Zeno Clash

I think the game has some political comentary too, since it comes from latin america:

[spoiler:ab8ac624c0] In argentina entire families of political dissidents where "disapeared", i.e. taken to secret prisons and tortured to death. Their children where mostly adopted and raised as wealthy right wing elite, loyal to the murderers of their parents. Likewise FatherMother kidnaps children and raises them as its own to have a big loyal clan. [/spoiler:ab8ac624c0]

Not done yet, but I think I am very near the end.
 
Finished it.

As I said before, the combat gets a little repetitive but the scenery and the story make up it all up.

Even if this was intended as a one time thing the way the game leaves you just makes it clear that there needs to be a sequel.

I just hope that if they make things 'bigger' that they don't loose track of the original concept.
 
Alright, here's a warning for all those X64 users out there that might be interested in this game, I don't know if that is the actual reason but it's the likely culprit.

I bought the game, started playing it, in the tutorial when you try to grab him, the controls lock up, the game is still the same, but it does not register the mouse clicks at all.

Sufficed to say I'm a bit irritated...
 
Just beat it, and was very impressed. I have to say, though, that the only time that I really felt challenged was against the two heavies near the end. That fight was a crock of shit.
 
How long is it?
How linear is it?
Is there anything other than shooting?
Is there multiplayer?
Thank you for your time
 
maximaz said:
How long is it?
How linear is it?
Is there anything other than shooting?
Is there multiplayer?
Thank you for your time
Click to expand...
Several hours at most.
Like an arrow.
There's lots of punching, with a side dish of kicking.
Nope.
 
Multiplayer would be pretty cool actually, but lag would probably be a very big problem.
Lag sucks in fighting games. I'm looking at you Tekken 5 DR Online!

Also, BN are you gonna do that review you talked about?
 
Leon said:
I have to say, though, that the only time that I really felt challenged was against the two heavies near the end. That fight was a crock of shit.
Click to expand...

I made it very easy: Place yourself in the way that one of them is standing behind the other. This way only one can attack you, the other not. Now move a bit forward, strike with the hammer, go a bit back, wait his attack, if he is done with his swing, move a bit forward and strike with the hammer again, etc.
The hole fight over you need to take care, that one is all the time behind the other. Then the fight has the same difficult level as all the other. ;)
 
Lexx said:
I made it very easy: Place yourself in the way that one of them is standing behind the other.
Click to expand...
That's what I ended up doing. The real problem, though, was getting caught on all those tables and other things laying about. That, and for some reason I had a lot of trouble trying to pick up any of the four fruits when my health was low, so while I was staring at a piece of glowing orange fruit and mashing a button, giant mutant creatures were raping me with their fists.
 
Brother None said:
Here.
Click to expand...

GamerNode shall be down for a unknown amount of time as we have just suffered from a brutal hard drive failure.
Click to expand...

Do you know about any date when it will be available again? I am writing my own review at the moment (in german) and wanted to know if I think the same like you. Heh.
 
The gameplay was pretty interesting for the first hour or two, then I got massive... oh no, it's a gimmick vibes.
That's exactly what it was, some gimmicky combat system that got really old, and punching things isn't really my idea of fun, especially with such a bizarre reduction of beat 'em sensibilities. I had been busy playing God Hand before I decided to waste my time on Xeno Clash and that definitely didn't help establish any positive impression.

I guess if you like the idea of interactive entertainment being an "experience" a la Planescape: Torment, No More Heroes, or Metal Gear Solid, it's worth a try, but for actually playing something half-way decent it isn't really all that much.
Definitely doesn't match up to Killer7 at the least, and the Source engine really fudged many attempts at atmospheric miscellanea, its bones are starting to show.
 
Lexx said:
Do you know about any date when it will be available again? I am writing my own review at the moment (in german) and wanted to know if I think the same like you. Heh.
Click to expand...

Dunno. But here it is:
Zeno Clash is an independent, PC-only first-person beat 'em up, released for digital download on Steam and Direct 2 Drive. It was created by Chilean studio Ace Team, and has turned many heads even prior to its release, its hype (for lack of a better word) driven by its completely original world design and aesthetic appeal, and only secondarily by the fairly innovative gameplay idea of a first-person beat 'em up.

It can be hard to explain how the game plays out because there's not a lot to directly compare it to. It has been termed a fighting game in sub-genre, but it only fits that genre in the sense that each instance of combat feels like an instanced fight, as the game starts the combat with a slide-in versus screen, and you can only continue further into the world once the fight is closed.

But what else to compare it to? Riddick and Fallout 3/Oblivion jump to mind, but the fighting in those games does not feel half as direct as that in Zeno Clash. I personally feel that despite the first-person camera, the combat best suffers comparison to the beat 'em ups of the 80s/90s, such as Double Dragon and Streets of Rage. Like these games, the basic control set-up is simple, and unlike the fighting game genre the combinations you can make tend to be short, one-two-three-throw moves rather than expanded key combinations to do a variety of super moves.

Like beat 'em ups, the portfolio of moves consists of punches, kicks and throws. Like beat 'em ups, it has a linear story, heavily reuses characters, meaning you can fight the same enemies over and over, and heals the player with fruit lying on the floor, as well as auto-healing between fights (perhaps more like fighting games in that instance). And, like beat 'em ups and unlike fighting games, pure skill at combinations is less important than a good intuitive feel for the way fights work. Singling out opponents and moving around a lot when fighting a group is more important than blocking. The blocking and dodging moves the game offered are just as easily replaced by quickly moving back and forth. The system is not simple enough for many players to master all combinations, but a bit of common sense can get you through fights just as easily.

One thing that does set it apart quite a bit is the usage of weapons, including guns (though I suppose Streets of Rage 3 had this as well). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the shooting action feels a lot more contrived. The guns are beautifully designed parts of the world, an do not feel like conventional FPS weaponry even though a few of them are (double pistols, rifle). But I would think most people prefer to keep their weapons holstered and go for the more direct approach whenever they can. The game does not force you into using weapons often, and in the Hunter boss sequence it pulls the need for a gun off really well, but Zeno Clash does occasionally stack the odds against you in a way that makes having a gun handy.

The other type of weapon is the traditional beat 'em up club, though baseball bats and iron pipes are replaced by weird-looking hammers and bone swords. Of all the action sequences, the ones featuring clubs are my least favorite. In particular fights with heavies feel unnecessary and cumbersome, lacking both the immediacy and intuitiveness of other fights.

In general, fights are interesting and Zeno Clash offers plenty of novel new situations to keep you interested, but at the end of 4-hour ride it's already getting a bit repetitive, and it's a good thing it doesn't last much longer. If you are hungry for additional fights, the game offers a 5-tier challenge mode with interesting combat situations. Still, first-person beat 'em up gameplay hasn't been done often, and it very rarely has been done well. Zeno Clash lacks the quality of close combat on the level of Mount & Blade, but it is superior to that of Oblivion. It's good, but it's not good enough to carry the game by itself.

What really carries the experience is the world design. It's like stepping into a nightmare sequence from a Cronenberg film, or right into a Dali painting. Angular architecture defying you to look at it, weird yet disturbingly familiar characters and animals, strange plants with claw-like branches and almost animal-like properties, it all combines for a world that follows no logic other than its own, breath-taking in beauty and consistent enough to remain believable as a whole.

While the game may lack the graphics of a current-gen AAA, it more than makes up for it in pure strength of design, and puts many if not all of the recent top-level games to shame in its originality and quality. Heck, it bares comparison only to the likes of Planescape: Torment and Sanitarium in how well it pulls off a beautiful, weird world. The game is worth playing purely for the experience of its weird world, and it's not until the last quarter or so when you backtrack through the same old locations and enemies that the rollercoaster ride lets up.

You explore the world in a linear romp of a story, tracking through set fights and non-branching corridors, though the game does a good job of making you forget about how linear it is and making the world feel more open than it really is. There's two storylines you play through, one being memories of the events leading up to the game's start, and the other being the story of the main character, Ghat, and his companion, Deadra, fleeing the scene of Ghat's crime. The story revolves around Father-Mother, the androgynous progenitor of an entire clan of brothers and sisters. As the story progresses, you are introduced to a picking of elements of the world, Zenozoik, from the Corwids of the Free who roam the forest near the city, to the rarely traversed desert and the darkness beyond it.

It's a fascinating string of ideas, and the main plotline itself is good enough even if it does leave a few too many things unexplained. But where it sadly falls apart is presentation, which ranges from ok to the painfully amateurish. It's not just that the voice acting never goes above passable (and often falls below the acceptable), a consequence of it being done by the team itself, but the writing just isn't very good. It feels like you're reading the cliff notes of a mediocre translation of Master and Margarita – the ideas are there, the layers of meaning and the possibility of philosophical and political depth exist, but they're just not there in the game itself. The English isn't broken, but it doesn't flow naturally in a way that pleases the ear. The voice-overs don't grate (much), but nor do they really entice.

The Corwids of the Free are a sad example of this. This clan (if they can be called that) are an expression of Aristotelean/Ramana Maharshi self-realization an extreme of the idea that happiness and fulfillment comes from realizing your potential, pushing it far enough to disregard society's standards and morals. For the Corwids this potential often takes the form of a single action, whether it be walking in a straight line or believing you need to be invisible and – for that reason – removing the eyes of everyone who sees you. Fascinating stuff potentially, and the character design is there both in ideas and in visuals, but when you reach this point in the plot and Ghat drones his mediocre lines in a boring, non-committal voice, it takes an effort to see the potential, the game itself certainly not helping you along.

It's a slight down note on a great accomplishment. It pulls off an original combat system well, and created an incredible, novel game world. Through heavily reusing character models and other art assets in well-paced levels, Ace Team shows a finesse in design that overcomes many budgetary shortcomings, it is only the story presentation where it catches up with them.

Title: Zeno Clash
Platform: PC
Developer: ACE Team
Publisher: Valve Corporation
Release Date: April 21, 2009

GamePlay: Solid first-person fighting, but not great and definitely too repetitive
Graphics: Incredible visuals and great world design
Sound: Mediocre voice acting, solid sound effects
Replay Value: A short game at 4 hours, and too linear to offer much replay value
Final World: A game with solid enough gameplay carried to a higher level by its aesthetic appeal and novel world design, this is a great game for people looking for true originality in gaming.

8.5
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top