Game Review: Zombie Derby (Xbox Series X)

From developer/publisher Brinemedia, anyone who plays just a minute of Zombie Derby will be completely unsurprised to learn that this is a game that was originally released on mobile. It looks and feels like a mobile game, given the most basic of tune-ups to make it passable on home consoles.

Brinemedia describes the game as the following:

Get into the driver’s seat and put the pedal to the metal! Smash your way through hordes of zombies and countless obstacles in a rip-roaring racing arcade.

Now most of that is factual. You do get in the driver’s seat, and you do put the pedal to the metal, eventually, after upgrading your vehicle. However, it’s the next sentence where things start to become a little less factual.

Let’s start with the smashing of hordes of zombies and countless obstacles. Using the words ‘horde’ and ‘countless’ here is stretching it a bit. There are zombies, they do sometimes clump together, but hordes? Brinemedia must class three to four zombies in a row as a horde then. Likewise, the obstacles, that are mostly made up of crates and explosive barrels, aren’t quite as countless as suggested.

However, the most egregious choice of word in the that sentence is ‘smashing’ as it suggests you’re going to be ploughing through bodies ala Dead Rising when in fact, the zombies in particular, might as well not be there, such is the lack of impact that comes from hitting them. The same goes for the crates, and it’s only the barrels that really cause any actual kind of impediment. Although those become easy to deal with once you have fitted a machine gun to your car and upgraded the ammo reserves to max.

You’ll have to max out all parts of a car to have any chance of getting to the end of a level, but there’s no hardship in doing this as the game gives you plenty of money for each unsuccessful run prior.

There’s a handful of levels, a handful of cars that all handle the same, and nothing else. In fact, achievement hunters can have all the gamerscore hoovered up in around twenty to thirty minutes and without playing any level but the first. Seeing as there’s no real motivation to play any further, it’s likely to be as far as anyone gets.

Rip-roaring? Brinemedia is having a bit of a laugh with that one.