For years zombies have received a bad rap from film and game makers who misuse them as simple fodder. Lots of zombie brains have been splattered against walls for our amusement and damnit, it's about time the undead rise from their graves (wise from their gwaves!) and give us humans what for. Eat out brains! Please!

That's the basic gist of Aspyr and developer Wideload's Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse. This delightful third person snack fest allows you, as traveling salesman turned rotting corpse, Stubbs, to take your everyday frustration out on the peaceful citizens of Punchbowl, Pennsylvania. It features plenty of gore, flatulence, and more zombies than you can shake a cattle prod at, and the addictive gameplay is wrapped within a tasty 1950s style presentation that features solid imagery and plenty of classic songs from the time period. It's a damn good videogame, but it's just that; good.

Stubbs is based on a very simple premise and concept. An ass by the name of Andrew Monday built a city of the future over your grave, you're really pissed off, and it's going to take a lot of killing to make things right, so the entire adventure revolves around you maneuvering Stubbs about Punchbowl and devouring the brains of its inhabitants. Once bitten (or scratched), your victims will become transformed into undead freaks, and together you can battle against the game's enemies. The idea is to basically amass this zombie horde and use them to wreck havoc throughout the city. You can fight alongside more than ten creatures at a time, and in addition to their services Stubbs can also reach into his intestines and toss gut grenades, unleash an unholy fart that temporarily stuns his victims, blast at them from the confines of a vehicle, and detach his hand and use it to possess the living.

The hand in particular is quite ingenious because as soon as Stubbs tosses it to the floor the game transitions to the hand's perspective. It's not invulnerable to attacks (which means you'll need to do some careful sneaking in order to nab your prey), but if you manage to lock onto a dude's cranium you can use whatever weapon they're carrying to decimate the opposition, a satisfying thing to do since some well placed gun shots can take off heads and limbs.

As for gore, the game's overflowing with it. You can tear off arms and bludgeon people with them, rip into their skulls and spew brain matter all over the place, and knock off limbs, whereupon which the newly infected will slowly crawl towards their prey. It's all very satisfying to watch, especially since the developers have made all of the characters stereotypical asses. Jocks, stupid cops, felons, and slack jawed yokels are just a few of the enemy types that make up Stubbs' buffet and torturing them is a guilty pleasure indeed.

I'm also quite fond of this game's presentation. Since it takes place in the 1950s and Punchbowl is supposed to be this futuristic city of the stars, the developers have modeled it to resemble what people back then thought life would be like now, so there are hover cars but they still resemble vehicles from that time period. Even the robots (the most amusing being the ones that pump gas) look like something from that era, so if you're into classic monster films you'll flip over Stubbs the Zombie, especially since the soundtrack features songs like Lollipop, Earth Angel, Mr. Sandman, and My Boyfriend's Back.

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