We're almost at the end, guys. Backlogtober 2015 is finally winding down, and frustratingly, I seem to be winding down with it. My latest conquest, Zeno Clash, was projected to take me just one or two days to blitz through, but ended up taking me four. This was partly due to delays in starting the game, but predominantly because of a very busy schedule through the back end of the working week. Between all-day work, band practice and other commitments, it turns out that Thursdays and Fridays are not good days for me to plan to do stuff. Still, I was able to beat Zeno Clash yesterday morning, and I think I've had just enough time to process the sustained assault of craziness the game put me through for five or six hours.

If there's one thing Zeno Clash does well, it's combat. The core of the game is built around an easy-to-understand brawling system - slow, heavy punches to break your opponent's guard; quicker, light punches to deal damage to unguarded enemies; and an all-purpose block-and-dodge to deal with incoming fists and feet. Time your block or dodge perfectly and your opponent will be left open to a counter-attack. The beauty of the system is its relative simplicity belying its difficult-to-master nature - each enemy you fight is unique, and they all have their own unique tells and attack animations that you have to learn in order to overcome them. It's sort of like Punch-Out!!, except you're slightly more mobile and the enemies are several more shades of fucked-up than the likes of King Hippo and Soda Popinski.

I could see others hating the segments of the game that involve guns, but I personally loved them. Not only do they break up the mêlée combat, which I could see getting tedious in sustained play sessions, but I appreciated the way they look and feel to use, too. Every firearm in Zeno Clash, whether it's twin pistols, a single-shot rifle or a grenade launcher, does impressive damage but is painfully slow to reload. Choosing to bring a gun to a fist-fight thus becomes a risk-versus-reward situation, where you're lethal in full-flow but painfully vulnerable while reloading. The ability to put your currently equipped weapon on your back and switch to your fists at any time means it's a viable strategy to switch between gunfire and brawling, which further expands your combat options. The reload down-time and imprecise feel of the ballistic weaponry will doubtless put some folks off, but they provided me with some of my favourite moments during my playthrough. There's a handful of mêlée weapons too, but they're incredibly slow to wind up and really only practical for fighting the lumbering heavy enemies who can't be harmed by fists alone.

Zeno Clash has also got one of the most striking and unique visual styles I've seen in a video game for quite some time. A lot of the game's art design was evocative of time spent with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind to me, particularly in the case of its environments and fauna. There was just something about the experience of travelling through the varied environments of Zenozoik that took me back to the island of Vvardenfell, with its distinctive architecture and weird and wonderful wildlife that somehow manages to be analogous to our own while still managing to look like nothing you've ever seen before. The story is suitably off-the-wall, too, and complements the 'feel' of the world brilliantly, even if the voice acting from protagonist Ghat and companion Deadra leaves a little to be desired.

Most of my criticisms of Zeno Clash can probably be boiled down to my general lack of familiarity with mouse-and-keyboard controls. I'd originally hoped to play the game with my wired Xbox 360 controller, but abandoned that plan almost immediately when it became apparent that the left stick's horizontal axis was mapped to turn rather than strafe. With no obvious fix to be found in the game's menus, and unable to locate Xpadder on my hard drive, I opted to do things the hard way, and I think my experience suffered for it. As I say, this is purely a personal problem, and had I played the Xbox Live Marketplace version I probably wouldn't have had any control issues whatsoever. But, as it stands, I feel like I need to acknowledge that the control situation did hamper my enjoyment of the game a little.

So that's my experience with Zeno Clash, a largely positive one on balance. It's certainly left me interested in picking up the sequel at some point and seeing how ACE Team went about expanding on the mechanics and mythos of the crazy world of Zenozoik, although if I do I think it'll be on my PS3 or 360 with the added comfort of a familiar controller in hand. Next up, and potentially last depending on how my time falls this coming week, is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. I've got a contingency plan in place just in case I manage to beat it ahead of time, but to be honest I may just deliberately slow my pace from here on out. I feel like Backlogtober needs a big send-off, and Nathan Drake's best-received adventure seems like the perfect way to bring things to a close. I'm hoping to have it wrapped up by Friday so I can throw up some kind of retrospective for the whole month on Saturday. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care duders, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Pokémon Alpha Sapphire (3DS)

I recently played both of these games purely because of how weird they looked. I didn't care too much for the gameplay though it was competent and surprisingly easy to get the hang of with mouse and keyboard. I do agree with you about the weapons! Though there were a few times where I actually did feel like I could rely on them, especially with endless ammo (they eliminate this in Zeno Clash 2).

My enjoyment of both games boiled down to its really unique world and characters. I don't think it was purposeful but I thought the stilted voice acting actually enhanced the weirdness.