Riddick? Eat Your Heart Out
As Ghat, you start out the game in a bit of a pickle. You've just murdered your father-mother, a hermaphroditic creature, and now you're on the run from your multitude of brothers and sisters, all of whom want revenge for the death of their matriarch/patriarch figure. Going along with your companion, Deadra, you'll piece together what the hell just happened, in a series of flashbacks and randomly interrupted cutscenes.
Zeno Clash is, without a doubt, weird. This is the kind of game you'd expect in a collaboration from Tim Burton and Stephen King, a pre-historic, surreal, that flies in and out of reality on its own whim, and takes you on a ride to the past, the present, and Ghat's own hallucinations. You'll encounter Father-Mother's children, as well as a group of insane forest folk, known as the Corwids of the Free.
The game is essentially a series of fights broken up by a cutscene, and the occasional boss encounter, and is where Zeno Clash really shines; the Melee combat. The game focuses on in your face punching, kicking, blocking, and dodging; putting a heavy focus on not getting yourself cornered and beaten to a pulp by your numerous adversaries (And trust me, you'll be fighting three, four, five, and even six at one time. There are a few guns in play in some levels, but those will mostly be used just to give yourself some time to breath; Or to knock away a few enemies so you can make the match a little more even for the moment.
Guns are pretty uninspired in use, although interesting in design. You have your dual pistols that appear to be fish skeletons, a rifle, a crossbow that feels like a reskinned bow from Half Life 2, and a grenade launcher. In close quarters, the guns fire far too slow to be of use, and picking any of these ballistics up immediately sends any nearby foes into a frenzy to rush you and disarm you as fast as possible.
Visually, Zeno Clash is one of the best games on Steam. The graphics aren't realistic, but they are unique and vivid, and most of the characters will indeed leave an impression on you. The ideas rarely feel recycled, and if you look into the game deep enough, you'll see that each character is unique in how they fight. The voice acting varies between poor and painful, but I'm willing to overlook that.
For the fact that Ghat mentions Father-Mother's children numbering in the dozens, if not more, you only come across the same dozen or so characters throughout your travels. The same bushy haired woman with the straw hat, the same three rat people with varying S&M gear, the same mutan Toucan Sam, and the same dopish looking guy with the enourmous forehead. ACE did go through the trouble of making a couple models for each character, to the constant fighting does eventually start to show itself in the form of bruises, cuts, scrapes, and torn clothing. It does, however, take a little out of the story to see the same person you just launched off the side of a cliff with a well placed bomb pop up unscathed in the following cutscene. It's like a game where you fight an enemy, win the battle, and the story has them defeating your character anyway in the following cutscene.
The issue that screams in your face is the controls in Zeno Clash. While the combat is in-depth and immersive, the sluggish controls really take you out of the experience. I've had several times where Ghat decides to ignore my pushes to sprint, pick random punches and kicks to throw out despite my button presses, and is just generally slower than his would-be killers. If you and an opponent are gearing up for a hit, they will always get it in before you, even if the game has to ditch the syncronization with the actual character's animation to do so. It becomes frustrating after getting knocked to the floor, and then having Ghat decide it's a good time to kick at the floor.
The AI also has what I refer to as "win mode", which some of you will recognize from Mortal Kombat where the AI opponents go into this mode where they do everything perfectly. Much of the game almost feels scripted, as your opponent takes a stand and will block and dodge everything until they're ready to strike, in which case they will always be faster than you (again, even if your attack is faster, and even if it has to ditch the animation accompanying it)
Being the anal-retentive-attention-to-detail bastard I am, I'm forced to point out some continuity errors in Zeno Clash's combat system. For starters, it's impossible to do much damage to your enemies while they're "down", but when you get knocked to the ground you can guarantee that your foes will form a circle and stomp you. Secondly, foes take no damage whatsoever from falls, no matter how high. On the Challenge Level -2 I managed to bullrush the cyclops guy right off the ledge, where I watched him fall, club his head on the ledge below, fall to the lowest point of the cavern hitting every branch along the way, and he took no damage. For a game that makes use of ragdolls when knocked to the ground, it's a very shallow system.
Apart from the story mode, Zeno Clash also offers a challenge mode, where you ascend (or descend) various levels, fighting an odd assortment of enemies in varying environments. In the latest Downloadable Content release, ACE released three levels where the player descends into a pit, where every move must be watched, lest they fall into the massive cavern, as well as most of the platforms being made out of flimsy, destructable rock.
Zeno Clash feels like it was rushed out before it could be fully polished, and despite some hair-ripping moments is actually a pretty fun game. The story is interesting, although the number of plot twists gets absurd near the end, where the game tries very hard to set up the sequel. The accompanying challenge mode is more of a test of how you can separate your enemies and pick them off one by one, but ACE promises free downloadable content, as well as a sequel in the works. Hopefully ACE will polish the game a bit before the sequel is released, even though I'll end up buying it either way.
If Zeno Clash was a full priced title, I'd think twice about picking up this niche title. The game has regular sales on Steam for 50% off, and even at the full price of 20 dollars, it's still worth a pickup. This is a single player only game, although there are features to compare your scores in challenge mode.
