Stupid Never Dies review: Capcom veterans resurrect the PS3 era with a quirky, off-beat action game

You don’t get games like Stupid Never Dies these days.

Perhaps it’s a reflection of the hegemony of big-budget game development: when something comes out that goes against the grain, I’m instantly reminded of 15 years ago. Stupid Never Dies feels like a game I’ll describe to someone in a decade, without being able to remember the name. An awkward cult classic in waiting. A PS3 game that never was. A pub quiz answer.

Stupid Never Dies is a roguelike action game that sees you take on the role of Davy, a zombie who’s sentenced to roam his local mall eternally. That is until a mad scientist recruits you to go down a magical toilet, battle a boatload of demons, and reverse the world-ending calamity that has been set in motion. All the while, you’re trying to defrost your girlfriend, who you periodically visit in the freezer.

It’s a genuinely quirky game. The gameplay loop in Stupid Never Dies sees you descend the layers of this underground labyrinth, taking down enemies as you go. These runs are timed, and if you run out of time, you’re sent back to the beginning.

Each run will have an objective, be that beating a boss or recovering a certain item. At these story points, you’re also sent back to the beginning. Runs aren’t very long, especially when later runs let you skip multiple layers at a time, which aids in keeping things fresh.

The combat is pretty generic, but Stupid Never Dies hits you with so many options, so constantly, that not only do you not get timed to get bored of Davy’s default move set, it’s actually pretty difficult to lock into a build you like. Davy can consume elite enemies and then turn into those enemies.

Defeat a werewolf as Davy, and then for the next three layers, you can use the werewolf powers. There is a surprisingly high number of abilities that Davy can take on, with new ones being introduced on the run up to the final boss.

Davy has a “Stupid Parry,” which, considering how frustratingly infrequently it actually works, is very aptly named. It feels like a parry for the sake of having one. By the time I was on one of the game’s final runs, I was using abilities that were so strong, parrying only slowed me down. You can also bite generic enemies to regain health, but this really only factors into the start of the game; towards the end, you’re so powerful that you’re essentially in a 100-meter dash to the finish line.

Stupid Never Dies is just throwing stuff at you constantly. You’re leveling up so frequently that you’ll eventually leave the first layer at level 30. You’ll get so many skill stickers (temporary stat increases that appear every few levels) that the top corner of your screen will become totally unusable.

Every time you get back to the mall, you’ll have 10 people to talk to, each of whom will give you a new item to upgrade your stats a tiny amount. In fact, the upgrades are so fractional that I genuinely wonder if most players would notice a difference were they to ignore this element of the game completely. It’s another screen where you watch a number go up. Stupid Never Dies gives out these dopamine hits like Smints.

“By the time I was on one of the game’s final runs, I was using abilities that were so strong, parrying only slowed me down.”

It’s interesting to see a game so desperate to move you forward at all times. Perhaps that’s an acknowledgment from the developers that if things ever slowed down from the frankly frightening pace, the facade would wear off, but it’s effective.

Even when you head back to your home base of the mall, new shops are constantly being opened, which themselves have pages and pages of objectives to complete and rewards to hand out. At times it feels like something I’d get from the G-Force on Union Street and translate with a shoddily made GameFAQ. It’s a palate cleanser from the modern triple-A malaise. It’s a mouthful of Toxic Waste Hazardously Sour Candy for when you’re bored with middling steak.

My main issue with Stupid Never Dies is that it never breaks beyond that “good” threshold. Just about every element of it is totally fine, bar the pants-on-head ridiculous story, but there’s nothing that truly grabs me. There’s no iconic character that I foresee people cosplaying for years to come. The music is fine, but nothing that’s become an earworm during my time with it. The game’s aesthetic is fun to look at, but every frame becomes a treasure hunt of obvious influences.

The video game industry needs the Stupid Never Dies to survive. The modern greats of the game all have games like Stupid Never Dies in their back catalog. Back when a team could make something like this for a reasonable budget, it would cut their teeth before going on to deliver a true classic. I don’t think Stupid Never Dies will become a beloved franchise, but there’s promise in the bones of this game.

GPTRACK50, the studio behind the game, is made up of Capcom veterans and newcomers alike. This is exactly the type of game that Capcom would have made in the early 360 days. Games that try something, even if they don’t nail every element of it, can’t confine a developer to the scrap heap. That’s how we end up with extraction shooter number 400. Is Stupid Never Dies amazing? No. Do I think you should try Stupid Never Dies? Sure.

Stupid Never Dies is a quirky, off-beat action game from another era. While it doesn’t excel in any one element, what is here means that when GPTRACK50 announces its next game, I’ll pay attention. The narrative elements are wafer-thin, but it’s a game that doesn’t waste your time. Get back down the toilet and fight monsters. Come back to the mall and spam upgrades. Repeat. If this game was released in 2009, you’d now see it in lists of “Top 10 PS3 cult classic you didn’t play.”