Ah, Stubbs the Zombie, the game I so badly want to love. Practically everything about it is great at first glance, then even greater upon further inspection. For example: it's a zombie game. Great! Zombies are a plus. But get this: you are the zombie. And: you are in fact a zombie who is a reincarnated 50s-era down on his luck drifter, and you're wearing one of those great fedoras back from when all men had to wear a hat. Ok, so that's a plus or three. The game is also being designed by Alex Seropian, a designer of Halo and co-founder of Bungie, a studio for which anyone who remembers Marathon should have respect. Even better: now he's founded a new studio, Wideload Games, that is independent-for-the-foreseeable-future instead of sadly-no-longer-actually-independent-and-unable-to-make-games-for-more-than-one-franchise.

The game, whose full name is Stubbs the Zombie in "Rebel Without a Pulse", begins when a 50s vision of a City of the Future is built over the grave of deceased traveling salesman Edward Stubblefield. For some reason this causes ol' Stubbs to awake from the eternal slumber and he takes it upon himself to sow destruction among the citizens of the newly-built city of Punchbowl. He does this through various means, including pelting them with intestine grenades, assaulting them with unholy flatulence, eating their brains, and, you know, clawing them madly in the face. Stubbs can also issue vague commands to his fellow zombies--former enemies whose brains he has eaten, causing them to rise again in his service.

So, with all of these undeniably appealing properties, why did the first sentence of this preview imply that I just might not actually love Stubbs the Zombie? Well, before QuakeCon my only firsthand experience with the game was at Game Developers Conference back in March, during which I and a couple colleagues from a certain other site received a private demo from Mr. Seropian. Sadly, even those ideal conditions could not mask my disappointment with the game. Stubbs' various abilities were fun novelties at first but after a while they simply became bland, due to ultimately uninspiring level design and repetitive fights. With only limited long-range attacks it was often something of a chore to trudge over to ranged attackers. On paper everything looked great but somehow it just didn't result in a game that actually seemed fun to play.

For some reason, however, when I played it at QuakeCon it was a blast. Go figure. It was a different level, and the retro-future urban look of what I played today was more appealing than the less interesting farmhouse of the GDC demo. The pacing was a bit more frantic this time around as well. Another large factor in my enjoyment was greater use of Stubbs' autonomous arm. Essentially, he can rip off his arm and toss it onto the ground, after which it becomes controlled by the player. The arm can scuttle around, much like Thing from The Addams Family. While controlling it the game's camera is positioned directly behind the arm, giving it a very visceral close to the ground feel; there are various extra blurring filters applied as well. The arm can latch itself onto the head of one of your mortal opponents, switching the player's control to the newly-possessed person. This proxy zombie is free to wreak subversive havoc on his unsuspecting former comrades. I had more fun dealing with this remote hand business than with any other element of the game. It's great. This is also what allows Stubbs to make use of things like guns, since he himself cannot.

Basically, the game is fun. Being a zombie, creating more zombies, ordering zombies around, ripping off your own arm, ripping off other people's arms (oh yes)--my fears in that department have been allayed. However, the game was suffering from some suspicious framerate problems. While the game was running at a fairly conservative resolution (it looked rather jaggy especially on the nice high-res LCD screen), it seemed to be getting framerates consistently under 30fps. It was running on a brand-new SLI machine, too. I had to get over a slow-shutter effect before I could really start enjoying the game--which I did, so the game must be pretty fun. I didn't see anyone from Aspyr or Wideload present, so it's possible that Stubbs simply wasn't tweaked correctly.

Either way, if Wideload smooths out these odd kinks and ensures that the fairly specific gameplay doesn't get stale, they'll have a winner on their hands. In a sea of endless sequels and genre rehashes, it's always nice to see a studio bring something that's original both in content and gameplay. Stubbs the Zombie has bounced from my "Wooo" list to my "Meh" list and back again, and I think I can rely on Wideload to keep it there.