Bring back Stubbs the Zombie for the original Xbox! It was a comment I dropped somewhere online that was taking a survey a couple of months back. At the time, there were no rumblings of a release. In fact, at the time Stubbs had no chance at returning from the dead. Not long after the post, Stubbs did get added to a list to return within the year. I still don’t believe it was a coincidence since so many people online co-signed and liked the suggestion. Of course, I’m kdding there is no way that they listened to that request right?? But… maybe? Noooo. Not possible. But what if? Nope and moving on. The important thing is that Stubbs the Zombie In Rebel Without a Pulse is back and this time its remastered.

The game is very of its time. You can almost smell the mid 2000’s on this one. You play as Stubbs a door to door salesman who was wrongly put to death and who one day crawls himself up from his grave to exact revenge on the folks that did him wrong and the whole dang town.

The town we speak of is an altered future sci-fi town called Punchbowl. This town exists in the 50s in America, but its founder was way ahead of the curve. He built robots, flying cars and other technical wonders that made Punchbowl a city of the future… literally. It’s very much modeled after the atomic age sci-fi age stuff. Complete with automatons and the like.

When you rise from your grave, you immediately begin your devastation on the city. Stubbs does this by eating plenty of brains and beating plenty of people to death with their own severed arms. The folks he kills get up and kill. Those get up and kill and on it goes. There is a large amount of joy gathered from going around and purposefully spreading like a virus… a zombie virus. By the time you know it you have huge groups of zombies all joining you in taking down Punchbowl’s polite society.

Along the way Stubbs gathers powers that keep things interesting. For example, he can stun large group with his atomic flatulance, he can possess people by way of his dismembered hand. Or, he can toss his head like a bowling ball and blow a whole bunch of Punchbowl citizens to kingdom come.

The game is pretty much just that, Stubbs going around the city killing and turning everyone into zombies and showing you zombies spread so quickly in films.

Back when Stubbs was released in 2005, it was Wideload Games that fashioned and dropped this lovely undead nugget. The team was freshly out of Halo’s Bungie team and brought those skills and the Halo engine over to help brings Stubbs to life.

Along with the game came an awesome soundtrack that has since been whittled down. Originally, the game was packed with a soundtrack that featured Death Cab For Cutie, Ben Kweller, Cake, The Ravonettes and more to bring 50s doo-wop songs to life once again. This made for a heck of a cool soundtrack. But this version of the remaster may have had some trouble with rights and licensing those songs and the like. It features brief snippets of those songs in a dance off midway through the game, but it just isn’t the same.

There is plenty of gore as you would expect and the, fashion with which Stubb bites peoples skulls open like granny smith apples is still very satisfying and gory. Stubbs might be an all out gorefest but its got plenty of heart and 3rd grade fart joke type humor peppered throughout too making for a nice mix of a game that I’m surprised didn’t get more attention at the time. I supposed this was way before the world blew up with Walking Dead mania but, maybe that mania will make the game popular now.

This remaster is an odd one. It isn’t an all-out remaster that features the number of things you saw added to – say THQ’s Destroy All Humans remaster. Instead, the frame rate is upped to 60fps, some controller changes were added to give us things like inverted controls and functions like that. But, it isn’t a whole top to bottom “remaster” by any means. But, considering I was fixing to dust off my old Xbox and the game to play it, this is a nice option to have.

There are enough mini games and strange mechanics to keep you interested in Stubbs for the whole run of the game. Which to be honest isn’t very long compared to modern games. It’s a very linear game and can be finished nicely and concisely in a few hours.

Stubbs is very of its time. It’s as much fun as it was back then but sort of exists within a time capsule that is 100 percent pure zombie nostalgia. For people who were familiar with the game, its a welcome return to everything you loved about it at the time. For new players, who had previously not heard of the game? I’m not sure. Although, I’m mostly positive that people will fall for the charms and farts of Stubbs. He’s a good dude, who was wronged and just wants love and brains. Can’t be too horribly angry at him for that.

My ultimate hope is that Stubbs does well and puts him back into the conversation. It would be great to see Aspyr come back and give us a totally new Stubbs adventure. At the time of release back in mid 2000, I very much imagined this being a series. Stubbs the Zombie: and then the next part of the title. ˆRebel Without a Pulse felt like a first game in a series. Maybe now we can see that come full circle.

The cross pollination of 50s zombie horror with tons of gore, emo music and a zombie searching for love is going to win me over every time. Sure, it might not be a 100 percent from the floor up remaster. But, man its a charmer and Stubbs is our buddy. All that, and the game remains fun in its short time with a game that I will play through again due to missed achievements. Stubbs is a out right great time and a no brainer of a choice to revisit.

Stubbs the Zombie: In Rebel Without a Pulse is out now on Xbox Series, PS5, Switch and PC. Of course you can also play on the previous gen consoles as well.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Revenge of Shredder takes us back to side-scrolling beat em up action. Check out the trailer here.