Hm...not bad actually
First off, its greatest achievement is the world it created. Zeno Clash's creativity ranges from its pretty scenarios to its background story. The premise appears shallower than it really is at first glance, but before you finish the game, you will start to feel it come to life. As the plot thickened, I found myself confused. Why did I want to see more? What exactly was getting me hooked? Ultimately, the game impressed me with its artistic design and somewhat viable plot.
But the artsy-nature of the game doesn't stop there. Character designs, strange creatures, caveman-style guns. Sometimes the game just creates a 'whaa' kind of reaction, and not necessarily the bad-kind. Also worth mentioning for sure, is the combat.
The combat really is a winning formula here; I found myself really surprised at how much fun I was having sometimes. Zeno Clash is to hand-to-hand combat as Spiderman 2 was to web-slinging. It created a relatively novel design that...well, kind of works. If you are to play this game, get ready for some cool fist-pummeling action.
This game, however, is not even close to perfect. I ran into some technical problems (such as some scripts not working properly), though it should be mentioned they weren't at all frequent. In addition, I really didn't feel the character development at all. Plot, not too bad. But characters? Lacking a bit. And last but most importantly, this game took me around 4-5 hours. Even for a game of this nature, that's just kind of short. But this didn't really bother me 'all' that much due to a simple notion: the pricing.
The pricing reflects the length of the game, and there's a high probability that this game will link into a sequel. All in all, I enjoyed Zeno Clash, and was slightly surprised that I did. I guess the summation statement is that: it tried something new (plot/gameplay/etc), and for the most part, it just 'worked'. There wasn't really anything that stuck out in an awkward/annoying manner. There were a 'few/uncommon' moments of tedium, but I found out afterwards that they were during the final boss (which is by all means excusable). So all in all, the game is rather streamlined, pretty fun to play, but rather short. If you want some quick/fun brawling/pummeling with a decent universe/story, you can't really go wrong with Zeno Clash.