Review by: Michael Barnes

It’s almost impossible to come away from Chilean developer ACE Team’s Zeno Clash, recently released in an “ultimate edition” for Xbox Live, and not be impressed with the sheer artistry and creative use of Valve’s Source engine in detailing a unique and completely alien fantasy world. The surreal, almost abstract setting of Zenozoik has much more in common with the works of Gene Wolfe (Book of the New Sun) than it does with Tolkien and its look calls to mind the grotesque illustrations of Brian Froud (The Dark Crystal) more than it does the airbrushed heroic fantasy of Larry Elmore. Suffice to say the game leaves a stunning sensory impression and some of my best moments with it were found simply in observing Mucolosaurs grazing in a desert under a pink-purple evening sky or sneaking up on a camp of Corwids, single-minded barbarian creatures fixated on performing repetitive tasks, dancing wildly to a capering drummer.

Virtually everywhere you look in this micro-budgeted first-person puncher features some detail, character, or landscape that sparks the imagination and invites you to speculate on histories cultural, social, and natural. The story is vague, almost to a fault, so there is plenty of room for interpretation and the cliffhanger ending suggest a much larger and more compelling tale to be told.

The narrative roughly concerns the player character, Ghat, and his flight from the village Halstedom after the skull-bomb murder of the Father-Mother, a strange stork-like, hermaphroditic creature with several varieties of very angry offspring including Ghat himself. Over the course of the game, Ghat and a female companion travel to various locations including the End of the World. Several playable flashbacks detail the events that lead up to Ghat’s apparent fratricide/matricide, imparting an interesting and somewhat confusing chronological element.

Along the journey, several fascinating characters are encountered including a mercenary with a penchant for crustacean headwear and the use of squirrel bombs. There is the sad story of Oxameter, a Corwid fixated on walking in straight line until he hits a rock and can travel no more, his destiny fulfilled. A mysterious, crowned being called Golem is encountered in a dimension where shadow-statues come to life and attempt to blow out candles. And the Father-Mother himself/herself harbors a fascinating secret that leads into a haunting revelation that calls to mind classic fairy tales and childhood nightmares.