Beaten: Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel without a Pulse (One)

 There was a brief few years in 2004-2006 where I actually had an original Xbox and played a few games for it but I was mostly playing PC MMORPGs then, along with a few handhelds. I had already missed the PS2 console era pretty much, except for a seldom-played Nintendo Gamecube, so the surprise XBox gift opened up that console generation’s library a little. 

One of the titles that caught my eye was Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel without a Pulse, a third person action game where the player plays as the zombie, rather than the other way around as seen in most games that involve the undead. The hook is that your victims become your horde and the player can sort of herd them ahead into attacking police and other living entities. 

 I got pretty far in my old play through, but quit in frustration when the game had a Simon-like dance off minigame that I couldn’t get past. 

I will say, in addition, my play style was less, uh, completionist(?) than it became a few years later with the XBox 360/PS3 era. That era got me up to speed on modern campaigns and what it took to actually commit to beating a game.

In 2021, the game was re-released with improved controls and a few other bells and whistles like achievements, so I recently decided to revisit it. Like my recent play through of Alpha Protocol,  I was hungry enough for the concept that I could overlook the issues.

This was a re-release and not a remaster; a distinction I have learned in recent years, meaning the look and the feel are the same, but a few quality of life improvements were added. Fortunately, one of the improvements was to skip the dance minigame entirely, meaning the studio that remastered it was well aware of how much that part of the game sucked.

In fact, that studio also acknowledged that the tutorial level was awful, as the achievement awarded for beating it was called “That Didn’t Age Well” and was described as “Complete the painfully slow, forced tutorial “. 

None of it aged well, so a discerning gamer will surely turn away from the old graphics and janky gameplay. There are different things to do in the game and a few fun boss fights, so it really doesn’t get monotonous. 

Stubbs also has a fun revenge story and the game’s undead humor shines. I’m glad I returned to Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel without a Pulse, and I’m glad I got to skip the dance minigame and see more of it than my previous attempt to beat it. It’s unique and fun enough, and these days that’s enough for me.