There are also a couple of moments in the game where there was originally music playing, but the tracks don’t play in this remaster. While it does create an eerie empty feeling, which does fit with being a zombie, it also increases the feeling of being bored when doing the same thing again. Not helping this is the lack of music while playing the game.
Take a little bit of this, plus a bit of that, and he's cured! Magic? No, it's Science! There’s also a very limited amount of voice lines from each type of enemy, so while something can start off funny, it’s just annoying the hundredth time you hear the same voice line. There are a few laughs that alleviate this, but some jokes just completely fail. Even though the game is fairly short - a playthrough is roughly 7 hours - it also manages to outstay its welcome. You just go through groups of different enemies, but all the encounters feel the same outside a couple of exceptions. Once you’ve unlocked these abilities, the combat throughout the rest of the game is unfortunately mostly the same. The special abilities are very useful, but don’t create new zombies, so using these powerful abilities also has a disadvantage. The gunplay when possessing is very clunky and basic (even though the developers came from Halo) but perfectly serviceable for the short spurts you’ll be using it for. You control your hand (like Thing from Addams Family) and can possess enemies, using them to attack or activate buttons.
Throughout the first few levels, you’ll also gain a few special abilities, such as sticky gut grenades and a detachable hand - probably the most important and more versatile of abilities in the game. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to create a large horde due to some ignoring your whistle, getting stuck on scenery as well as sections of the game that cause you to go back to having no zombies following you. You have some slight control over the zombies by whistling, although this doesn’t seem to work some of the time. After you’ve killed someone, they’ll come back as a zombie and attack other enemies. Your most common tools for doing this are a basic hit and a bite, which works on unsuspecting or stunned enemies. You don’t know why or how you are a zombie, but you want to eat brains and cause more zombies. Stubbs the Zombie isn’t like most traditional games, you are the “alpha zombie” Stubbs. Aspyr have decided on focusing on making the game available to new audiences, as they have done with other Switch releases such as Star Wars: Republic Commando and Star Wars: Jedi Knight 2.
The new Switch release updates Stubbs the Zombie with 1080p resolution, while keeping everything else as close to the original as possible.
Originally released on the first Xbox in 2005, Stubbs the Zombie was a game developed by some ex-Halo developers using the same game engine as Halo.