Two years later, Zeno Clash still weirds me out

That would be Zeno Clash.

I wouldn’t call it a great game by any means. The mechanics were clunky, the levels were corridors (often times, literally so), and many of the enemy encounters were exercises in frustration.

But I don’t think any of that was the point. All the gameplay mechanics felt as if they were just means to an end. That end? To deliver the weirdest game ever created.

And I’m not talking Darth-Vader-as-a-scorpion weird. That’s just silly. I’m talking get-under-your-skin-and-lay-eggs weird. After playing the first few levels, I must have felt like the first man ever to pull a squid into his boat: “How can this even exist?”

 

 

 

Zeno Clash — how to describe it? I would have a hard time calling it a first-person fighter, aside from the fact that you hit people with your own extremities. It has nowhere near the depth required for a game to be considered a fighter, but it does brawling very well. I guess.

That’s why it’s not a great game.

But here’s why it's an amazing experience:

I can describe the art direction as cavemanpunk (did I just invent a word?) — picture the Flintstones meets Labyrinth in a Salvadore Dali dreamscape instead of an Escher mindfuck, and you have a fair approximation of the game's style. I found myself often looking away from the screen for the simple reason that what I was experiencing was so far removed from anything I had ever encountered in any form of media before. 

The story is a paranoid nightmare of sexual identity, oppression, and insanity. If Franz Kafka was a Frank Herbert fan and wrote the script to the Dark Crystal while on acid, he’d come up with something close to this. Again, it isn’t a horror game; far from it. But it elicits something in the player that is itself horrifying.

 

 

I could make a very convincing argument that a third-person perspective would have benefited the mechanics significantly. I won’t, however. The first-person perspective forces the player to look the surreal characters (and landscapes) in the eye.

A year and a half later, I am still thinking about it.

Truth be told, I never finished it. I couldn’t. The game is too weird. I had to watch someone else play through on YouTube…I couldn’t actually experience the conclusion first hand.

Maybe now I could, but I kind of don’t want to. Seeing the game on my Xbox Dashboard makes my skin crawl. Imagining re-entering the game in that sewer level makes me shiver.

Ultimately, however, I don’t really want to give up on Zeno Clash’s world. I don’t want to close that door. As much as it repulses me, it enthralls me. It’s as exhilarating as it is bizarre. I have no idea how it exists, but I am very happy it does.

I honestly wish more games affected me like this. I don’t play horror games, but I do begin to understand their draw when reflecting on Zeno Clash.