Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition Preview
- March 04, 2010 22:42 PM PST
Zeno Clash originally reared its head in April of 2009 as a downloadable game on Steam. Built off the Source Engine, it wowed many a gamer and critic with its unique first-person "brawler" gameplay. It went on to become a finalist in the "Excellence in Visual Art" category at the 2009 Independent Games Festival competition, but lost out to the equally visually stunning Machinarium. Fast-forward to 2010, and Atlus is breathing new life into the visually bizarre brawler, bringing the title to XBLA as Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition, which will contain many tweaks that Chile-based developer ACE Team implemented for this release, as well as a few new modes to sweeten the deal.
In many ways Zeno Clash plays similarly to The Chronicles of Riddick; players control Ghat, an exiled warrior who spends the majority of the game punching and kicking his way through dozens of odd humanoids and creatures, from a first person perspective. Ghat uses his fists a lot, as many of his foes do, so many encounters in the game play out like strange boxing matches. Players will also have to utilize blocking and dodging techniques to take down tougher enemies, and will occasionally come across weapons that work for a situation and then must be disposed of.
The structure of Zeno Clash doesn't leave much to player choice, as chapters generally unfold with an opening cutscene, some dialogue between Ghat and his female companion Deadra, and then loads of fighting. Thankfully ACE Team has designed quite a compelling fighting system that will constantly keep players on their toes. Often multiple enemies will descend upon Ghat, and juggling between them becomes quite a challenge. To fight strategically players can work on one enemy and knock him to the ground, and then bounce to another enemy. The game incorporates a nifty lock-on system so you aren't constantly swinging your fists into the air around a group of enemies. The dodge technique can also be used to better the chances of making it out alive and on the winning side of the battle, as timing a dodge at the right moment will open up a chance for Ghat to counterattack with brutal results.
Though the fighting engine is great and works well to complement other factors of the game, the world of Zeno Clash is the real star. ACE Team has created a world that could've been the brainchild of Tim Burton and Guillermo del Toro on a "lost weekend" acid binge. The world is called Zenozoik, and it is filled to the brim with bizarre and grotesque inhabitants, otherworldly wildlife, and one of the strangest antagonists ever featured in a video game: Father-Mother. Father-Mother is a giant bird-like abomination that, as its name implies, acts as a paternal/maternal figure for a number of Zenozoik's inhabitants, who are essentially its "children." Ghat, a child of Father-Mother, finds out a secret about "it" early in the game that gets him exiled from his tribe, and he'll spend a large portion of the game fighting off Father-Mother's legion of followers.
By far the strangest inhabitants in Zeno Clash are a group known as the Corwids of the Free. These masked creatures, as Ghat explains in the game, "are not slaves of reality," therefore they have no problem attacking anything that rubs them the wrong way. Other Corwids won't fight Ghat, but will exhibit the strangest habits of any "thing" I've seen in a game. One Corwid called Oxameter walks in a straight line, pulling his large head forward using a handle attached to his face. That's his only purpose in life. Later Oxameter is found dead, leaning against a tree that stood in his way. There are plenty more strange creatures like Oxameter, but I won't spoil the joys of discovered them and their strange neuroses here.
ACE Team has also created a challenge mode to supplement the main story. There are time trials, which are based off different sections of the single player game, as well as a mode where players either descend into a pit or ascend a tower, both of which play out a sort of Zeno Clash "horde mode."
The main game will take players about 12 hours to complete, and with the additional modes Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition should provide players with enough content to keep their fingers busy for quite a while. Check it out when it hits Xbox Live Arcade in early April
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