Steam Distributed

Strangeness and rather exotic and often disturbing situations almost seem the norm for this action first person adventure fight game. The environments and characters and creatures all seem to have stepped out of some medieval nightmare painting. Many of the enemies are a mix of disfigured humans and odd characters that are a mix of perhaps fairy folk and some insane persons dream, and I like it! Its not uncommon to have some half bird half human creature want to beat you to a pulp, and them some big boss fights are intermixed with cannibalistic heavy bruisers that take a bit of tactical thinking to beat. Dodge, strike, strike dodge, make them charge and dodge. You get the idea.

 

While the whole shock and newness gets a little mired down after a bit of repetitive actions and the perhaps regional style of story telling and perhaps a bit of victimization by the translating that may leave your scratching your head, just surrender to this new and bizarre world and you will chug along and appreciate the odd and sometimes seeming disjointed story telling and dialogue. Just for the fact that it is a strange new fantasy world and things like this are just normal here. Suspension of disbelieving is in full effect here. I applaud the writers and designers for stepping out on that branch, and taking the risk.

The primary character is called Ghat, a warrior who is now being forced to flee from what amounts as family members (tribe or clan members?) who are intent in killing Ghat for killing the Father/Mother. Of course it's not as cut and dry as that and as Ghat is fleeing his pursuers, the story and events that took place to bring this adventure to a boil are reviewed along the way. Ghat is not on this adventure alone, he has the back up of a female companion, Deadra. She ends up assistant in some tense situations and aids Ghat with some enemies as well as offering some guidance and even getting him past some gates.

 

 

Hand to hand fighting and some weapons are the flavor of the day. All of which have some odd fantasy world twist, but enough interesting looks to make you wonder about the actual back ground and design. The designers must have had some kind of logical back grounds for the designs of weapons in this world. Myself having a back ground in roll playing game and comic book writing appreciates and sees that. Nice! When your not punching, elbowing, or kicking the crap out of an enemy, you can also have some stand off weapons. Such as a club like weapon with some form of energy crystal at the tip that can also hurl said energy at an enemy. More like lob it really because it comes out in an ark and you have to kind of jog it a bit to get the distance just right sometimes.

 

There is also a bone sword that you will need to take out some larger foes who can only be harmed with club like weapons it seems. Then one of my favorites the twin cross bow. Like a double barreled shot gun, but in cross bow form. Firing one bolt then another and reloading for another volley. This thing packs some punch and can stop some of the non heavy enemies in mid charge. Then, what can you say about dual fish head pistols? These leg bone handled pistols have fish heads as the body of the weapons and they also pack some fire power. Never seeming to really run out of ammo, you do have to reload them....but you always seem to have ammo. That's good because these duel wield weapons lay down a barrage of hurt on what ever your aiming at.

 

The game for the most part seems to be linear in many respects, but what do you really expect from a first person beat um up? With 18 levels of weirdness to wade through this hybrid fighter slash shooter drowns you in oddness in some respects, but again. Thats this world, this worlds normal may not be what we are used to, it's a visit to another discombobulated land that may not be sane. But is a interesting E ticket ride. Simple at the beginning, and darn hair ripping harder near the end. But a odd breath of originality in a predictable land scape of first person games, well worth a go especially for the price of admission.

Check out Zeno Clash now on Steam.

Have fun, play games
Edwin Millheim
Impulse Gamer