Home

 › 

Articles

 › 

Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition Review for Xbox 360

Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition Review for Xbox 360

Bad Trip

When Zeno Clash made its PC debut last year, it garnered a lot of attention and praise for its unqiue gameplay mechanics as well as its bizarre aesthetic. Upon release, the game became an indie darling, with no shortage of accolades over this one-of-a-kind first-person brawler. I’ll admit that the game isn’t like anything you’ve probably seen before, but that sure as hell doesn’t give it an automatic pass. In fact, at the risk of swimming against a pretty widespread critical tide, I’m going to say this: don’t believe the hype. Zeno Clash is a boring, repetitive, terrible game that does its best to wow you with style, hoping you don’t notice its lack of substance.

Zeno Clash screenshot

The game throws you into the action in media res, as Ghat, the protagonist, has just killed a spindly, grotesque creature known as Father-Mother, the leader of a tribe of equally hideous abominations (Father-Mother’s children). Ghat, too, is an offspring of this freak of nature, but has betrayed the family (and committed pat-matricide) for reasons that aren’t explained until later. After a brief, semi-nonsensical tutorial from a strange, creepy-looking ghost, you start the brawling that makes up 90 percent of the game in earnest, squaring off against a set of freakshow combatants (your siblings, actually) that are out for your blood. From then on, Ghat and his friend (or lover, or whatever) Deadra are considered pariahs to the clan, and are forced to take refuge in the forest outside the village they have now forsaken.

The set-up doesn’t really sound weird on paper, but play this game for more than five minutes and you’ll see that not only is the narrative opaque and the presentation a bit obscure, but the world and its inhabitants are deformed, savage, and quite unpleasant to gaze upon. This isn’t because the graphics are bad-quite the opposite, actually, since the game uses Valve’s Source engine-but because this horrific style is actually what the developers were going for. If you tossed the aesthetic essences of Lewis Carroll (which would be terrifying enough on its own), Heavy Metal, Dali, and internet cartoons like Salad Fingers or Strindberg and Helium in a blender, gave its contents to Pixar and told them to make something, the result might look something like Zeno Clash.

Zeno Clash screenshot

Even the relatively ‘normal’ looking Ghat, a lean, Borderlands-eqsue cross between Josh Duhamel and Trent Reznor-with mange-isn’t exactly sporting a good look (and Deadra has horns, most of the time, that make her look like an 80’s Amazonian reject from Ico). Needless to say, rarely have I come across a game with art direction as disturbing as Zeno Clash’s, which probably won’t endear you to the game much, unless you really enjoy viewing hideous art.

As bad as the surreal landscapes and hard-to-look-at character designs are, though, aesthetics are the least of Zeno Clash’s problems. The game is essentially a first-person brawler-an innovative idea that you seldom see-but it’s not a very deep one. Ghat has regular and hard attacks, as well as bum-rush moves you can use while sprinting, the ability to block or evade, and limited use of firearms, but the combat starts shallow and doesn’t really get much deeper than that. A seasoned player will be able to deflect attacks from enemies, allowing you to counter with a massive strike, but there’s little to keep the combat fresh or interesting, making most fistfights a slog to get through. The small assortment of primitive-looking firearms Ghat can use are also more or less one-offs-if you find them in a certain section of the game you can use ’em, but don’t expect an arsenal on your person-each new level sets you back with just your fists, the focal point of the game.

Zeno Clash screenshot

Making matters worse, each gun only holds a handful of bullets before you have to reload, and, for the pièce de résistance, your weapons can be knocked out of your hands. It’s just as well, I guess, since almost all of the guns, save for a grenade launcher, do almost no damage to the thick-skinned freaks you’ll be fighting, and in the later levels there’s too many of them to effectively use non-melee weapons anyway. This doesn’t add up to very deep or interesting combat, which, while balanced, more or less just boils down to the same few moves repeated over and over.

Zeno Clash screenshot

There are a few levels where the developers tried to give you a break, such as a scripted scene where you shoot rock-throwing creatures from a boat as it moves towards your destination, as well as the occasional boss battle. But for the most part, Zeno Clash’s gameplay is a one-trick pony, and it gets old pretty quickly. In every level, Ghat and Deadra find some obstacle and things start attacking you, and when you kill them you either move on to the next set or the level ends.

It’s not particularly helpful either that the developers were going for such ambiguity within the world they created. I get it-the strange and creep-tastic world of Zeno Clash is simply the way it is, with no explanation given and none needed. But even if I could enjoy its horribly deranged visuals, the developers didn’t give any reason why we should care about Ghat, Deadra, or anything that happens in the game. Hell, the script is so unclear and barebones that half the time I didn’t even know what was going on as I wandered from one surreal environ to the next.

The use of flashbacks that slowly unravel the reasoning behind Ghat killing Father-Mother barely offer any explanation at all until the end, and when you do find out just what’s going on, the end of Zeno Clash’s lackluster narrative can’t justify the journey its taken you on. Zeno Clash’s world may just seem like oddity for the sake of oddity, but when it all comes together, you’ll likely wish you had never been bothered by what answers it held in the first place. And, as far as gameplay is concerned, its construction might be solid but leaves little imagination-or fun-to be had. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone in their right mind would actually enjoy playing this game, let alone paying fifteen dollars for it. Indie cred, it seems, isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 4.0 Graphics
Visuals are quite pretty, which given the horrid aesthetic direction, is actually kind of a detriment. 3.5 Control
Hand-to-hand brawling, melee, and weaponry are all handled with just a few buttons, but there’s no jump. 3.0 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Tracks are either forgettable or weird enough to blend in with the rest of the game’s rampant oddity. Voice work is pretty decent, if a bit scary at times, while beating someone black and blue sounds satisfying. 2.0 Play Value
The brawling gets old fast and the game’s design isn’t conducive to using guns, making for some boring, linear gameplay, The lackluster narrative doesn’t help. 2.0 Overall Rating – Poor
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • Takes first-person games in a seldom seen direction with hand-to-hand combat.
  • Multiple modes of play, including time attack and co-op.
  • Journey through a bizarre, grotesque world.

  • To top