I played a little of Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse in in the mid-2000s, sometime after I had gotten my hands on an old Xbox and was finally able explore the console’s back catalog. Stubbs the Zombie was nothing to write home about, but was still a well-made and competent open-world action game.
Much in line with the credo of zombies, Stubbs is back from the dead and he’s ready to shamble on. He’ll be appearing in the re-release of Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse next month, more than 15 years after the game’s original launch on Xbox. The game will, of course, get the general remaster treatment, but this is no remake — so gird your expectations. That being said, it actually looks pretty good.
To be honest, the game was never anything more than a skin-swap of the action adventurism you’d find in similar titles from the same time period, most notably Destroy all Humans (with the obvious main difference being subject matter and specific methods of destruction/progression). But what was notable about Stubbs — and indeed his splash-page claim to fame — was that every NPC you’d bite and infect in the 1950s-themed sandbox levels would die and shortly thereafter return as undead versions of themselves. I found that to be pretty groundbreaking at the time — and even today, it’s a mechanic that not enough subsequent zombie games have attempted to duplicate.
Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse will launch March 16, 2021, for PS4 (with backward compatibility for the PS5) and Xbox One (with backward compatibility for the Series X/S). It will also be coming to Steam and Nintendo Switch. Depending on the cost, this could be a nice little gem that I think deserves chance at a second life. Or a second un-death.
You can watch the recent Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse announcement trailer below.
