always a good time, especially with the more science-fictiony weapons. Co-op mode makes the game many, many times more fun than the singleplayer mode, as you and another zombie (who looks identical to Stubbs) work together to bring Punchbowl down. The soundtrack is spectacular, taking popular songs from the 50's and having them re-recorded by modern bands helps place the action in its 50's setting, while not invoking that obsolete feeling that using the original recordings would have brought out. I understand that the official soundtrack is more popular on eBay than the game itself.
The Bad: Some of the jokes aren't at all good, including an odd running gag where people call Stubbs' tie ugly. Apart from the unusal twist in the first one, boss fights are tremendously un-fun. One boss surrounds himself with a forcefield and flies around on a jetpack shooting you from above. Since your ranged attacks are extremely limited, you'll probably get this one by accident. The game gets a little repetitive after a while, and the combat stops being fun a few levels in, as the enemies need more and more melee strikes before you can satisfy your hunger for brains, meanwhile they and their friends are letting you have it with their weapons. Especially annoying is the fact that your default moving speed is incredibly slow. You speed up after continuously walking for a short time, but if you're just starting out, enemies can back up faster than you can chase them, meaning they can easily blow you away if their weapon is powerful enough. Unfortunately, the excellent tutorial from the singleplayer campaign is almost totally absent from co-op mode, which is the first mode most people will play the game in, requiring them to figure things out as they go. The game is also very short, two experienced gamers could probably put it away over the course of a single afternoon. And topping things off, when you do finish the game, the ending is amazingly unsatisfying, containing a truly awful special effect to represent something that should be breathtakingly awesome, and then immediately cutting to a cheesy "The End" screen. Since this campaign is all there is to the game, the only replay value comes from co-op mode with friends, unless you enjoy playing games again on a harder difficulty.
The Other: The vehicles are usually fun, but they feel a little superfluous. Other than the first sequence, which takes place in a very large canyon which would take quite a while to cross at Stubbs' shambling pace, and a sequence at the dam where you have to carry zombies around in a pickup truck, they never feel particularly useful. In addition, unlike the Halo vehicles they were clearly inspired by, none of the vehicles has anything for a second player to do except sit there passively in the passenger seat while the driver mans the weapons. I found myself hopping out of the car and engaging enemies on foot just to give myself something to do. There is an odd exception to this, actually: a player hand-controlling a human with a bazooka can ride in the back of an army jeep and fire at the enemy... but there is never a good opportunity to do so. The vehicles are polished enough that they're fun to use, they just feel a little bit wasted. Additionally, the game contains some subtle references to Halo: you face off against a policeman named "Chief Masters" at one point, for example, and certain weapons are designed very similarly to those used in the other series. The bazooka, despite just being a metal tube, can carry two rockets per clip, just like the double barrelled rocket launcher from Halo. Similarly, the sniper rifle carries four rounds to a clip. As awesome as the soundtrack is, it's not utilized much, you can mostly hear it when Stubbs is inside a mall or in the vicinity of a jukebox, which isn't often. Somewhat generic action music plays while you engage in combat, but while it's servicable, it pales in comparison to the soundtrack they must have worked so hard to create.
Conclusion: Stubbs the Zombie in: Rebel Without a Pulse is a very unique game, letting you play as the bad guy for once. The gameplay is fun and unique, if somewhat repetitive, but the short length of the game actually keeps it from getting too stale. The controls are rock-solid, the soundtrack is stellar, and co-op mode is an absolute blast. The graphics are pretty good from a game from the last generation, and while the storyline is incredibly weak, it's not really to the detriment of the overall game. If I was writing this review in 2005, I would have said that it was a terrible bargain for $60 off the shelf, but since it's now available on XBox Originals for 1200 Microsoft Points (about $20 Canadian, $15 US) I'd say if it appeals to you, you should definitely check it out, especially if you've got a friend to play it with.
Story: The game begins without any setup whatsoever - a well-dressed zombie pops out of the ground in a retro-futuristic city called Punchbowl, Pennsylvania and immediately begins eating people's brains. The only way you even know the name of your character is because it's in the name of the game, it is never spoken at any point. It turns out there is a backstory, but other than touching on it briefly halfway through the campaign, the game ignores it until the second last cutscene, at which point we learn it isn't very deep anyway. It's fortunate, then, that the gameplay is so good.
Gameplay: In general, your objective is to run around eating people's brains, which turns them into mindless zombie minions, who can then themselves turn more people into zombies. Other than unarmed civilians, every enemy must be struck by melee attacks a number of times before you can feed on them, unless you can get behind them, making flanking manouevers incredibly effective in co-op mode. Levels are mostly linear paths to the exit with large numbers of armed humans in between you and the end. Occasionally a level will have a specific objective other than consuming the brains of the living, and these objectives are always clearly laid out for you and explained nicely. One specific level, however, is very unclear as to how to go about finishing. It leads up to a tank endlessly circling a four-way intersection, the other three roads of which all lead to dead ends. So my partner and I assumed we had to kill the tank. After a dozen or so failed attempts, we fell back on the old co-op exploit: he hid in a safe place far from the tank, and I would charge in, throw an organ grenade or two, die, and then respawn next to him. Rinse and repeat until the tank dies. But that wasn't the end of the level, and being able to drive the tank didn't help, either. It turned out that there was a small, unobvious door near one of the dead ends, and we were supposed to sneak past the tank to it. But it looked just like all the other scenery doors, apart from a dim red light above it. Adding insult to injury, the second after we finally noticed the door, the game threw an objective indicator on it, apparently having decided we had been stuck just long enough. Fortunately, this was the single major snag in level design, all the other levels are pretty well laid out. Stubbs has a few nifty zombie powers at his disposal; he can fart to stun any humans around him, allowing him to immediately eat their brains while simultaneously preventing them from attacking, he can throw his putrid organs around like sticky grenades, he can detach his left hand and use it to control the minds of humans (and thus use their guns against other humans) and he can sever his own head and use it like a bowling ball to knock enemies on their ass, an ability you will almost certainly never use again after trying it out once after you get it. Still, three good abilities out of four isn't bad.
Controls: I really like the controls in Rebel Without a Pulse. They're carefully designed to take advantage of every button on the XBox controller so that you never have to switch between abilities; every gruesome trick in Stubbs' arsenal is available to you at all times. Ironically, the controls are probably better on the 360 controller than on the original XBox, the incredibly useful Hand can be sent out with a press of the convieniently located right bumper, instead of the out-of-the-way black button. Melee attacks are mapped to the X button, Y is the interaction button (used most often to eat brains) and, in the style of a shooter, L throws gut grenades while R is reserved for pulling the trigger on guns when you're possessing a human.
Graphics: The graphics are pretty good for an XBox game from 2005. It uses the same game engine as Halo: Combat Evolved, but the graphics style is somewhat more stylized than that game, so it holds up slightly better, although it did inherit a few bad points from that title; lip synch is nonexistent, characters' mouths move like they were ventriloquist dummies, making closeups in cutscenes somewhat jarring. Hands are entirely unanimated, in that old, frustrating style where everyone seems to be wearing mittens. It's more noticeable in Stubbs than in Halo because characters in this game aren't constantly clutching rifles. Stubbs in particular never moves his fingers, so in cutscenes it looks more like he's pantomiming his actions, not performing them.
The Good: The singleplayer campaign begins with a fairly excellent optional tutorial that holds your hand through a starting area to make absolutely sure you know the controls. Gameplay is shockingly unique, and a lot of the time the game can be really, really funny, particularly the overacting of people being eaten and the scenes involving antagonist Andrew Monday's personal security force, who dress like a barbershop quartet for some reason. The actual act of eating people's brains never gets old, and there's a wide variety of locations for you to wreak undead havoc in. Messing around with the different firearms the humans carry by using the Hand is always a good time, especially with the more science-fictiony weapons. Co-op mode makes the game many, many times more fun than the singleplayer mode, as you and another zombie (who looks identical to Stubbs) work together to bring Punchbowl down. The soundtrack is spectacular, taking popular songs from the 50's and having them re-recorded by modern bands helps place the action in its 50's setting, while not invoking that obsolete feeling that using the original recordings would have brought out. I understand that the official soundtrack is more popular on eBay than the game itself.
The Bad: Some of the jokes aren't at all good, including an odd running gag where people call Stubbs' tie ugly. Apart from the unusal twist in the first one, boss fights are tremendously un-fun. One boss surrounds himself with a forcefield and flies around on a jetpack shooting you from above. Since your ranged attacks are extremely limited, you'll probably get this one by accident. The game gets a little repetitive after a while, and the combat stops being fun a few levels in, as the enemies need more and more melee strikes before you can satisfy your hunger for brains, meanwhile they and their friends are letting you have it with their weapons. Especially annoying is the fact that your default moving speed is incredibly slow. You speed up after continuously walking for a short time, but if you're just starting out, enemies can back up faster than you can chase them, meaning they can easily blow you away if their weapon is powerful enough. Unfortunately, the excellent tutorial from the singleplayer campaign is almost totally absent from co-op mode, which is the first mode most people will play the game in, requiring them to figure things out as they go. The game is also very short, two experienced gamers could probably put it away over the course of a single afternoon. And topping things off, when you do finish the game, the ending is amazingly unsatisfying, containing a truly awful special effect to represent something that should be breathtakingly awesome, and then immediately cutting to a cheesy "The End" screen. Since this campaign is all there is to the game, the only replay value comes from co-op mode with friends, unless you enjoy playing games again on a harder difficulty.
The Other: The vehicles are usually fun, but they feel a little superfluous. Other than the first sequence, which takes place in a very large canyon which would take quite a while to cross at Stubbs' shambling pace, and a sequence at the dam where you have to carry zombies around in a pickup truck, they never feel particularly useful. In addition, unlike the Halo vehicles they were clearly inspired by, none of the vehicles has anything for a second player to do except sit there passively in the passenger seat while the driver mans the weapons. I found myself hopping out of the car and engaging enemies on foot just to give myself something to do. There is an odd exception to this, actually: a player hand-controlling a human with a bazooka can ride in the back of an army jeep and fire at the enemy... but there is never a good opportunity to do so. The vehicles are polished enough that they're fun to use, they just feel a little bit wasted. Additionally, the game contains some subtle references to Halo: you face off against a policeman named "Chief Masters" at one point, for example, and certain weapons are designed very similarly to those used in the other series. The bazooka, despite just being a metal tube, can carry two rockets per clip, just like the double barrelled rocket launcher from Halo. Similarly, the sniper rifle carries four rounds to a clip. As awesome as the soundtrack is, it's not utilized much, you can mostly hear it when Stubbs is inside a mall or in the vicinity of a jukebox, which isn't often. Somewhat generic action music plays while you engage in combat, but while it's servicable, it pales in comparison to the soundtrack they must have worked so hard to create.
Conclusion: Stubbs the Zombie in: Rebel Without a Pulse is a very unique game, letting you play as the bad guy for once. The gameplay is fun and unique, if somewhat repetitive, but the short length of the game actually keeps it from getting too stale. The controls are rock-solid, the soundtrack is stellar, and co-op mode is an absolute blast. The graphics are pretty good from a game from the last generation, and while the storyline is incredibly weak, it's not really to the detriment of the overall game. If I was writing this review in 2005, I would have said that it was a terrible bargain for $60 off the shelf, but since it's now available on XBox Originals for 1200 Microsoft Points (about $20 Canadian, $15 US) I'd say if it appeals to you, you should definitely check it out, especially if you've got a friend to play it with.
