Something I enjoyed more than I expected I would, and a game that I feel will stick in my mind for a while.
The game begins with the protagonist, Ghat, killing "Father-Mother", a hermaphrodite creature who has raised a large family well-known in the game's world. Ghat is one of Father-Mother's children, who has turned on him-her for unknown reasons. As a result, he is run out of town by his brothers and sisters seeking to kill him, and is banished from his family. The story is told largely through flashbacks showing the timeline up to this point, as Ghat explains the story so far to his sister Daedra, who is also your companion for a large part of the game. The game flicks between past and present so often it's sometimes difficult to distinguish which is which, but the story is mostly quite compelling and unique. The worst thing that can be said about it is that it's quite impenetrable for a while, mostly because the game begins with you completely clueless as to what is going on and then becomes clearer as you progress further. It's usually a good tactic for keeping players intrigued, but the generally bizarre qualities this game boasts will likely cause many people to stop paying attention and just assume it's supposed to be as random as it first seems. The dialogue is also quite haphazardly presented and/or over-clarified, with several phrases such as "Armenia peed on herself and starved to death anonymously" boggling my mind. There are some obvious inconsistencies with the translation from the original language to English, and there is also a distinct lack of character development throughout the game.
Zeno Clash plays far from your standard fare for a first person game, with its gameplay mainly focusing on fist-fighting. Each fight begins with a VS screen showing you and who your opponents are, and they all have health bars on the screen, much like arcade fighting games. Your normal attacks are controlled purely with the left mouse button, and the right mouse button for a powerful "charged" punch; space to block, E to lock onto enemies. It's all a very simple layout, but you can string together combo's and special moves quite easily with combinations of player movement and the buttons already mentioned, and certain context-sensitive attacks such as throwing enemies. It's simple to pull off, but a bit clumsy sometimes and lacking a whole lot of depth. Regardless, it's always fun and satisfying, and rarely gets repetitive simply because of how brutal and visceral it is.
You do get hold of some weapons too; mostly clubs and hammers, further emphasizing the importance of melee combat in this game, but there some long range weapons as well. They can't exactly be classed as guns; though they do have a major resemblance, they seem to fire pellets rather than bullets which take a while to knock your enemies unconscious. You can't hold more than one weapon at a time and you can be easily disarmed by a single attack from an enemy, so most of the time you'll have to rely on heart-pounding close combat encounters rather than having the luxury of attacking from a distance. This is a good thing, as the fist-fighting is what elevates Zeno Clash above most standard first person games in terms of gameplay originality.
As mentioned already, the timeline of the game's story changes continually, but the pacing is always quite good regardless. The levels are presented as linear bite-sized chunks through varying scenery; lasting somewhere between 5 and 15 minutes each, in-between short cut scenes conveying the story. This keeps things interesting, (though feeling a little scattered) and makes boredom pretty difficult. The enemies you face are well-matched and even while facing off against several baddies at a time you rarely feel overwhelmed, even though the game remains quite challenging throughout; which is a good achievement on the developer's part. There is no difficulty labelled as 'Easy' in Zeno Clash, and it ranges from Normal (which appears to be the game's equivalent of Easy, though it still gets rather challenging at times) through Hard (the game's default and normal difficulty) to Extreme, which basically doubles your enemies health. Zeno Clash is a satisfyingly challenging game all the way through, with a progressive difficulty curve in all the encounters you face, and some interesting (and sometimes quite silly, though not going against the game's tone) boss fights thrown in there to spice things up.
Once you've finished the main story, you can spend an extra hour or two honing your skills in the challenge rooms, if it appeals to you. The challenge rooms are separated from the story and focus entirely on your combat abilities, slowly pitting you up against more and more enemies as you progress. Situated as a large tower in which you move upward as you advance (probably a nod towards the early Mortal Kombat games) it gets progressively harder, and damn near impossible near the end. People looking for a challenge away from the oddities of the storyline will enjoy this feature, but it doesn't last long and is merely a distraction from the rest of the game. You can compare scores with friends on Steam if they also own the game, but chances are, your friends don't, seeing as this isn't the most well-known or critically acclaimed of games.
The visuals are what I've been itching to talk about while writing this review. Zeno Clash is artistically stunning; with such lively, vibrant environments it was basically sex for my eyes. As I make quite obvious in all my reviews, I'm not a fan of bland visuals and I find they can even partially ruin the experience for me; as I'm very observant while playing games, and the same colours repeated constantly or just a generally dull colour palette can make an otherwise fun game quite boring for me. Visually, Zeno Clash has many varied locales and imaginative characters. You'll be engaging in fist fights with creatures that are half man half pig, while traversing rocky mountains across a sprawling desert populated by giant creatures that look something like a cross between a brontosaurus and an anteater. You'll also encounter a beached whale on your travels, a town which is designed to look quite pointy and over-the-top almost like an exaggerated painting, lush forests with bizarre and colourful plants and life forms, and foggy swamps populated by birds with no wings that spit green slime at you. It's all very creative and all looks stunning thanks to being built upon the latest version of the Source engine used for Valve's "Orange Box" games, the Source engine allows for the game to look stunning, colourful and alive while not being too taxing on people's computers. Thanks to the rather heavy use of motion blur effects, all of the encounters in the game feel very fast, intense and immersive. On my setup I played the game on the highest possible settings at 1920x1080 resolution with 16xQ AA and it is arguably the best looking Source engine game available while also playing very smoothly on my machine, which is great but is classed as "mid-range" as much as I may scoff at the implications of that term.
The voice acting is mostly quite good, Ghat's voice is fairly believable and so are all the other characters you'll meet on your travels, but your companion Daedra sounds very amateurish at times and was almost painful to listen to. I almost feel bad singling her out like that, but it's not like the person who did her voice work is going to read this. As you're with Daedra for most of the game it's very noticeable and the other good voice actors are almost drowned out because of her. The sound effects are decent, with satisfying crunches, cracks and yells as you pound on people. Atmospheric sound effects seem a little limited and most of what you hear will be the music, which is thankfully quite good but slightly repetitive.
Zeno Clash is a fresh concept, which is easy enough to pick up and play, while also having a decent and very unique story, imaginative characters and beautiful and creative environments. A great example of how indie developers can create things the big companies could never risk doing, and a showcase of how games can still look fantastic without being technically impressive. Zeno Clash is available at a budget price, so it's short length is softened by that fact; and it succeeded in satisfying my increasingly high standards in games, which is something I should start dishing out awards for or something. Bottom line is, if you enjoy unique games that try to do something different instead of sticking to the tired old conventions, Zeno Clash is a game you'll probably enjoy.