Stupid Never Dies Review: Gorgeous Punk Chaos, Thin Combat

Stupid Never Dies is the kind of debut I want to root for. GPTRACK50 is a brand-new studio led by long-time Capcom veterans, SEGA is co-publishing, and the whole thing openly refuses to be another remake or another soulslike. It launched on October 21 for PS5 and PC (Steam), it is Steam Deck Verified, and the standard edition costs €49.99, with a pricier Glorious Idiot Edition that bundles the first DLC pack. The physical release is PS5-only.

A gloriously dumb pitch

You play Davy, a zombie who finds a girl, Julia, frozen in a freezer and decides he is going to bring her back. The road to that runs through a shopping mall toilet that flushes him into other dimensions: Imperial Rome in the shadow of Vesuvius, medieval Europe, the Viking Age, Edo Japan and a gothic finale. It is absurd in the Suda51 sense - the dialogue is genuinely funny, the supporting cast sticks with you, and the pop, punk, rock and metal soundtrack is the best thing in the game. Visually it is bright, loud and confident. The first few hours are a blast.

How it actually plays

Structurally it is a roguelite with a looser leash than most. Each dimension is a stack of floors that get nastier the deeper you go, with a boss at the bottom, and you can bail out after clearing a set of floors to bank your haul. A full run to the boss is roughly a 10-15 minute affair, which I like. Combat is light and heavy attacks, chainable combos, specials picked up mid-run, and the Stupid Parry - a timed parry that turns into a dodge if you mistime it. Biting heals you, and biting an elite lets Davy steal its form: there are 11 styles in total, from zombie and werewolf to vampire, cyclops, lich and demon. Die and you lose unbanked loot, but your experience feeds permanent growth, and the hub lets you upgrade skills, gear and mods as new shops and characters unlock.

Where it cracks

There is no dedicated dodge or roll and no lock-on, and in a game this busy that hurts. Crowded rooms turn into swinging at the wrong target while something clips you from off-screen, and the parry-dodge hybrid is clever but not a substitute. After a few hours the floors start to blur, and I kept falling back on the same couple of forms because most of the others felt like sidegrades rather than new ways to play. The systems pile up faster than they deepen. One flying boss in particular is more chore than challenge.

On PS5 it behaves: a performance mode targets 60 fps at a slightly lower resolution, a fidelity mode 30 fps, and both held up as advertised.

Who it's for

If you want a Hades-style loop that is louder, sillier and more about vibes than build-crafting, this is your game. If combat depth is what keeps you in a roguelite, the novelty wears off well before the credits. At €49.99 it is a full-price ask in our region too; if the trailer hooked you, go for it, otherwise a sale is the sweet spot.

Verdict

Stupid Never Dies has more personality than most of this year's big releases combined, and I'd happily see GPTRACK50 make a sequel. But style can only carry repetitive combat so far - this is a very good first album with too many filler tracks.

Score: 7/10

Image: Sergey Galyonkin / CC BY-SA 2.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Playstation_Dualsense_controller.jpg