Game: Zeno Clash
Developer: ACE Team
Genre: Beat’em-up/Fighting Game, First-Person-Shooter
Releases: 2009 (PC), 2010 (Xbox 360)
Here is another game review for a rather unique title for Blaugust 2022. In an ocean of videogames on the market one strategy to garner people attention and interest is to do something … different. Think of “Katamari Damacy”, which uses a rather silly premise about the heir to the throne of the entire cosmos rolling things and beings into balls that are later on made into stars; you know, weird things. That title was a hit for various reasons, and another game that takes the “weirdness” approach to game design was displayed on my monitor just a few hours prior to writing this article: “Zeno Clash”. This mixture of a fighting game paired with shooting mechanics and art design that was compared by lots of reviews to the works of Hieronymus Bosch or M. C. Escher is certainly unique; but whether it is actually playable is something that I want to talk about in this article.
You play as Ghat, a human who finds himself in a difficult situation right from the start. Apparently, he just murdered the bird demon-esque being called “Father Mother”, and as this being was the head of the commune that calls itself a “family” their children do not just sit idle while their parent-pair-made-one-person is killed. Deadra, a fellow family member, is about the only person believing that Ghat might have been falsely accused or that there is a reason for Ghat’s actions, which is why she tries to help him escape and therefore accompanies the player on the journey to come. Ghat and Deadra have to find a place where they are safe from the family’s kill squads, even though their journey takes them through less than welcoming regions. The wildlife in form of crabs and giant flightless birds are as hostile towards the pair as the various family members or the tribal “Corwid”, a group of people that has freed itself from the shackles of reality and reason.
The craziness of the setting is visible everywhere, and for every single thing that seems reasonable there is going to be something that is utterly insane. Let us take the “Corwid” as an example: Ghat introduces them as free people that follow their own agendas. With legendary introductions like “Erminia peed on herself and starved to death anonymously. And that is … what Erminia did.” you get an idea for how weird the setting is. The character Oxameter made it his goal to walk in a straight line, regardless of obstacles or hinderances like hunger or thirst. You can find his corpse in the desert level where he met his match when a palm tree in his way refused to move. Nonetheless, Ghat does not judge them, rather saying that they are beyond morality and reason. One of the encounters in the game happens in a flashback when Ghat was caught by a Corwid called Gabel who made it his goal in life to eat humans. Weirdly enough, Ghat can understand this behavior, but since he has other things in mind than becoming that guy’s dinner he whacks him over the head and leaves the scene.
From a gameplay perspective, you will have to fight most of the time. The various enemies and bosses in the game will be encountered in an arena-like stage, from urban places with tables and crates to destroy to labyrinthian paths blocked with thorns in a dark forested area. The name of the game is fisticuffs: “Zeno Clash” does have a solid combat system using light and heavy punches, blocking and parrying, and you will send the opponent flying because of powerful melee moves on a regular basis. Light punches are easy to block but do not eat up that much stamina and can be combo’d, while heavy punches have longer startup but obviously hit harder. If you manage to hit the opponent enough you will stun them which gives you an uppercut against the opponent basically for free. But a blocked heavy punch can also be transtioned into a follow-up, while pin-point blocking gives you access to a punisher in form of a kick. All that comes on top of the game being a fluid experience with your best bet against the opposition being to stay mobile. “Zeno Clash” does stack the odd(s) against you and fighting 3-against-1 is the normal setup most of the time; and believe me, you do not want to end up being pummeled from multiple sides. Therefore, move and run to position yourself more favorably, get a swing in whenever there is a window of opportunity, and you will soon find yourself beating opponents left and right.
And you are not even limited to fists either. “Zeno Clash” does have a few weapon options to work with; and surprisingly, despite the setting being a weird mixture of prehistoric and fantasy-cyberpunk, the weapons feel rather good gameplay-wise. The dual-wielded Fishguns are rather low in the damage department but can hold eight shots and reload faster than the rest of the arsenal. My personal favorite in form of the crossbow shoots skull-like projectiles with enough force to make enemies topple over and can load two shots due to its unique design. The musket feels like the standard rifle and does its job as far as I am concerned, holding three shots but taking quite a bit of time to reload which is certainly noticeable in stressful situations. The grenade launcher shoots an explosive load as you would imagine but holds only one shot making it a high-risk high-reward option in battle. The so-called “Skull-Bombs” function as the throwable grenades in the game, although I found them rather lackluster due to enemies getting out of harms way rather quickly and therefore nullifying the effect of the explosion. There are also melee weapons but those are mostly used against the heavy-weight enemies the game throws at you which simply block your normal punches, but while the design can be either a bone club or a metal hammer they both have the same moveset of one slow swing and one even slower but chargable attack. All those weapons work well, but you have to be aware of what you can get away with: If the opponent is already charging in your direction, it is probably wiser to ditch the ranged weapon and ready for melee combat rather than hastily reload only to get punched in the face for it and dropping the weapon anyway.
In-between fighting sequences, you can take a look at the game and take in the eerie yet enchanting scenario you find yourself in. “Zeno Clash” does look rather ugly in places and a lot of the character models clash with some of the beautiful backgrounds; but I feel like that is on purpose. It seems like ACE Team wanted to make an alien game and they definitely succeeded. The city levels, despite being limited in space, set the mood of a dog-eat-dog world rather well, while the wilderness levels suggest that such freedom comes with the price of fighting for your life against whatever opposes you. “Zeno Clash” explains very little that happens in its world. During a boat ride, you are constantly attacked by strange desert people throwing rocks at you; but why their people are even attacking you in the first place remains a mystery. At the end of the world you have to fend off shadowy creatures that slowly lumber towards you and sometimes throw fireballs in your direction. They seem to be defending some sort of temple in which you actually find one of your allies to progress the story, but the makers of the temple remain unknown as does the purpose of said building and its army of shadow people. In my opinion, it helps set the mood and does make everything a little bit more unsettling.
There are a few bits of criticism I would like to address though. Some people hail the fighting system as the best thing since sliced bread and while the controls are surprisingly solid it is still able to trick the system. If you have only one enemy in front of you, it is perfectly possible to charge up a heavy strike and walk out of the combat range of the opponent before they can retaliate. You can technically repeat this until you run out of stamina or the opponent runs out of life points: Walk towards the opponent with a charged strike, hit, and walk back if it does not connect. During the end of the game you will face a formidable opponent that is actually defeated in a cutscene due to you losing the fight no matter what; and you get an achievement for bringing said enemy down to one health. With the movement method, I unlocked said achievement without any problems and plenty of life to spare since you will connect a hit sometimes and are almost risk-free for the entire time. Another thing is the secret of “Father Mother”, which Ghat refuses to elaborate on until the very end of the game. You do not need to be the most savvy player to understand what said secret entails and it made the big reveal at the end a little bit awkward since I could guess what we are talking about for a fair amount of time before.
I had no expections going into “Zeno Clash”, I just found the title in the Mandalore games list and typed some of the results into the Steam store search function. But while I cannot really rate what I played through on the Sunday I am writing this article on, I would definitely say that it was an experience. Chances are that I will take a look at “Zeno Clash 2” when the title goes on sale because I am interested in what direction ACE Team decided to go after the ending of the first installment. If you are interested in the game, you can obtain it on Steam for 9.99€; although I can only urge you to wait for a sale since the game drops down to an affordable 1.99€, which makes the rather short length of about three hours less of an issue.
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