When it comes to major consoles and casual games, I have no doubt that there’s a tightrope that needs to be walked in order to make something good. Especially since the Switch can be taken on the go, there should ideally be a simplicity to the experience that suits easy pick up and put down play, but the ability to reasonably enjoy the game while playing with a controller on a television would be a good idea as well. The greater challenge though is working out the balance between being friendly to players of just about any skill level, while also not having such a limited core idea that repetition sets in almost immediately. Of course, you could also just go the route of Zombie Legion, effectively phoning it all in, and just hoping for the best.

The idea here isn’t so different from the classic setup where you’ll play as a small fish, or some other non-threatening creature, who’ll need to eat other fish in order to grow, becoming capable of eating bigger and bigger prey while trying to avoid the same happening to you… except this involves zombies. So in this context your goal is to shamble around, turning humans (or other weaker zombies) into your army of sorts, with the goal of achieving domination over all. Since there are other zombies out there trying to do the same, you’ll need to try to find a balance between turning easy target humans and tackling other zombies, ideally staying just ahead of the curve in order to maximize your gains. If you fail to keep pace, you’ll simply end up being consumed by someone more powerful, and it will be game over.

My problem isn’t so much the core idea, there have been games like this for ages, and at least the move to using zombies is marginally creative. My issue is that the developers really did nothing at all to capitalize on the theme, which makes this dull and almost pointless to play for any amount of time. The humans are inexplicably all just standing around, waiting to be turned, there’s no bloodshed to speak of, and there doesn’t feel like there’s been any effort to give you an incentive to continue to rehash the same bland gameplay in a slightly different space. Perhaps civilians screaming and running in terror, a little silliness with blood or body parts flying as you go through them, or any effort at giving the experience an ounce of personality could have done something to at least marginally redeem this effort. But alas, it just seems to be designed to do the bare minimum to get people’s money.