Zeno Clash
Zeno Clash is a 3D fighting game or brawler, with some elements of a first-person shooter video game. It is the debut game of developer, ACE Team, an independent game development studio located in Santiago, Chile. It uses Valve Corporation’s Source engine. It was first released for download through Valve’s content delivery service, Steam, on April 21, 2009.
The game is set in the fictional fantasy world of Zenozoik, and follows Ghat, a young man who is on the run from his vengeful siblings, and Deadra, his female companion, as they travel through strange and exotic lands.
The game was favorably received by most critics, receiving an aggregate score of 77/100 on Metacritic and 77.5 percent on GameRankings. It was a finalist for “Excellence in Visual Art” at the 2009 Independent Games Festival, won Mod DB’s “Best Upcoming Indie” award, and was named PC “Game of the Month” by IGN for April 2009.
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- Tagged with: 2009 | artdirection | brawler | fps | melee | source-engine
- Wikipedia: Zeno Clash
- http://www.zenoclash.com/
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4 Reviews
I played this for a while, and though I really did like the inventiveness of the art direction and I support developers trying something new, the combat mechanics just didn’t do it for me. Ended up not finishing it…
I bought this game based solely on its aesthetics, and in that respect the game delivers; it’s one of the most visually striking games I’ve played in a long time.
Simply walking around, taking in the surreal landscapes, looking at the characters, I often had a hard time remembering that this was a game.
Unfortunately, Zeno Clash appears to have a hard time remembering that as well. Brilliant visuals aren’t enough to salvage a fighting game whose main mechanic–fighting–is its weakest attribute.
You run around punching all sorts of absurd individuals in the face, which is all good fun, but there’s nothing to break up the monotony of it all. The closest thing you’ve got to a combo is punching someone, putting them down on their knees, and then punching them again.
There are more powerful punches, but these use up a substantial amount of stamina and take far too long to recover from. There are melee weapons and ranged weapons, but they seem to almost always get knocked out of your hands by enemies before you can say fish pistol.
When a ranged weapon isn’t immediately smacked from your mitts, the AI run away and hide. This amusing act quickly loses its charm when you spend several minutes chasing enemies in circles around huts and stands, trying to get a bead on them. You quickly realize it’s a lot easier to just throw down the weapon and give them the ol’ punch-kneel-punch.
The targeting system in Zeno Clash is atrocious. The button you use to lock onto enemies–allowing you to keep them in your sights and strafe around them–is the same button you use to pick up items.
Low on health, and the glowing orange health-fruit you want to pick up is flanked by two enemies? Good luck, you’ll end up continuously targeting one or the other while being pummeled to death by both.
Zeno Clash attempts to ramp up the intensity as the story progresses, as games tend to do, and while the enemies become better, stronger, faster, you’re stuck with the same old moves.
They have more health, so you want to use your more powerful punches, but those take up more of your stamina. You instead become increasingly dependent on dodging and blocking–which, by the way, eat up more of your stamina.
Because punching uses stamina–and the health-laden enemies take a lot of punches–and being punched uses stamina–and the enemies are all blurry walls of incoming fists–you spend most of the game kiting enemies, looking for health, you and your character both panting heavily, fingers cramped, waiting for that damned stamina bar to fill up again. And you do this over and over again.
The fighting is broken up by a couple rail shooter levels where you ride in a boat, in a straight line, and pick off enemies as they approach from the shore on either side of you for what seems like ages.
While your fingers could use the break, and the levels are somewhat soothing, it speaks volumes that a straight-lined rail shooter–the epitome of tedious, monotonous, repetitive games—manages to become a welcome experience after a few levels of Zeno Clash.
Overall, Zeno Clash’s beautiful aesthetics are something to be experienced, but the frustrating and exhausting gameplay might be too much of a hurdle to actually enjoy them. Of course, you could always buy the game and load the levels up in Garry’s Mod, or download the free Zeno Clash DLC.
It’s really cool, and there was an update that made the controls better, though I never really had a problem with them. It deserved all the attention it got, it was simple enough to learn and complex enough to be interesting. <3 <3 <3
I liked the game, for its surreal visuals and the attempt to focus on melee fighting. The punches feel visceral. And it was made by like two or three guys and such efforts should be supported.
There could really be more health. Often enough your reward for defeating one batch of enemies is to face another batch, and you’ve already found all the health in the area.
It’s not long, but it started to feel repetitive toward the end. Worth one playthrough though.