1up gave a glowing review to a game that will be released this week for XBox, called Stubbs the Zombie in “Rebel without a Pulse”. It uses the Halo engine and some of Stubbs’ developers also worked on Halo. It’s said to have lots of gore balanced by a good amount of humor, and it’s set against the backdrop of the idyllic American 1950s. The perspective sounds intereseting, while not entirely new (MediEvil on PS1). You control a zombie instead of the usual zombie hunter, and your arsenal consists of parts of your body that you can detach and throw at people. And it features split-screen Co-op (got that Crabby?). People are already claiming that this will be the best game of the year that no one played (like the awesome sleeper Beyond Good & Evil).

FWIW, geeks seem to have a special affinity for zombies. Sure zombies eat human brains, and, yes, they’re ugly and undead. But I’ve never understood the fascination. I’ve often felt that zombie games put their theme first and gameplay second. That can be OK if the theme is great and the gameplay doesn’t suck (ex. Black & White, Psychonauts). But zombies alone is not a sufficiently compelling theme. So I’ve avoided them with the thought that they typically relied on their theme which, to me, sucked.