By John Walker on December 18th, 2008 at 2:01 pm.
Zeno Clash looks strange. Good strange, possibly the best kind, but so very weird. Built using Source, it’s an extremely hands-on FPS, with plenty of gruesome melee punching. There’s a new trailer showing this off, below, along with some interesting character art developers ACE sent our way.
Make sure you watch to the very end of this.
Click on these for the full size pages of the character descriptions, and indeed the one at the top.
18/12/2008 at 14:05 Del Boy says:
That looks great.
18/12/2008 at 14:08 Kua says:
Hooray for something different \o/
18/12/2008 at 14:10 Gap Gen says:
That’s utterly fantastic.
18/12/2008 at 14:11 AndrewC says:
It’ll be worth playing even if it’s rubbish.
18/12/2008 at 14:15 SuperNashwan says:
That looks amazing in a way I can’t quite articulate. I hope it’s as coherently mad as the trailer seems to suggest.
18/12/2008 at 14:16 teo says:
Very 1995 PC game-ish
18/12/2008 at 14:17 Jochen Scheisse says:
The music is shit. Other than that, I feel strangely reminded of eXistenZ.
18/12/2008 at 14:19 Schmung says:
How utterly, utterly bonkers. Not sure about FPS melee gameplay, especially on the source engine. Still, it’s certainly interesting.
18/12/2008 at 14:20 phil says:
I’ll pass, the thing at the start looks like Big Bird crossed with the child catcher, individually those two things caused 73% of my childhood nightmares, combined it’ll give me cardiac failure.
18/12/2008 at 14:20 Optimaximal says:
Looks great, although it’s gonna succeed or fail on the strength of its collision detection – early game or not, fighting seemed a little haphazard at times.
18/12/2008 at 14:22 GibletHead2000 says:
Anyone else reminded of PS:Torment by the visuals?
18/12/2008 at 14:27 SuperNashwan says:
Dev interview on the game here: http://playhard.ru/Article.aspx?id=3218
Bonus geek points in their favour: “The first inspiration was a set of game books of the 1980′s; the Sorcery series from Steve Jackson, mainly because of John Blanche’s art.”
18/12/2008 at 14:29 Down Rodeo says:
I believe the phrase is “what the shit?”
I think it could be rather good though. I like the look of this.
18/12/2008 at 14:30 Man Raised By Puffins says:
Oh my.
I hope an RPS interview with whoever, or rather whatever, was responsible for the Father-Mother is on the cards.
18/12/2008 at 14:40 Turin Turambar says:
I love it. So surreal and different. And i am one who don’t play games for their “visual art”! Ass Creed, Far Cry 2 and Prince of Persia have great art, but they are mediocre games.
Still, I am hoping for a good game here.
18/12/2008 at 14:41 Turin Turambar says:
Quoting that Q&A:
“- The story is an intriguing part. The name of your hero is Ghat. What can you say about his character?
- The story of the game revolves around the conflict between Ghat and Father-Mother who is Ghat’s father and mother at the same time. Father-Mother is the hermaphrodite parent of many different children who live in the chaotic city of Halstedom where his family is a powerful clan. Ghat’s brothers and sisters are not all human-like and the story goes through several locations and even timelines where the player will meet and face very strange and unconventional characters.
The reason of conflict between Ghat and his family is something players will see when they play the game. We don’t want to spoil it now. ”
Wow.
18/12/2008 at 14:46 phuzz says:
basically:
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
18/12/2008 at 14:50 Senethro says:
Even if this is good, consumers will punish the innovation.
18/12/2008 at 14:55 Fazer says:
Firstly I thought “Who the f is this game for?!”, but now I’m actually more interested in a story set in an alternative world. Hope they’ll make a decent one!
18/12/2008 at 14:57 Ian says:
I’ve no idea what to make of it, but I applaud what they’re trying to do none the less.
18/12/2008 at 14:58 Okami says:
Hooray for PC Gaming!
18/12/2008 at 15:00 The Poisoned Sponge says:
That. Looks. Awesome.
18/12/2008 at 15:00 Fazer says:
Senethro, just like they punished Portal, right? It all depends if developers explain the rules step by step and if they don’t include some completely illogical stuff.
18/12/2008 at 15:02 Super Bladesman says:
If it’s different, which I hope it is, let’s hope people buy it for a change…
18/12/2008 at 15:04 Naurgul says:
I think I like it.
18/12/2008 at 15:04 Rook says:
Gameplay looks…. bad.
18/12/2008 at 15:08 Meat Circus says:
WHAT
18/12/2008 at 15:12 Gurrah says:
Don’t know, the first trailer was way better. The gameplay looks a bit off, but the environment and characters are fantastic.
18/12/2008 at 15:12 Tei says:
@GibletHead2000: *raises hand*
18/12/2008 at 15:21 Malagate says:
This game seems to feature a guy who lives on a platform on the back of a really ugly Brachiosaurus-thing where he spends his time throwing para-suicide-bomber-foxes at trespassers. That alone makes it a must have in my books.
18/12/2008 at 15:24 dhex says:
ok, i’m in.
dark messiah, for all of it’s failings – of which there are many – proved to me that fps melee could be done in an interesting and fluid way beyond TES style slashnanigans.
18/12/2008 at 15:24 Morph says:
“???????”
That’s all I have to say.
18/12/2008 at 15:26 Tek says:
Am I really the only one who doesn’t dig the art style? I’ve got nothing against innovation or a fresh, distinct look, but this just isn’t for me, I guess.
18/12/2008 at 15:28 SLDeviant says:
@GibletHead2000: Absolutely, i was wondering what it reminded me of , PST style written all over it.
18/12/2008 at 15:31 Seniath says:
a wha?
18/12/2008 at 15:31 Carey says:
I like melee in Source. I thought it was decent enough in Dark Messiah and had room to get even better. I don’t really care what it looks like. A big brown playdough head with twigs in that shoots a gun might as well be a space marine for all the difference it makes to me. It’s all about what’s new in the stuff you actually play. That’s why Portal worked for me. The underlying mecahincs sold it, and the sweet ass styling of the rest just ‘completes’ the game. Pushes it into legend. Same with the first TR. Badass underlying modular mechanics, slick style, character and sense of place on top = legend. If you can’t get the mecahnics right (in this case the fighting) the rest is just window dressing. Window dressing which reminds me of Sacifice though, which is nice. Here’s the thing: I’d rather play yet another WWII shooter but one with some undefined and exceptional mechanics rather than some undefined but amazingly styled game that plays like generic shooter 3. Where do you put the effort?
18/12/2008 at 15:37 Dr. Wily says:
This looks almost exactly like what I envisioned in my head while reading “Imajica” by Clive Barker. It even has that same feeling of whimsical, brightly colored menace that I liked so much about that book.
I assume, however, that this game will have fewer loving depictions of man-on-androgynous blue hermaphrodite sex.
Oh, Clive Barker. If it weren’t for your random, weird, super graphic hardcore sex scenes you’d be my favorite fantasy author.
18/12/2008 at 15:40 Frans Coehoorn says:
What’s wrong with random, weird, super graphic hardcore sex scenes?
18/12/2008 at 15:40 Xercies says:
The fighting at first looked a bit rubbish since the collision wasn’t really doing anything. I liked the gun play a bit more. This looks like a good world/story i just hope they don’t let it down by the mechanics.
18/12/2008 at 15:49 Malagate says:
@ Frans, the problem is the embarassment when you have friends over and they start flicking through your book. Also the fear of recommending it to anyone on the ground that no matter how good the rest of it is, the special scenes will make them question your real motives.
18/12/2008 at 15:50 jimmy says:
looks nice, but why the hell do the enemys have to bend down to ….well they just show one time how the fiend is getting thrown away, but i hope its not all
18/12/2008 at 15:51 Frans Coehoorn says:
True, true. However, it’s Clive Barker’s unique style. And for that, we should salute him. Same counts for the looks for this game!
18/12/2008 at 15:54 Alex says:
That left me utterly puzzled…
18/12/2008 at 15:55 Pags says:
It looks fantastic, especially for a Source game; for such an old engine, it’s really been proving it’s mettle as of recent. The one problem I do have with Source games though, and this applies to every one of them in recent memory, is how floaty your avatar is. DMoMM was really let down by it because you’d often end up sidling right past the orc you wanted to boot in the face, or end up backing yourself right off a cliff. Hopefully Zeno Clash tries to tweak that a little, because it could very easily ruin the punchy bits.
18/12/2008 at 15:58 Pags says:
Also:
wat
18/12/2008 at 16:01 thefanciestofpants says:
Wow. One to watch eh?
also; LOLWUT
18/12/2008 at 16:02 PaulMorel says:
Wow. That could be awful, but it could be that under-the-radar game that rocks – kind of like Mount & Blade was this year.
18/12/2008 at 16:09 Meat Circus says:
That is nang, blood.
18/12/2008 at 16:10 Radiant says:
There’s a rule:
“unless you are in prison; never fight another man if either of you are naked.”
It’s right below “Buy your round” and just above “Never try and duck out from buying your round”
18/12/2008 at 16:10 Radiant says:
Loin clothes do NOT count.
18/12/2008 at 16:19 Dominic White says:
Melee combat in the Source engine isn’t as outlandish as it may intially seem. The remarkably underrated (especially post-patch) Dark Messiah was about 90% melee combat, and surprisingly great.
The art direction on this game is insane and fantastic, and the gameplay looks to break genre norms as well. So long as it’s not completely unplayable, I’m on-board for this. Hell, I liked Pathologic, even if the translation was terrible.
Tangentially, the new game by Ice Pick Lodge is due for an english release early next year, published by Atari. Formerly known as Tension, now known as The Void. Ice Pick are doing the translation themselves this time, rather than letting a B-list publisher babelfish it.
It looks just as weird as Zeno Clash, and the gameplay is even stranger.
18/12/2008 at 16:21 Dominic White says:
Ha – seems me and Pags have completely different opinions on Dark Messiahs combat. I never had any trouble with it – the only attacks that I ever had overshoot were the heavy ones, which are meant to be risky anyway.
18/12/2008 at 16:25 Dr. Wily says:
@Malagate- Yep, exactly. I also really enjoyed Everville, but I fear that anyone I recommend it to will only focus on the gay sex and miss the point entirely.
18/12/2008 at 16:35 Pags says:
Radiant: you forgot the clause to that rule which adds that it is acceptable if either you or your attacker is of Eastern European origin and you’re in a bath house, a la Eastern Promises.
18/12/2008 at 16:45 Heliocentric says:
the only thing I dont care for is the voice of the “hero” someone give him some throaties.
Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason Tech Demo
http://files.filefront.com/Cryostasis+Sleep+of+Reason+Tech+Demo/;12688161;/fileinfo.html
No idea what’s inside downloading now
18/12/2008 at 16:51 Subject 706 says:
Weird and wonderful looking. Let’s hope it is also good.
18/12/2008 at 16:55 Heliocentric says:
Also!!! Free games on http://www.gog.com
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/beneath_a_steel_sky
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/lure_of_the_temptress
18/12/2008 at 16:57 Newblade says:
Please let this be good. It sounds so interesting and weird. I’ll definately check this out.
Game’s lenght is supposed to be around a Half-Life Episode, by the way.
18/12/2008 at 17:03 Radiant says:
@Pags
Or if you are fighting one legged drug dealers in a russian sauna ala Red Heat.
“COCAINUM!”
18/12/2008 at 17:07 Meat Circus says:
Oooh, does Lure of the Temptress run with ScummVM?
BASS definitely does.
18/12/2008 at 17:20 Muzman says:
Did anyone besides me ever play the old single player Quake 3 mod made by the same people? It was called The Dark Conjunction.
I wouldn’t go looking for it as an example of what these guys’ll do. It was fairly clunky and buggy (abandoned and released unfinished I believe). Had an interesting premise though. It was basically Lovecraftian Half Life in design; linear puzzley levels of a real-world sort in a shooter about the planets aligning and the old ones returning. Made me badly want a proper game along those lines at any rate (still room to do it too. Would be less watery and adventure-y than Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners).
You’d have to have been a bit of a voracious mod nerd to have encountered it I think (which I was at the time).
18/12/2008 at 17:20 peanut says:
@ Meat Circus
I think all the games on gog.com already work on XP and Vista, so no need for ScummVM.
edit- ahh, I just realised you might want to play it on your phone, DS or similar.
18/12/2008 at 17:28 Little Green Man says:
Yay for GOG!
18/12/2008 at 17:29 PleasingFungus says:
Looked… nifty! Very different. I approve of hermaphrodites in video games – they are an important demographic which have been terribly under-served thus far.
18/12/2008 at 17:34 hydra9 says:
Here are the details on the Cryostasis tech demo that Heliocentric mentioned. Unfortunately, it would appear I can’t run it:
This tech demo is designed to show off the capabilities of Nvidia PhysX, but it also provides some very early looks at Cryostasis: The Sleep of Reason. Windows Vista and an Nvidia series 8 or greater desktop GPU are required to run this tech demo. Continue reading for full system requirements.
“In development by 1C games, Cryosatasis is a FPS horror game set in 1968 on a Russian Nuclear powered ice breaker. With freezing conditions around the ship, and only partly working heating the conditions are tough – but ideal for creating a very cool looking FPS with interactive Nvidia PhysX gaming effects. This sneak peak demo gives you an opportunity to be one of the first to see the game actually running on your gaming rig. This scripted flythrough makes full use of GPU-accelerated PhysX features of your GeForce graphics card with some very cool environmental effects.”
18/12/2008 at 17:35 Man Raised By Puffins says:
LotT and BaSS have both been free for a fair old while now (five years in fact, according to wikipedia).
@ Meat: Yup, its been supported by ScummVM for about a year now.
@ SuperNashwan: Cheers for that link.
18/12/2008 at 17:36 hydra9 says:
Re: Zeno Clash.
I’m still not crazy about the main character’s moustache-tattoo.
18/12/2008 at 17:55 Pags says:
@man raised by puffins: RE: BASS and LotT
While they’ve both been free for a while, both haven’t been patched and made to work on XP/Vista, which I’m pretty sure is what GOG does.
18/12/2008 at 18:25 yhancik says:
@Dominic White:
oh, good news about The-Game-Formerly-Known-As-Tension :D
I didn’t even know it was already released in Russia!
http://forum.ice-pick.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4663
yum! (and no, i don’t say that about the high amout of boobage there)
18/12/2008 at 18:31 Tei says:
Looks like a Ubisoft game, before Ubisoft selled his soul to satan to make uninspiring linear dull games.
18/12/2008 at 18:33 Tei says:
@Radiant: followed by the important rule “never kiss a women with more facial hair than yourself”
18/12/2008 at 18:39 Radiant says:
Now that’s just unfair.
18/12/2008 at 18:40 Mman says:
“linear”
Isn’t that, like, the polar opposite problem many people have with Ubi’s current games?
18/12/2008 at 18:45 Pantsman says:
The visual style reminds me strongly of Planescape: Torment, which is a good thing. I also quite liked Dark Messiah, so the prospect of more Source engine first-person melee combat is an enticing one.
18/12/2008 at 18:56 meeper says:
am I the only one made slightly nauseated by the camera movement?
18/12/2008 at 19:17 N says:
Animations could use some work but all in all it’s definitely worth a look, I read an interview with the lead designer on the game, forgot where though, some russian site I believe, interview was in english… the guys are from Chile if that matters to anyone.
18/12/2008 at 20:06 Leeks! says:
That looks lovely. I’ll play it for the art direction alone. It’s like David Lynch did peyote, wandered onto a Guillermo Del Toro set and thought to himself “I’m going to fuck this shit up.”
18/12/2008 at 20:20 Calabi says:
@ Leeks! – Nah it dont look that bad.
Cant wait to play it.
18/12/2008 at 20:32 BooleanBob says:
Has anyone else noticed how great Team ACE’s logo is?
It’s pretty great!
18/12/2008 at 20:39 M.P. says:
The whole look of the thing reminds me strongly of sci-fi/fantasy art from the late 80s/early 90s, of the sort you’d typically find on the boxes of Psygnosis games and heavy metal album covers.
Which will probably be enough to make me buy the game even if it sucks! :p
18/12/2008 at 21:10 An Innocuous Coin says:
Music is kind of shit, gameplay looks like it could be either really neat or really disastrous, but I’ll probably buy it just because of how utterly unique the world and characters are. I’m not sure if thats a bad thing or not.
18/12/2008 at 21:28 Oasx says:
Looks pretty good, especially like the music
18/12/2008 at 21:35 BaconIsGood4You says:
@ BooleanBob
Yup.
Glad someone else noticed it too.
18/12/2008 at 21:59 A-Scale says:
Yeah, genius logo.
18/12/2008 at 22:00 solipsistnation says:
So Dave McKean and Hieronymus Bosch had some kind of ridiculous kinky sex, and one or both of them gave birth to this? Freaky.
18/12/2008 at 22:02 Erlam says:
“The one problem I do have with Source games though, and this applies to every one of them in recent memory, is how floaty your avatar is. DMoMM was really let down by it because you’d often end up sidling right past the orc you wanted to boot in the face…”
Thank you! I thought I was the only person who hated the actual movement on the Source engine. I can’t stand how everything feels like you’re skating on ice.
18/12/2008 at 22:08 BoltingTurtle01 says:
Definitely looking foward to this one. I expect it will be limited in the collision detection by the source engine, but I think some of that could be fixed with scaling. (I noticed they were already trying this. Look at the odd distortion on the arms as they go for the choke move). The basic collision detection for scource is great, but it never quite made it in terms of melee. If you ever noticed it, sometimes when you use a melee in Half-life you don’t actually hit the guy, but the attack still “connects”. Again, can be fixed by the animator/scripter.
18/12/2008 at 23:08 Fat says:
Gameplay didn’t look too hot, but i’m sure they can clean that up… woulda been nice if you could aim your punches but seems to be set to aim straight for the head, easy for them to block you and such, and the grab/throw stuff looked a bit awkward.
We shall see though, nice concept. I really enjoyed Dark Messiah because of the melee in it… it’s something i wish more FPS games would focus on a bit more. Rather than taking the ‘shooter’ part as a base so much.
18/12/2008 at 23:17 Meatloaf says:
Honestly I couldn’t care less about the gameplay. It looks so far away from normalcy that I don’t think I COULDN’T play it.
18/12/2008 at 23:44 El Stevo says:
That is my favourite game.
19/12/2008 at 00:38 Candid_Man says:
That kind of rabid imaginationizing should be the norm for PC games by now.
It’s almost as if a step backward into the 90s is a step forward in terms of thematic originality. Less military stuff and more like this gamepeople!
19/12/2008 at 00:46 Adventurous Putty says:
This looks sexy; I likey.
19/12/2008 at 00:52 Devan says:
Wacky! It looks like nothing new for gameplay, but it holds your interest just because everything from the weapons to the enemies and environments is so different. It makes you want to learn the story just to find a rationale for all the weirdness. Because unlike the games which are strange for the sake of it, this looks like everything has a purpose which makes sense that world.
Three cheers for creativity!
19/12/2008 at 01:07 MeestaNob! says:
Now, usually I’d lob in to a thread around this point and say words to the effect of “Looks great but…”, but I choose not to.
Sure the collision detection isn’t quite there yet. Sure I thought I heard a re-used HL sound effect. Sure, games this odd are usually naff.
But!
I don’t care, this looks utterly bonkers, and I hope they get somewhere with it. As advised by the news piece, check out the last bit of the video? What the FUCK is happening there? Cant wait. It’s ace, and yes, so is their logo.
19/12/2008 at 01:14 hydra9 says:
Much as I like FPSs/action games, I hope this is more than it appears to be. So far, it looks like all these exotic people with exotic backgrounds are just there so you can beat/shoot ‘em.
19/12/2008 at 01:15 Al3xand3r says:
Bolting, Valve’s source engine uses models which are separate from the world for all the first person objects like hands, weapons, crowbars, whatever. It’s just a visual thing, they don’t actually interract with anything, hence why the melee feels off, it’s just a purely visual effect on top of the actual hitting mechanics. It’s basically faked melee, the crowbar is no more than a short range bullet basicaly.
It seems this game has either modified v_ models to really appear within the game world, or doesn’t even use v_models and instead something else, which does physically exist in the game world, either with simply making arms/legs and slap the camera view somewhere so they seem normal, or perhaps by enabling the third person models and sticking the camera in an appropriate place.
I don’t think melee will be restricted to a particular height, as that would make it impossible to hit shorter enemies with it, but even if they do, and make sure all enemies are hittable, it’s probably for the better of the mechanics. There’s really no fighting game which allows you to attack as freely as a first person view would, at the most you get high, mid and low attacks, nothing inbetween, and usually skipping mid altogether for the sake of better, more engaging mechanics.
19/12/2008 at 01:18 Al3xand3r says:
If you read the character profiles you can more or less tell what’s going on at the last part of the video.
I guess reading is beyond even the intellectuals around here, even though they crit the game for seeming like a standard FPS, and yet they react like standard gamers just looking @ the eye candy anyway.
That last part is just father-mother taking care of his/her young.
19/12/2008 at 01:21 Guhndahb says:
This is rather exciting. If they can pair a great, thought-provoking story with the game-play I’m seeing, I could very well love it.
19/12/2008 at 03:16 Saul says:
Best design ever. Yes, it is pretty much pure Planescape, but there’s nothing wrong with that, and the concept seems much, much stranger.
19/12/2008 at 03:54 pilouuuu says:
I’m hoping that this game ends up being at least slightly good because it’s being developed in my country Chile and it would be a first here.
If it is successful I will apply for a job there hehe.
In any case it is really good to see a creative and different game when nowadays most games seem to be clones and generic.
19/12/2008 at 04:08 Psychopomp says:
Consider my attention motherfuckin’ caught.
19/12/2008 at 08:14 jay says:
God this looks mad.
Can’t wait!
21/12/2008 at 20:11 Bhazor says:
My only disapointment so far is that given all these wierd and wonderful character designs I’ll end up having to play as a ruggedly handsome brunnete. Why can’t I play as a twenty foot tall crow with tits?
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