Take note of the super deadly pig enemy on the right.

After watching a lot of highlights of the Independent Games Festival ’09, Zeno Clash was one of the games that really stood out for me in its originality and general weirdness. This bizarre first person brawler game comes from the ACE Team – an up and coming indie games developer from Chile.

The story of Zeno Clash is purposely very thought provoking, but at the same time not incredibly difficult to follow. You play a man named Ghat who is on the run after supposedly killing “Father-Mother”. Constantly throughout the game you are facing many of the offspring of this bird-like shemale as they attempt to reap vengeance for Father-Mother’s death. As you progress through the game with your cavewoman accomplice – Deadra – you also face many of the other twisted inhabitants of Zenozoik including semi-naked madmen, suicide rats, and of course the infamous Golem. After just ten minutes of game time, I could tell that the development team at ACE employed drug addicts to think of this plotline. Much of the story’s blanks are filled in with flashbacks building up to the day that Father-Mother was killed. Initially this appears quite interesting, but after a while slowly makes you wish you were dead. It felt as if I was just mindlessly wondering from one fight to the other, being fed with more flashback fight sequences in-between. Saying that, the tutorial is very well integrated using a similar sort of method. Occasionally Ghat enters a dream-like state where his teacher – Metamoq – grunts various fighting techniques at him. Initially Metamoq only teaches you the bare essential controls, but slowly returns to you throughout the game to teach you more techniques. This felt very intuitive, and stopped a very unnecessarily long tutorial level at the start of the game. When you are in this dream state, however, it feels as if Ghat has taken a load of crack and decided to book himself in for routine medical experimentation. The entire landscape is a vibrant ray of unusual colours, and Metamoq himself looks as if he’s been lifted straight out of Rapture. Because you’re supposedly in-between consciousness when with Metamoq, you also blink quite erratically. Again, this is a very nice touch at the start, but when you get to the stage of actually having the fight Metamoq for real you can’t help but think your character is having a stroke. If you like beating up goths after taking a lot of LSD, while having a fit, then you will surely enjoy this experience.

Unfortunately you never get to fight the plastic surgery dinosaurs.

If you start to get tired of the Singleplayer experience, I’m afraid you’re stuck with it, as Zeno Clash has no Multiplayer facility. The best it can offer you is a challenge mode where you fight through levels of a tower attempting to beat your friends’ scores. Although not a substitute for Multiplayer, this is a welcome addition that serves as a break from the mind-boggling story.

Being built around the Source engine, one of the first things you notice about Zeno Clash is how incredible it looks for an independent game. The visuals are well composed and characters well rendered. The motion and distance blur is a very nice touch as well – even if it is frequently used incorrectly. The texture detail has been kept very high without any noticeable FPS drop, and this really comes into its own when you are up close and personal with your enemies.

I’m not sure if Zeno Clash will go down as a classic, but it will certainly linger with you for a while. It’s been a long while since I have felt such refreshment from a game, and Zeno Clash definitely can’t be accused of playing it safe in a market dominated by high budget titles. The graphics are beautiful, the sound is great, and the control system works surprisingly well. Ignoring some of the nagging faults in the presentation, and Ghat’s inability to open any sort of door, Zeno Clash has a brilliant, amusing, and unique story that you definitely won’t see anywhere else.

Graphics                   Gameplay                  Sound                    Replay Value

88%                            78%                         82%                              73%

Overall

80%

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