Zeno Clash - first impressions

I've been zipping through Zeno Clash for a couple of hours and have a few thoughts.

For those who don't know what it is, there's a trailer here which sums it up quite nicely.

So, observations:


1) It's really fucking weird.

The design is excellent, the setting is pretty unique and the story is... interesting. To be honest, the primary reason to play it is because it's so odd and if that doesn't appeal, you may as well stop reading now.


2) The combat is... a bit shit

You know how the combat in the trailer looked stilted and rubbish? Well, the game is exactly like that. The shooting is extremely unsatisfying & The hand to hand combat pales in comparison to Assassins Creed, The Chronicles of Riddick... even Crysis.

They've falling into the age old trap of assuming that punching people in the head becomes infinitely more fun the more you do it. This may well be the case in real life but it's really not in the game.

3) The voice acting aint up to much.

I feel bad criticising an indie game for having bad voice acting... but it's valid. Indie games are becoming more and more important in the industry right now and if they want to be taken seriously, they need to show that they can do what big budget titles can do in different ways. They do this with the story quite well- you're not eased into the world, all you know is you've killed your father-mother. I don't know what this is yet but I'm rather intrigued. If they'd spent a little extra on the voice actors, the story could have been the main selling point of the game.


4) The source engine is REALLY fucking showing its age.

Now, most of the time this isn't an issue but occasionally, you find yourself wandering through a desert and there will be a two foot high fence on your left and right and you can't pass it. Somehow, they've managed to make a game set in a desert / wilderness a corridor shooter.

About half of the time you're not actually fighting in these corridors but even when the game does open out, it feels small and restrictive. I get that these guys are working on a small budget, I really do, but could they not have picked a better engine? Maybe the Unreal 3 engine or... I don't know, the Cry Engine? Fuck, Merchants of Brooklyn felt more open than this.


5) This is another one of those games where most things about it are good... it's just the gameplay is shit.


It falls into the same category of Fallout 3 and, hopefully, like Fallout 3, many people will be able to look past how shit the fighting and gunplay are but I don't think I'll be able to. It's a game, it's an interactive experience. If the interactive bits are terrible, I'm wondering why the hell they didn't make an animated film instead... I can't help thinking that would have been better for everyone concerned.


6) Despite all of this, I'm going to continue playing it tomorrow.

If I'm honest, I'll admit that I'm not really enjoying playing it. And not even in a The Path way, where I'm not especially enjoying it but I'm so immersed in the game world I don't care. I'm going to continue, even though I have no idea why.



I really don't think it's worth buying anyway. I'd recommend trying it before you buy it but guess what, there's no demo (for reasons that are becoming apparent) so if you want to try before you buy, I suggest torrenting. Don't pretend you don't know how to do that. Hopefully you'll get more out of it than I did.