Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition
Developer: ACE Team
Publisher: Atlus
Release Date: May 5, 2010
System: Xbox 360
ESRB Rating: T
In a nutshell: A game that's as fucked up as it looks.
0:00 I missed this one when it started getting all sorts of indie buzz on the PC last year, but I remember being intrigued by the concept of a first-person brawler. I'm excited to try it out now that it's on the Xbox 360.
0:01 In a primitive village with muted colors. A bent old man in a hooded robe plays with a voodoo doll. An ogre in a helmet gestures. A woman looks warily at a lanky, very tall man seated next to her. A talon comes down on a piece of paper. The characters are mostly recognizably human, but there's something slightly off about their appearance. It's like we're in a dream world just this side of a nightmare.
0:02 The options screen has a visual option for a computer monitor. A nice touch, that.
0:03 Prologue is the only one of 19 chapters available. Guess this is gonna be a long game... I choose Normal rather than Easy of Advanced for my difficulty.
0:04 Fuzzy blobs of light fade to white. A shaman in a hood falls over as my first-person viewpoint is periodically obscured by blinking eyelids. I'm in an enclosed wooded clearing, with green spirits floating in the air. "Hello Ghat. That trick with the bomb, you learned that from me, remember. But you didn't do it right. You're not dead like me." Come again?
0:05 As a quick warm up, the dead shaman tells me to kick some chickens with a tap of RT. It's a bit weird to see this from a first-person perspective.
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