Zeno Clash

Zeno Clash is a pretty one of a kind experience. The main game only lasts about five hours, and parts aren't that polished, and some aspects of its design are frustrating. But there's a sort of charm to its unrelenting weirdness, and it's pretty respectable for what is clearly a passion project for a pretty small development team.

The game throws right into the action from the beginning, with a few mystical tutorials thrown in to get you up to speed. The story is half told in flashback, as the protagonist Ghat explains to his friend Deadra how he came to kill Father-Mother, the very bizarre patriarch/matriarch of his unusual family, while on the run from siblings who would seek revenge. The voice acting isn't that good, but it fails to ruin the story, which is honestly a pretty interesting one, filled with mysticism and hard to explain things and, much like the rest of the game, enhanced by the unique, strange art design. I doubt anyone's ever seen something that really looks like this, and while I felt some things were weird just because the developers thought they should be, there's still a sense of place that's very strongly enhanced by the way all the odd characters and places knit together into something resembling a whole. The ending to this tale both wraps up the most important parts of the plot, and also leaves a lot of mysterious breadcrumbs for a sequel which is on the way.

The gameplay is a mix of not-that-great shooting and the well-formed but occasionally annoying fist fighting. The focus of development was clearly on the latter, as they tried their damnedest to make a system that would allow for capably fighting off multiple opponents from a first person perspective. It's not too hard to get mobbed and irritated with the combat, but if you know what you're doing it actually works pretty darn well. Not every encounter (complete with fighting game "versus" screens) seems as well designed as the others, but there's a lot of variety, and it's fun enough to usually get over most of the smaller issues. Some of the shooting areas are sort of interesting, especially a couple long range duels against a particular enemy (I have a theory that if a game has a sniper boss, it is automatically the best boss in the game), though they have their issues as well and just weren't the developers' primary concern. There's not very much to the game that isn't some form of violence, though it keeps things mixed up enough to prevent stagnation in the fairly short running time of the story. There's challenge modes to work on your technique if you're interested, although as usual I really wasn't.

It's hard to give Zeno Clash a full recommendation, though anyone looking for something new might like it. There are a lot of touches I like, such as how every enemy in the game is a character you're likely to see more than once instead of just a generic goon, and how all of the equipment ties very directly into the setting. There's also a lot about that just got on my nerves, so it's the sort of thing where your mileage may vary. Atlus is putting the game out on XBLA with new content, giving more people a chance to play it, which is pretty cool.