Zeno Clash

Zeno Clash is a gorgeous game. It is not technically beautiful, like say a Crysis, but the art is without equal. The characters all look remarkably different, the locations are varied and logical, and the entire game has a cohesive, alien feel. It creates a world in a way that most games only hope to do, and it does it without having cutting edge graphics or a gigantic budget. The voice acting is sub-par, sure, and the writing could have stayed in the oven a little longer. These issues are to be expected in a lower budget title. The gameplay is nothing terribly special, notable only for the fact that it is one of very few first-person fighting systems on the market.

The game is a first person brawler, which is not so much a genre as it is our best guess as to how to classify the game. You control fighting and movement in a similar way to an FPS, but in-game is almost like walking through Streets of Rage, or any number of old school beat-em-ups. Enemies are frequently clones of earlier enemies, they all have signature moves, and they all have specific ways to avoid damage while fighting them. The brawling element works well enough – I'm not sure I've seen yet a first-person fighting mechanic I'd really describe as “good” – and it flows very well. Fights against multiple opponents generally involve a good deal of hit and run while you whittle down the pack, and any non-boss enemy is a cakewalk mano a mano. The hard part is getting the fight to that point.

The fights all feel very much the same until you get to your first “big enemy” fight. These enemies can only be damaged with melee weapons, which is a much more difficult system than just straight brawling. When using a weapon, you lose much of the versatility and quickness that the game offers in its hand-to-hand system. You need to be mindful of how long it takes to swing your sword, and how quickly the enemy can react. Suddenly, it's a game about spacing and timing, about learning patterns and adhering to them strictly. That said, if you know how to find a rhythm and approach a boss, he is relatively easy. His attacks do fairly large amounts of damage, and your lifebar is agonizingly shallow. He has a propensity for a charging attack that knocks you down and throws the weapon from your hands, and until you learn how to dodge them you will be thrown around like a ragdoll. Unfortunately, once you learn the graceful art of running forward and a bit to the left, he and every future boss like him is a joke, and the only worry you'll have is if a group of enemies joins in while you're fighting. Remember him, though, as you will encounter reskins of this enemy with the exact same move set several times before you're done.

That is not the only type of boss, though it is the most common. There's a boss who sends rodents with powder kegs tied to their backs parachuting down on you, only to shoot at them with a sniper rifle from atop his perch. The entire fight becomes a frantic attempt to shoot the squirrels before they get close enough while still occasionally getting a shot off on the boss himself. It creates a somewhat different experience from the brawling you are doing throughout most of the game, though the fact that you fight this exact boss more than once was a tad grating. The gunplay is less than stellar, but it is more than enough to manage those fights.

The weapons are all very tied to the world of Zeno Clash. They seem very tribal, almost haphazardly assembled, and none function particularly well. They are neat to look at, but most of the time dangerous to use. While you are reloading – the guns carry very limited ammo and you have to manually reload, even after you exhaust your clip – you are likely to be pummeled by enemies who are not afraid to get in your face. In this game, it does not feel like the guns needed to be useful, it simply isn't a shooter. You would pick up a weapon to maybe weaken an enemy, perhaps take out some of the wildlife, and then throw it away in favor of punching. Zeno Clash at times tries to break out of the mold it built for itself, and change the gameplay up. There is a gondola ride while enemies attempt to throw pebbles at you, a rabbit hunting segment, and a section of the game where you defend torches and attack enemies by throwing balls of light from your torch. These were all very welcome, and worked well to change up the pacing, as the fights tended to get exceedingly repetitive. These diversions were generally fun tangents to the gameplay, though sometimes it felt a bit forced.

There is also a Challenge Mode, which is very well fleshed out. It's not simply a rehash of levels in the game, it is a somewhat unique experience. You fight enemies from the campaign, sure, but in formations you'd never see them in the main game. It gets markedly harder than the main campaign as well, and is certainly not an easy task to make it through. While it is just more of the same repetitive fights, the sense of at times overwhelming difficulty keeps it mostly fresh. It feels like a well-thought out addition, rather than something that was tacked on to artificially inflate the game's length. If you were unhappy with any aspect of the combat, though, don't expect to enjoy this mode. It doesn't sugarcoat anything, and will throw just about everything the game can at you, so you'd better be comfortable with scrapping.

If punching some reject from the Mos Eisley Cantina in the face until he's dazed, then putting a knee through his skull sounds like your idea of a good time, you should probably pick this up. If you're interested at all in getting a look at what is some of the best game art around, you should definitely pick this up. If you're looking for a stellar brawler with fun snippets of gunfighting and a compelling plot … perhaps you should give it a pass. Just know that if you skip it, you'll be missing out on one of the more unique looking games on the market.