Zeno Clash

Zeno Clash is one of those games that is hard to talk about. A unique setting of its kind, built on a mix of fantasy and primitive society. All landscapes and creatures seem to have descended from the canvases of Hieronymus Bosch (quote from Gameplay magazine, August 2009). The game is worth launching even just for the sake of curiosity and an unusual gaming experience. Made on the Source engine, the game has aged very well. Thanks to the visual style and accompanying art direction, it still looks great and even mesmerizing in places, and in terms of gameplay it plays nicely and with a sufficient level of comfort. By the way, it is a mixture of a fighting game and a shooter. There will be a lot of fighting here and hand-to-hand combat is rich in tricks, but unfortunately, the combat system seemed to me a little viscous in terms of animations and not polished enough. As a result, Zeno Clash can be cautiously called a hidden-gem that can surprise you. In its own way, pure gaming arthouse, not created for everyone.

A decent attempt at first-person melee goes a bit awry with too much jank, too easy tactics and yet too brutal AI, leading to an ambitious but pretty meh playing experience. To say nothing of the atmosphere, a hodgepodge of fantasy and storybook elements (and maybe a bit of kink influence) so diluted that nothing within the story carries any meaning besides the concept of the Father-Mother, itself ruined by the ending and leaving nothing to speak of. Your party just goes all the way to the end of the world and then right back, making the whole experience feel like a waste of time.

Zeno Clash is a weird one. It uses the source engine to make essencially a first person brawler, though it also has a few weapons available.

The visuals are noticably source-y, but they have gone a long way into painting a colourful and diverse universe. There is a weird blend of characters, between humans and various sort of animals. This is really explained for story reasons, and its a surprisingly new and interesting story. That said, the voice acting and cutscenes are pretty bad, and i didnt enjoy the way it ended.

Gameplaywise its not so solid. Though the combat is given a lot of depth between counters and grabs and power attacks, it still a bit janky. Not only that, but the AI can be a bit annoying to fight, particularly in the few intanses when you are outnumbered. The melee system simply isnt designed for that, and you end up trying to isolate them one by one or run to search for the firearm. The firearms are pretty weak in comparison to your damage, but they are more than enough to handle the job granted that you have enough ammunition.

The campaign lasts 6 hours or so, A decent lenght, considering that it tells a well paced story and explores the depth of the combat system well enough. I had some fun time with it, though its a very flawed game in certain aspects.

Great games like BioShock have shown us how far games have come, but Zeno Clash shows how far we have left to go. The imagination, ingenuity, and focus of Zeno Clash is undoubtedly the title's crowning points; it's something we don't see enough in games. While many reviews of the game have built themselves around paragraphs celebrating the art direction and storytelling, there is still a game here that must be examined. Zeno Clash in play doesn't quite meet the pedigree of its production values, but it never gets in the way enough to mar what is an absolutely original title.

Zeno Clash’s story is best received with an open mind. Explaining the story in words alone will only come across as alien jargon but I’ll try my best. You play as Ghat, who resides in the world of Zenozoik; he is the son of a sexless creature known as Father-Mother. The game begins with Ghat killing this entity, and the rest of the game has you dealing with both Ghat’s exile and his memories that pre-date the assassination. Between the world’s strange set of rules and the story’s non-linearity, the game is best experienced then explained -- and what an experience it is!

Zeno Clash is one of the best-looking games I’ve ever played and not for the usual reasons. You won’t see any advanced lighting effects, but what ACE Team Software has delivered on is a world that is so abstract and surreal that it often feels like you are living in a painting. Every little detail in the character models and locations is inspired and thought provoking. The game conveys as much emotion and information in its visual design as it does in its story—this is the first time I think I could ever say that about a game. One can state that the developers were working with such minuscule levels and a short length that it would of course appear more detailed than Fallout 4, but that doesn’t change the fact that you don’t see games as richly textured and conceptually complex as this.

You might not think it at first but Zeno Clash is more-or-less the rebirth of old school beat em’ ups. Everything from all your favorite Konamiarcade games is here, although with a more evolved combat system. You start every fight in an enclosed space with nothing but your fists and maybe a gun or melee weapon. You can counter, block, and do some minor combos but everything is simple in concept. It takes a while for the combat to click and you’ll damn the game until it does. By the end, the game will throw some pretty nasty fights at you but if you play them smart you’ll be able to handle it. The rest of the game is a linear adventure much like Half-Life 2’s bigger set pieces. Variety is key to any game that seeks to keep the player interested and Ace Team is aware of this. Although you’ll go through similar levels, there is always enough different to keep things feeling fresh.

If there is ever a Criterion Collection for games, Zeno Clash would be right up there between ICO and Bioshock. Many players will get flustered with the game’s combat, but the learning curve is worth seeing to its end. As good as the combat is, it will always be second to Zeno Clash’s memorable story that feeds on a vocabulary unfamiliar to games. Rather then making comparisons to Gears of War and Half-Life, my mind thinks up images Salvador Dali paintings or the films of René Laloux. Good gameplay deserves a higher standard of story telling, and Zeno Clash serves as a good example as to why.