Zeno Clash is a first person brawler taking place in an alien landscape, following a fella named Ghat as he tries to find a better place to live after killing his tribe's "father-mother".
Let's get the good stuff outta the way first, the brawling in this game is amazing, the punches really have some kick to them, and you never really feel like you're messin up unless you happen to start taking hits which is very nice. The combat isn't terribly complex, mostly normal melee combos and some context sensitive stuff. (Holding back while hitting heavy punch will make a "super heavy" punch that is difficult to land but sends people flying on top of doing tons of damage, for instance) Not a bad thing necessarily, but at times you can't help but feel there's lost potential.
The scenery is very nice, you've mostly got bizarre looking plants, the guns, being made out of bone and wood (it seems like), are fantastic looking, and are very well animated. While everything looks quite different from earth (obviously), the fact that you regularly encounter humans (and bizarre pig/bird men) as enemies it kind've takes things out of the alien atmosphere. At the end of the day, I'm okay with this as really, what else are you going to have a fist fight with?
Bad... almost everything else. Which isn't to say it's a bad game, and in fact most of the "bad" isn't really so much "bad" as "why did they do this". The game has a pretty wide theme of trying to be more then one thing, and it can get a little extreme. For instance, the game has FPS style guns too. They fit in theme with the game, that's fine, they're perfectly effective (and honestly balanced really well, you rarely feel like a gun is just killin the hell out of everything, or at least not as good as your fists), but at the same time, there are two seperate boss fights where you are forced into using guns for an extended period of time, and one full stage of drifting down a river while a plot dump happens and you shoot one shot kill enemies from your boat. I feel like that could've been a cutscene.
The gun boss fights are their own issue. They aren't terrible but they're... jarring. The gunplay is fine, it's easy to hit stuff, in fact I've had an easier time aiming at things on the move in this game then any other, but it mostly boils down to doing the same thing over and over again. Which works for the melee, enemies are constantly on the move, you've gotta dodge and block and such, it mixes it up, but for the gun fights it amounts to running around like a madman and taking a pot shot when you get a minute (while you're busy kicking squirrel bombs that are scurrying around your feet, and staying away from them). To make things more frustrating the boss has absolutely no issue with one shotting you if you get enough of the little jerks around you at one time, which leads to doing it all over again. The second version of this guy adds spitting crabs into the mix which to me seems to completely ignore all the issues with the first boss and just make it harder to get the squirrel bombs out of your face. This, combined with the fact that it is focusing on, easily, the worst part of the game makes the bosses KIND'VE miserable.
There's another weapon, a staff that shoots fire that is similar, and it's a surprisingly neat weapon. The fireballs arc a bit so you have to aim, they one shot things that are otherwise mostly immortal, and you have to "catch" fireballs enemies throw at you to recharge your ammo, which is rather hard. I feel like if they just tweaked the guns a bit it might've worked better. On to one more combat related gripe...
Melee weapons. Melee weapons are basically used to kill "big" enemies, like elephant people or boar people, and again, it falls into the same traps guns do. You do the same thing over and over, maybe while dodging small enemies (although the weapon will take care of them too). You hit them once while charging, they fall back, charge again, you hit them again. There's never much of any reason to move around during these exchanges, they're easily timed, and it overall adds very little to the game.
The plot is.... sparse. It's basically Ghat and his ladyfriend wandering through the world and seeing the sights, along with periodic flashbacks that reveal the things ghat did before he killed before he killed father mother, and ultimately, the reason, and fight itself. (which is very well done and involves guns, as a side note.)This isn't bad, it's.... it's a plot basically. He goes to father mother after beating up some thugs, asks her some questions and she freaks out about it and sics guards on him, which pisses him off and leads to him killing her. Unreasonable reactions on both ends. (which is acknowledged by the game)
After that they find a fellow named Golem, a person placed by a mysterious race at what would appear to be the edge of the world, to sit and wait until he is needed. They wake him up, and he takes them back to the home village, after revealing he inexplicably has a full knowledge of ghat and father mother's conflict. As they travel along the coast they find a woman who's child has inexplicably turned into a pig overnight. Curious.
When they get back to the primary town, Father mother reveals (a term used in game) that it was alive the entire time, albeit wounded quite badly. THis leads to the final fight of the game, ghat and father mother duke it out one more time, almost leading to ghat's death, until golem saves the day by.... breaking his fingers, which breaks ghat and father mother's fingers as well. This happens earlier in the game at a much less important part of the story, so it doesn't just come out of nowhere, by the way. Then the game ends after Golem reveals father mother's secret, that she isn't a father mother, she kidnaps Children and replaces them with animals and takes them back to the village where she raises them (remember the pig?), revealing the reason she chased Ghat out of the town, as she thought he had figured out her secret. Golem then ends with the revelation that the shattered family is going to have to rebuild if things are to continue as they are.
And that's the end. It answers one question, and is otherwise mostly set dressing. Not.... bad? But it's not winning any prizes either.
However, despite all this, they do a very good job of downplaying the bad parts (guns and melee weapons), and the plot isn't so bad you'll dislike it, it just ends a little early.
So, after all is said and done, Zeno clash is hardly a bad game. Would I buy it for 30 bucks? I dunno about that. Ten/Fifteen? Maybe. I'm kinda stingy. Has it earned its' independent game of 2009 reward from PC gamer? Definitely. The 3D environments are beautiful and run very well even on my laptop, the combat is fantastic, and the game knows when to let itself out. It's not a game that can keep your attention for years, or even weeks, but for the time it spends, it's most definitely a wonderful game, even if the plot needed a little bit more time to develop then the game had.