Horror movies have been out since movies have been produced, and along with those, the zombie has been a cult favorite. Recently there have been quite a few Zombie movies created, from Dawn of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Undead, 28 Days Later, to Resident Evil. This game is a throwback to the classics, much like in Night of the Living Dead. My personal favorite genre of movies has always been zombie movies, and I look forward to seeing more of them produced.

When I heard about this game, I was quite curious about it. After all I have -- sort of -- always wished for a zombie apocalypse, and I have even planned out what to do in case there were one. The overall idea of playing as a zombie was quite new, other than the short stint in Zombies Ate My Neighbours. In that game you were a zombie only for around a minute, before you reverted.

I was even more intrigued to hear this game was created using the Halo engine, so I was curious how well that would work. After all, the game Halo is considered one of the best games created, proven from their record sales for Halo 2, but that was first person action, not third person. Now in this game you would actively go out and hunt humans for your food, which was a fantastic concept. We play the role of the zombie Stubbs, a true rebel without a pulse, whom returns from the grave to seek revenge on those that put him in his sad sorry state of existence.

Stubbs has a few other abilities that most zombies do not have. He has the ability to exert unholy flatulence, and this ability seems to flat-line most of the enemies. This will cause the humans around you, even if they are in a vehicle like a Pershing Tank, to be susceptible to your attacks. They will then stand dazed, and ready for you to put your moves on. This will turn them into the unholy dead, which would be one of the best parts of the game.

Another ability that Stubbs has is the gut grenade. He will pull his organs out and throw them at his enemies. These organs can also stick to certain objects, so they are fully taking advantage of the Halo grenade engine here. Once these explode, you will see bodies flying, even if they are part of your own horde. Doing this to people can even blow off limbs, and cause those whom you have destroyed, to also return from the dead.

You are also able to rip off your hand and throw it towards your enemy. You will then have control of this hand, so you can crawl where you want to go. What is pretty neat is the hand sticks to any surface, so you can scale up to a ceiling, and get the drop on a human. When you do this you possess them, which also allows you to take control of any weapons they may have. Think of the fun you can have shooting a rocket launcher at a group of humans that are ready to mow you down like the zombie dog you are. Sadly the enemies you kill with a human will not return from the grave to fight for you, which can impede your process in the game.

Lastly there is the sputum head, where you will rip off your own head, and throw it at your enemies. When you do this, you get control of the head as it rolls around on the ground. Any enemy you run into will be infected with your zombie plague, and become one of your minions. Since it is a human head, it can be fairly difficult to control, but you can get used to it. You only have an allotted time before your head explodes, with considerably more force than a gut grenade provides, which you can even activate early if need be. Now each of these abilities can be rekindled only by eating brains.

When you discover people on the streets, there are a few ways you can deal with them. Depending on who they are you can destroy them by flailing your limbs at them till they die, rip off some of their arms, then use it as a weapon, or bite into their skull and digest their delicious brain. Once they die it will only take a few seconds for them to return. From most of the movies I have watched, it generally takes a few minutes, so being true to the movies verses game-play, was a love/hate relationship.

Now -- obviously -- when you kill something as a zombie, as previously said, they come back from the dead. The more people you kill, the bigger the horde you control. Control is actually a relative term as the zombies have a huge problem listening to you. Mainly the zombies will run around, and try and devour people around them. There was also a whistle command to call your zombies close to you, but I found that it did not activate as often as I would have liked, and even when it did work it had less than stellar results. As these are actual zombies, I feel that they should not be able to be controlled at all, or completely controlled by their zombie king, but not this erratic mix. Also when you are close to a zombie and you want them to either get out of the way, or run towards a certain directions, you could give them a friendly shove to get them on their way. You also have the ability to just destroy them at your own hand.

What I do not like about this game is that zombies are fairly weak. Just several shots with a gun are enough to put them on ice for good, while the standard headshot is not in play. This was something that irritated me, as that was the standard I was used to. While I know I could be instantly killed by a headshot because of this, I think it would add to that realism of this unrealistic game. A nice touch though was how slow you move as a zombie. You will have considerable difficulty trying to catch up to people running away from you, and this can be attributed to your rotting flesh an innards spilling out. After a continuous moment of running in a specific direction you enter into a zombie sprint that allows you to affectively chase after your next meal.