Stupid Never Dies: Can a Zombie Save the World? - Review

Encountering Stupid Never Dies inevitably leads us to imagine one of those immensely creative – and exquisitely "bonkers" – Japanese video games from the seventh generation of consoles (PS3/Xbox 360) like Lollipop Chainsaw or Shadows of the Damned. A purely aesthetic, first-impression resemblance that certainly doesn't fully identify the first video game created by the studio founded by Hiroyuki Kobayashi, a renowned producer of iconic series such as Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Dragon's Dogma, and many others.

This is the first authentic calling card from GPTRACK50, a development team that has worked with growing enthusiasm on Stupid Never Dies, a frantic title that puts us in the shoes of a rather eccentric zombie with a more than noble goal for an undead: to bring back the girl he loves and perhaps even the world. The experience crafted wisely blends the action RPG genre with roguelite mechanics that, despite all the narrative and gameplay twists, cannot escape the Achilles' heel that plagues the genre: repetitiveness!

However, Stupid Never Dies is a title that is enjoyable to play, putting you through level after level where you can make short work of monstrous villains in a small amount of time. The developers' goal was to create a satisfying experience in quick, interconnected sessions, while also giving the player all the potential of a classic RPG. So, take your time, and let's send Davy down the toilet drain: don't worry, you read that right, it's all perfectly normal for entering the labyrinthine dungeon. 

Is a Zombie's "Stupidity" Limitless? 

There was a time when humanity coexisted with monsters, and, in the end, they weren't much of a threat. In fact, these horrible creatures (perhaps to some) were considered an unusual spectacle and easy to exterminate like cockroaches or, at best, were displayed like caged animals. But one day everything changed: the world everyone knew was swept away by the KOM (King of Monsters), not before he declared war on humanity (and perhaps he wasn't entirely wrong). Imagine that in less than a month, 98% of humans were eliminated, and monsters disappeared from the surface world.

However, apart from those few humans, some didn't leave and continued to wander the Earth: the beloved/hated zombies, like Davy, our protagonist. This "monster," however, is not like the others: in the war, he decided not to be used as cannon fodder against humans and fled the battlefield, taking refuge in a shopping mall. And it was in a freezer cell that he met a frozen maiden with whom he fell madly in love and whose name he didn't even know.

Days became repetitive until, out of hunger, Davy ate a strange colorful egg and acquired a mysterious power: a low-level zombie was now the only one who could defeat the KOM and restore humanity. But who cares, after all: the zombie's only goal is to "unfreeze" his beloved in the name of love, his sole selfish desire. 

An interesting and quite stimulating narrative premise for Stupid Never Dies, despite the simplicity of how the main events are told. And to set them up, the development team divided the game into two sections: the narrative one where you discover anecdotes of our journey, and the other where you have to dive into the dungeon from a main hub, which is the shopping mall. This "stratagem" allows the player to maintain focus on the events that will serve as a watershed between one combat and the next.

Action RPG or Roguelite?

Answering this question is simple: Stupid Never Dies is an authentic 3D action RPG with strong roguelite elements. What does this mean? Well, every exploration in the dungeon will earn us EXP (experience) from defeated enemies that we can use to develop ourselves, but at the same time, we will lose found items, OT parts (mods for arms, legs, and head), and OT energy (the in-game currency used to purchase cards, i.e., temporary updates).

Once we enter the portal, which is the access point to dive from the human level into another (via the toilet flush), we will be ready to face increasingly dangerous enemies based on the depth of the underworld. Each level consists of one or more floors, not forgetting the landing areas where you can acquire temporary and limited advantages (such as restoring energy and increasing combat strength). 

The time available to complete a dungeon is extremely limited, and when it runs out, Davy will find himself helpless and vulnerable: this means that game over will fall upon our heads in a very short time. The goal, therefore, remains to power up our hero as efficiently as possible, also carefully choosing the Receipt in order to learn one of the three zombie abilities offered. And it is precisely in this aspect that Stupid Never Dies most closely intersects the strategy of the roguelite genre: choosing unappealing upgrades or focusing only on increasing combat ability could lead to an easy game over, probably generated by an easy-to-break guard.

The fact remains that each trip into the dungeon will last approximately 10 minutes, perhaps a little more as you advance through the main events of the game. Each floor thus leads us to the next, which can be the boss room, the landing area, or simply an area full of villains to defeat. Another aspect to consider is choosing the most suitable path once you leave the landing area: here we will have to be good at considering our equipment, the skill level we have reached, active transformations (we'll get to that soon), and the rewards we can obtain by skipping too many floors.

However, biting off more than you can chew could be a double-edged sword: clashing with a boss a few levels higher than ours is never wise, so choosing carefully is the characteristic that makes Stupid Never Dies a more strategic title than one might think. 

I'm Diving Headfirst!

The goal of the GPTRACK50 team seems to be (at least on the surface) simpler than expected: to create a "stupid" protagonist (and who better than a zombie?) who can attack, then attack again, and finally continue to attack even immediately after being hit. And from this point of view, we must say that Stupid Never Dies hits the mark: we can indeed perform quick attacks that are easily chainable with special ones, which will make enemies stagger or cause undesirable effects.

In addition to hitting like blacksmiths (in the dungeon, Davy is decidedly faster), we can bite the core of an elite enemy and use its style: in other words, we transform into a completely new monster to exploit different actions and abilities. Each style obviously has a usage limit, and as we descend through the various floors, this limit will decrease: the more times we acquire this power, the more we will make it grow over time, simultaneously improving the bonus characteristics. And the choice is quite wide and randomized, meaning that each run inside the dungeon will always be different, and it will also take a good dose of luck to get the transformations we know how to use best. Werewolf, Harpy, Cyclops, or Snow Fairy are just some of Davy's forms, but we won't reveal anything else to avoid spoiling your overall experience.

Stupid Never Dies relies heavily on this feature and, in doing so, offers the player various possibilities to defeat the various monsters underground. The gameplay, in this sense, is quite varied, even if it won't change much in its general form: however, it's fun to become a Lich and reanimate killed enemies as an army of skeletons. 

It must be acknowledged that completing a dungeon can be quite fun, but it's also true that in the long run, this formula starts to feel the weight of repetitiveness. Despite immense effort to streamline it, with various upgrades to unlock and others to find in the dungeon, maximizing Davy to make him face increasingly challenging battles forces us to immerse ourselves more than necessary in that toilet, and some might even experience a certain fatigue from this routine.

The combat system is satisfying, although the lack of a lock-on for opponents caused us some problems in certain fights. The developers have also implemented a button that positions the camera behind the shoulders and automatic targeting, but we believe it's not enough: the feeling of not being able to hit some villains (especially those positioned higher up) was alive in every descent into the monstrous abyss.

A Shopping Mall Full of Opportunities

Between one immersion and another, we can dedicate time to organizing, developing, or incorporating new implants into our decaying zombie. Here too, the choice allows us to exploit new abilities and automatic stat upgrades: tracking down implants within the dungeon will become fundamental for Davy's proper evolution. The shopping mall will also delight us with new "attractions," including the Bessie Burger where we can buy ability cards, Doc's lab to examine the abominations database, or Davy's tablet to discover the various backstories of our beloved's life, from social media posts to secret pages of her diary.

In short, Stupid Never Dies was designed with care, all animated by a style that recalls graffiti and Doodle Art, a creative art composed of scribbles and geometric patterns. And this visual component marries magnificently with Davy's story, making us imagine the world seen through the eyes of a zombie. In addition to ingenious character design, Stupid Never Dies excels in punk music, which blends brilliantly with its entire artistic direction.