As a fan of arcade racing games as well as crushing zombies, the idea behind Zombie Derby has some innate appeal. Your goal is to essentially tackle a traditional hill climbing game, but then deal with zombies in your way as well, whether squishing, shooting, or smashing them in a variety of ways. 

You’ll start out each stage with your vanilla vehicle, trying to get as far as you can, and then go back to the garage after each run with some loot to try to upgrade your ride. While obviously you’ll need power and fuel to maximize your distance, you’ll pretty well need to upgrade every component in order to reach the end of each stage. Even fully decked out you’ll need to feather your gas, try to either shoot or avoid fuel barrels that will otherwise make you lose your momentum, and then be sure to conserve some nitrous boosts for late ravines you may need to jump over. Once you reach the end of the stage you’ll unlock the next where you’ll essentially start over with a new ride and new challenges.

The problem is that there are loads of games on mobile that play precisely the same way, follow the same progression, and are similarly short on satisfaction given the time it takes to make progress before having it all ripped away from you over and over again. Yes, there can be a certain thrill when you upgrade later vehicles whose equipment at least feels like it’s more lethal and fun, but those are ultimately cosmetic differences more than game-changers. Maybe if you haven’t burned out on this sort of game already there’ll be more appeal, but the move to Switch has really only managed to allow you to use dedicated physical controls, not any other clear meaningful improvement.