Zenophobe

WTF?

      On tuesday I picked up Zenoclash from the Steam store after being assured by the marketing department that it was the Portal of 2009. Predictably however this statement was a little off. For those who don't know Zenoclash is an interesting amalgam of Heironymus Bosch and Soul Calibur. You control Gaht, as he kicks the asses of the denizens of Zenozoic.

    The developer Ace promised a wonderous mix of brutal melee combat and ranged combat with guns made of scrap metal. They achieved this to some degree but overall it falls a little short of expectations. Granted, I only played for about 2 or 3 hours, but the game seemed intent on pissing me off. For one thing, all of the enemies in this "Brutal hand to hand combat action game" seemed to have impeccable aim with all weapons that did massive amounts of damage to me with every shot. Needless to say, this effect wore off as soon as I picked up the same weapon.

     Moving on, the aiming system is extremely frustrating to use. In order to aim with a gun you are holding, you have to hold down the right mouse button in order to bring up the crosshairs and actually shoot at something. The problem with this is that in order to aim you need to stand reletivly still while the other enemies charge you from all angles. 

      For that matter the game seems to focus far too much on ranged combat rather thatn the proudly touted melee combat. Apart from that though the environments are quite possibly the epitome of source engine graphics. The characters are very imaginative and have a lot of personality.  That alone is honestly enough to keep this game from being a total disappointment.

     All things considered, Zenoclash is fairly good game with excelent graphics(not Crysis good, but still), and an engaging story. Overall, i'd give this game an 8.5 because nothing that I really have a problem with is unfixable with a patch. 

         And no, the saving thins didn't give me any real problems...