Wideload

Aspyr
PC, Xbox, Mac
www.stubbsthezombie.com

With all of these zombie titles we've had over the years, the undead have been getting a raw deal. They are, after all, just hungry. If you were starving while wandering in a world full of walking McMeals, you'd also sink your teeth in a few of them. Not having much of a brain also helps negate the precarious line of morality that comes with eating a human's melon. So how about it: would you like to be a zombie? Well you can, playing as Stubbs.

The company Wideload is comprised of a bunch of Bungie people (including Halo's creator). They are employing the Halo engine - whether this is good news remains to be seen - in creating the first-ever game in which you play as the zombie.

Edward Stubblefield was killed in 1933 and buried in a field. In 1959, someone builds a city on top of that field and Stubbs awakens, hungry for brains and feeling a need to stretch his legs.

Stubbs, being a zombie, is a tough guy. He's also got a nasty bite, able to render any mortal into a lumbering fly-magnet. Employing these and a few other abilities, our hero will set out to take over Punchbowl City, the futuristic place built over and around his field. The humor is truly macabre as Stubbs sets out for municipal domination: weapons include a gut grenade and toxic zombie sputum, while one of your items is a severed head (for those tight spaces).

Perhaps another reason to give this one a shot is to see what Wideload can come up with. These guys did, in a manner of speaking, give us classics like Oni, Marathon and Myth (and that other game), so their prowess will hopefully show that they can extend their ideas beyond Master Chief. Well, a tongue-in-cheek zombie game in which you have to start the apocalypse revolution is quite unlike anything out there at the moment, so let's give them the benefit of the doubt.