Thanks to several top-grossing films in recent years, the zombie epidemic has again been unleashed worldwide ' on our television and movie screens, that is. With several games in the works and some already released for consumption, that charge you with the task of battling these rejects of Hell, Wideload Games takes the opposite approach and casts the player as the titular character in this year's first and only third-dead-person action comedy, 'Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse.'

While teenagers have come to know zombies as the fast and ferocious cannibals depicted in '28 Days Later', those among us whose voices broke long before the 'Dawn of the Dead' remake hit theatres will fondly recall our zombies as slow, bumbling creatures that make up for their lack of finesse with sheer determination. Fortunately, Stubbs and fellow breathing-challenged mates fall into this second category. Terrifyingly agile undead cannibals just aren't very funny! Well, maybe if they all wore hair-nets! The year is 1959, and billionaire Andrew Monday has constructed the city of future in Punchbowl, Pennsylvania ' also the final place of (un)rest of Edward 'Stubbs' Stubblefield after he was brutally murdered some 26 years ago. As Stubbs, you are roused from your shallow grave along with fellow (un)dead citizens just in time for Punchbowl's grand opening celebrations, and on the journey to eat brains, you'll fight for vengeance, redemption and true love!

Your adventure is also littered with a lot of attempts at tongue-in-cheek humour. The combination of flesh-eating zombies, the '50s, and a futuristic city as fathomed by people from the '50s makes for very easy comedic targets. And the developer maintains good aim much of the time, but it doesn't quite measure up to the outrageous hilarity of Pandemic's Destroy All Humans. One of the problems I have with the setting of Stubbs The Zombie is the fact that Punchbowl, city of the future, is a little too, well, futuristic. It's hard to make fun of hover cars when I'm actually thinking 'gee, I want one'. But overall, the story and setting of Stubbs can be fairly entertaining. It's worthy of note that the plot will seem as flat as the readings on an EKG machine hooked up to a corpse in the beginning portions of the game, but if you perservere, things do pick up considerably and you'll find that there's more to your afterlife than just eating brains.

The fact that the game's protagonist is a zombie should tip you off to the fact that this isn't a standard third-person shooter involving gunplay and grenades. Make no mistake though, bullets will fly, they'll just mostly be flying at you. As Stubbs you'll start off as just another zombie, that is, you shuffle around slowly and beat on nearby Punchbowl citizens before ingesting their brains. Soon enough though, you'll end up with your own zombie army since those you kill rise again pretty quickly to join your ranks. Rather than having any direct control over your minions, you can only shove them out of your way or whistle for them to come to you and they'll do their best to mosey over. This is great in that you'll be able to sic your army of brain-starved zombies on your enemies - just be prepared to wait a while for them to get to you as they move about like a group of retirement home escapees. Once they get in the fray though, they become precious allies as they'll not only convert more people to your cause but also allow you to push them in front of you as shields to keep yourself from harm.

As expected, with his incredible zombie metabolism, Stubbs is able to recover his health fully if he can avoid being hit for a few seconds (remind you of a certain covenant-ass kicking space marine?). Even when zombie metabolism and undead army fail, Stubbs still has a few tricks up his sleeves. Throughout the course of the game, you will learn 4 special powers, starting with a flatulent display that will stun nearby humans and make them easier targets. Not content with just expelling gas? You can also rip out your pancreas and toss it with the L trigger, and detonate (your pancreas!) it at will. Your head can also be removed and used as a exploding bowling ball to take out a group of, err, victims.

While we are on the subject of detachable body parts, your last power involves removing your arm, whereby you assume control of the arm, which can crawl on just about any surface so it's easy for you (the arm) to descend on unsuspecting humans from above and take control of them. While controlling a human, you will be able to make them flip switches to allow the rest of Stubbs passage, or even brandish their firearms to kill other humans. All of Stubbs powers can be charged up by, you guessed it, eating brains!

With all these powers in your possession, Rebel Without a Cause really doesn't present too much of a challenge even for casual gamers, so I would recommend playing it on a tougher difficulty level, of which there are 4. And the game can get pretty tough, just not on the default level. The action can get pretty intense with your zombie army fighting a, well, real army, and your four powers can provide much amusement. However, once the novelty of throwing your pancreas around wears off (and it will, probably sooner than the developers would have liked) it's hard to not see the game as an action game where the protagonist moves like his pants are weighed down by a tonne of bricks. The game does contain several vehicular combat sequences to get you off your feet for a while, but these, while fun, present even less of a challenge than the on-foot action.

Stubbs the Zombie can be played in split-screen co-operative mode with a second player assuming another zombie with the same powers as the main character. This is a great feature that adds a lot of replayability to an otherwise fairly short game that should take maybe 6-8 hours to complete. Barring the sacrificed screen real estate, playing with a friend that isn't easily offended by the fairly crude humour can be an absolute hoot.

The visuals in Rebel Without a Pulse look appropriately horrid - that is to say, Wideload did a superb job of making the zombie characters look like they belong in a coffin (preferably nailed shut). The '50s futuristic city of Punchbowl features an impressive variety of outdoor and indoor environments with lots of amusing personalities and hidden gags for you to experience. Characters all animate convincingly also, with extra stiffness from the zombies that makes the world of Stubbs that much more convincing.

Apart from some repetitive sound bites from your human victims as you get set to bite through their skulls, the game sounds very good with the obvious standout being the groans and moans (and screams) of the zombies that will still make you grin long after the rest of the game's humour grows stale. There is also a great soundtrack here that features what I'm told are covers of old '50s songs, but even though I wasn't familiar with them at all, they compliment the visual style and the story of the game perfectly.