Unfortunately, we’ve long since moved on from the Xbox 360-style of video game. Aside from a few notable examples, like Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, there really aren’t that many games that both embrace the structure and stylings of the 360 era as well as its penchant for the wild and eccentric. It is a genuine shame, in my opinion, as many of these titles proved to be some of the best Xbox games of all time, trumping the majority of what the studio produces today. Luckily, every now and then, much like the aforementioned Space Marine 2, we’ll get something that adopts the tone and gameplay concepts of the 360 era and translates them into modern madness. Such is the case with Stupid Never Dies, an extremely bombastic and colorful RPG that may just be the dose of early 2000s action-packed game design that we need.
Stupid Never Dies Truly Embraces The 360 Aesthetic
Image courtesy of GPTRACK50
Stupid Never Dies, the debut title from developer GPTRACK50 Inc., completely embraces the wild and weird side of the 360 era with its flashy visuals, ridiculous premise, and linear game design. It would be no insult to say that Stupid Never Dies would fit perfectly into those neon-green cases alongside the likes of Suda51’s Lollipop Chainsaw or Killer Is Dead. Frankly, there’s something refreshing about its action-focused linear design, a gaming philosophy that has largely been abandoned in recent memory in favor of the bloated open-worlds that dominate the industry today.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t have open-world games, nor that Stupid Never Dies will triumph over the likes of Crimson Desert or Assassin’s Creed. It is hard to judge a game’s ultimate quality solely on a handful of trailers, so it would be disingenuous of me to claim it is better than its contemporaries even if it does, to me, look like one of the most exciting action-RPGs of 2026. Rather, regardless of how it turns out, it is simply welcoming to see a once guaranteed convention take centre stage again, if only for a moment.
I suspect that Stupid Never Dies will fall a tad to the wayside, even if it is being developed by some of the folks behind Dragon’s Dogma and Devil May Cry. Sure, the pedigree is there, and had this been released when the likes of Catherine were the norm, then perhaps it would have done well. However, games like this simply don’t perform well in the current zeitgeist; they’re unconventional and inarguably too simplistic compared to the mechanically complex RPGs of today.
There’s no sprawling world to explore in Stupid Never Dies, no photorealistic graphics that make screenshots easily shareable, no meaningful story to theorize over. It just looks like a fun, action-packed romp with a weird story, much like the recent Romeo Never Dies or even the cult classic Wanted: Dead. I am of the firm belief that we need more games like this, not less, and that, actually, a return to the lower-budget, lower-stakes game development of the Xbox 360 era that delivered us some of the most creative and wildly enjoyable games in existence is very much in order.
We Need More Games Like Stupid Never Dies
Image courtesy of GPTRACK50
The PS2 era saw video games become far more experimental than ever before. The advent of more complex 3D graphics helped the era eschew the rigid blocky look of the last-generation and ushered in a great level of freedom when it came to aesthetics and visual style. Similarly, the more powerful console allowed for complex gameplay mechanics to be implemented in ways they simply couldn’t be a few years prior. It’s how we got the likes of Okami, Magic Pengel, Metal Gear Solid 2, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
The 360 was really just an extension of that, only with even more power to offer and the ability to render realistic visuals. While we did shift to the gunmetal gray of cover shooters like Gears of War, the creative expression born out of limitations that popularized the PS2 era still carried over. We got titles like Spec Ops: The Line, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Deadly Premonition, Asura’s Wrath, Dante’s Inferno, the original Nier, alongside the aforementioned Suda51 and Atlus titles. I’d argue that were any of those games to release today, they’d likely be overlooked as oddities of a past-generation.
The problem is that everything now has to be a big-budget blockbuster release that has to hit the high 80s to warrant even discussing. It used to be that a 50 or lower was deemed a bad game, then it became 60s, and now, with the stock value of Crimson Desert’s developer Pearl Abyss dropping by 30% as a result of its 78% on Metacritic, it would seem a review score of 70 is now considered subpar. I’m not a fan of this era of gaming, where smaller, more experimental titles are shoved aside in favor of games with such extraordinarily high budgets that they can’t afford not to appeal to the broadest audience possible.
Who knows if Stupid Never Dies will end up being a great game? Chances are, it will probably be good, a game that hits the 70 or maybe even 60 range on aggregate sites like Metacritic. But that’s okay. More than, really. At the end of the day, the more games we get like this, the more titles that are born out of a desire to entertain, to deliver a modicum of fun in a brutally challenging time, the better. I hope that we see a return to the chaos and unpredictability of the 360 era, the time in gaming history when it really felt like anything was possible. Maybe Stupid Never Dies will be the start of that, who knows?
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