Retro Review: Stubbs the Zombie

Grade: C+
Time Spent Playing: 5 hours

The most enjoyable part of Stubbs is when you build up a platoon of zombie recruits and, like an undead papa, watch them stumble out and destroy humanity without your direct guidance. Unfortunately, these moments are few and far between. I can imagine the dilemma for the designers: you don't want a passive experience to be the most enjoyable part of a game. So, they make the player take a more active, action game approach to getting past many of the levels; which doesn't work so well with a cumbersome zombie fighting speedier humans who can backpedal as quickly as you can lurch toward them. As to your horde: it rarely grows larger than six or seven zombies and the humans, whose melee attacks are more powerful than gun shots, can generally wipe them out with little trouble; especially in the middle and later levels when they start wielding shotguns and automatic rifles. In the very last levels you pretty much have to do everything yourself, which is where my dissatisfaction really took hold.

Stubbs has an absolute wealth of potential, so I wonder if it was due to a lack of time and resources instead of poor decision making that led to its mediocrity. It certainly feels like an unfinished product. The levels are large but empty. There's little to interact with. The objects that are there are cemented in place. I distinctly remember running into a park bench with a jeep and getting nothing but a dull thud as my jeep came to an abrupt stop with neither the jeep or the bench look the worse for wear. There's rarely many citizens running about, which is odd considering the PS2 grade visuals. Maybe all of the Xbox's processing power was taken up putting on that annoying, old timey screen filter.

Stubbs does succeed in the charm and writing departments. While poking fun at the 1950s is trite at this point, the game does succeed in making you laugh on purpose. One of my favorite jokes was the gas station robot that refuels cars by literally having sex with them. Stubbs also has the distinction of having the only rhythm mini-game that I recall enjoying; a dance off against a midget police chief to covers of old songs performed by new indie and indie-oid* bands.

Speaking of the music, the first thing I did upon firing up the game was find the soundtrack. It's really good but, continuing in the line of perplexing things about this game, pretty much only shows up on the title screen. Beyond that is the dance contest and then one other time, in a diner, one of the songs plays from a jukebox. All told, you hear less than half of the soundtrack, including some of the very best executed covers on it. I'll post a review of the sound track later.

There are other, small things that Stubbs does right. For one, there are a number of different brain eating animations, adding variety to the same basic task. Ripping off a guy's arm and beating him with it is pretty fun as well

I really wish that Stubbs had lived up to its monstrous potential. Perhaps after Wideload finishes up Hail to the Chimp, they'll take another look at Stubbs. Give it elements of pikmin or lemmings, don't treat Stubbs like an action hero, add more interaction with the world, put dozens of characters on screen, make use of a great soundtrack you undoubtedly spent loads of money on, retain the humor; I think you have a triple A title.

*Indie-oid: a word I just made up to describe indie-esque bands that are actually on major labels. Like to Built to Spill, who, unfortunately, aren't on the Stubbs soundtrack.