The game, which was built using the Halo game engine, follows the adventures of Stubbs the Zombie. Stubbs, formally known as Edward Stubblefield, worked as traveling salesman during the Great Depression but soon found himself buried 8 feet below ground in a field after being brutally murdered. Fast forward to 1959 into the futuristic town of Punchbowl, Pennsylvania which was built by the world’s richest man, Andrew Monday, to be a utopia with hovercars and helper-robots. Crime and pollution are things of the past in Punchbowl and everything is safe, clean and convenient. Then Stubbs shows up.

The game is very easy to get into as right from the start the game runs you threw a quick and easy tutorial to teach you all the controls and abilities your new friend Stubbs has. Of course just like any zombie, you want to eat brains. So this is your goal throughout most of the game. There is a plot here, and I’ll get to that later. First though the game play deserves a mention.

Since the creators started the game with a tutorial the game is very easy to follow as you roam around Punchbowl devouring the brains of your innocent (or not so innocent) victims. Throughout the game you gain new abilities such as gut grenades or unholy flatulence and as you gain them the game takes a moment to teach you how to use them. This, in my mind, was extremely helpful so I didn’t have to struggle to figure out these new abilities while trying not to get killed (again).

Of all the abilities that Stubbs has there are two that stand out to me. One is the ability to control your zombie horde. Anytime you kill someone by eating their brains they promptly get back up and join you as a member of your zombie horde. In order to gain their attention you simply face them and whistle and they come running right to you, which is very helpful as you get farther into the game.

The second ability that I really love is the ability to remove your hand and possess anyone that is still living. This allows you to pull a sneak attack on your enemy by attacking them with whatever weapon your unfortunate victim may have in their possession. This can range from pistols all the way up to bazooka’s or lasers! You can’t get much better than that.

As for the plot, it is surprisingly good for a game where you play as a zombie. Early on in the game Stubbs falls in love with Maggie Monday, the mother of the aforementioned Andrew Monday, after seeing her face on a billboard in Punchbowl. This is the epicenter of the game’s storyline, as once you reach the final level you will understand why Stubbs has such a serious interest in Maggie.

The music in the game is outstanding, as the game creators did an excellent job recruiting bands to perform classic music from the 1950s. The list of artists includes Grammy winners The Flaming Lips, Ben Kweller and Death Cab For Cutie. The songs covered include Kweller doing an outstanding version of “Lollipop” while The Flaming Lips play along with the game in “If Only I Had a Brain.”

Along with the music the comments that come from the Punchbowl residents as you eat their brains or attack them are extremely funny at first, but they do get old by the time you reach the end of the game.

Considering the style of game play this game was designed for they did an excellent job making the interface simple and effective. You can easily tell how much health you have, how many gut grenades you have at your disposal or if you have a free hand to possess one of the locals. Controls on the X-Box were also very easy to gain a quick understanding of, so you don’t have to worry about playing with your controller trying to find the right button to eat the brains of some local jock.

In addition to all of this, if you pay close attention throughout the levels you can find small floating pink cars which will unlock bonus audio content from the creators of the game. So far I’ve only been able to locate two of these, one in the first level and one in the second level. I won’t tell the readers were they are, though, because that would be too easy.

For a game that’s the first of its kind, Stubbs the Zombie is an extremely fun game to play. The creators did an excellent job taking an idea from scratch and creating a new game genre out of it. The game is fun and addicting but the only drawback I’ve found is that once you beat the game you’ve run out of things to do. The game is not X-Box Live compatible, although it’s hard to imagine what kind of online play you could have with a game like this. You can always go back and eat the brains of the locals at any point, but there is no free roam in the game so you’d have to pick one of the levels to play through again in order to do this. Besides that, Stubbs the Zombie is an outstanding sleeper that if given the chance could very easily be an outstanding mainstream hit. Look for this one on store shelves, it is defiantly worth playing.