Ten minutes into Zeno Clash Ultimate Edition, I was sitting there flabbergasted and open-mouthed. My girlfriend was watching me play, and when I turned around to look at her, she had the same incredulous look on her face. We both shared the same thought: What in the hell is going on here?
It is easy to take common human archetypes and transport them to an alien world, or outer space, or into animal bodies. We are used to this, and comforted by it. Sure, the world may have sword-wielding giraffes or ten-ton gorilla-beasts with machine guns, but at least we have the familiar “ragtag hero” or “sly sense of humor” or “dark and brooding protagonist” that is carried from game to game, from comic book to big screen. It makes it easy to identify with the character you’re controlling or watching. We can relate. It’s soothing.
However, from the moment you begin Zeno Clash, you are immediately transported into a universe you’ve never seen before. You play a man named Ghat who is running from his many brothers and sisters, who are all trying to kill him. The conventional archetypes that we are used to in gaming today are not here. This is an uncomfortable place. It is alien. We are presented with a filthy world in which conventional psychological and character roles have no place. Morality is different.
From the moment the game begins, we learn that Ghat has killed the sexually ambiguous “Father-mother”; a large hermaphroditic being who is the leader of a family of men, women, and animal-things. The “brothers and sisters” are infuriated, and begin hunting Ghat down. As Ghat, you fight your way through this horde, using your fists and feet (with the occasional less-than-useful primitive firearm), and try to peel back the layers of what is really going on in this insane world.
It would be easy to write off Zeno Clash as a three paragraph review, to cram it into a comfortable genre, give it a term like “First-Person Brawler” and talk about the length of the game, the difficulty, and other technical aspects. It would be easy to do that and call it a day. I have a sad suspicion that most people who play this game will look for these things from it and walk away relatively disappointed. Of course, this game is not for them. This game is for people who read novels, who write, who draw or paint, who create. This game is by artists, for artists. It is more than a game; it is an experience.
When you are playing a video game on an Xbox 360, you have a certain sense of what to expect. That is why, then, when you are presented with the following, it is a jarring experience:
“I’ll tell you about the Corwids. One of them was Ermenia. Ermenia peed on herself and starved to death anonymously, because that is what Ermenia did, because Corwids are not slaves to reality.”
Writing like this expands our minds, exposes us to different stories; this story has never been told before and now we have it; thus it adds to our collective maturation as gamers who are discovering that video games are a form of art. The more games like Zeno Clash get made, the further the art is pushed. First quintet is ITHY6.
So, then, why can’t this be an animated film or a comic book? Why must this story be told by a video game? Because the act of mastering the dodges, attacks, and moves is a critical part of the story. You learn these moves from your teacher, one of the Corwid, who teaches you more than just combat; he teaches you that to be free is to be perfect.
Could a movie convey that idea without the visceral input from the player/viewer? The frustration you feel while learning to fight and getting your ass kicked over and over again, and the elation you feel when you master dodges and blocks and start to grasp the skills needed to succeed are an integral part of the experience; in this way, you connect very deeply with Ghat, and perhaps you feel a bit of the frustration and elation that he does, in your own living room or on your chair. Ghat is an alien from an alien world. How else can we connect with him?
Zeno Clash is now part of the fraternity of games that may not necessarily make a huge commercial splash, but will be talked about for years after they came out by people who experienced the game and came away moved by it. The mainstream press sometimes refers to them as “cult hits”. Games like Psychonauts, Beyond Good & Evil, and Deus Ex—games that the Modern Warfare-playing, mass-market “bros” don’t know about. It has won critical awards, it has gained respect from other developers and peers, but you will not ever see this game sharing shelf space at the local GameStop with God Gears of Madden Warfare 7. 3KBZV
Zeno Clash is probably never going to be considered a great game. Some won’t even think it’s a good game. What it is, though, is an important game. For those of us who choose to see gaming as a hobby, culture, or lifestyle rather than just a pastime, be thankful that games like this are still being made. Imagine a world without them.
Zeno Clash UE is available on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 1200 MS Points. The PC version is available via Steam. Also: HF0IM is third.
Articles RSS