izigame.me

A long, difficult, beautiful prequel to Zeno Clash I & II, this one matches up perfectly in terms of theme but plays almost nothing like those other games. It's also Ace's fanciest release to date. Instead of first-person brawler, it's a third-person adventure with a faint touch of Souls, about a wandering martial arts master who won the appearance of a gangly chinless burn victim from the genetic lottery. I like the simple story, even if it doesn't quite have the profusion of little dramas and lore bits that turned me on with the second game.
The fighting requires you to be fast and deliberate, and to me it felt as weird as the gameworld at first -- but it's not unresponsive in the least. Coming right off the previous two games, which are slower and straightforward, this took me time to get used to. But more than just the accelerated speed, my major hurdle was that fighting game principle known as CANCELLING. Basically, you have to do another input, be it a dodge or attack, the instant your previous attack connects -- if you're successful, you flash white and the next thing you do happens with extra speed. If you cancel-attack or cancel-dodge-attack, that attack is more powerful, too. In general, the more rapidly and consistently you can string together attacks via cancelling, the more cumulatively powerful your offense is. You have to flow about the opponent, slapping him silly, weaving beyond his reach, parrying his attacks; if you're particularly fleet with your phalanges, you can tear a boss apart in no time. If you can't or won't learn the cancelling . . . you will not have a fun time playing this game. If you work to build up the muscle memory, however, it becomes a fun, fast, and furious time. You can also buy heavy melee weapons to carry with you for the big guys, which I recommend.
In this early age of Zenozoik, the mutant denizens have One Law that they call the Ritual. It's a dice game you can play before combat -- and you can get extra dice from bat-guy merchant Eo and game-modifying tchaks that flip or destroy enemy dice where they lie on the craps mat. If you win, you can inflict a handicap of your choice on the enemy. If they win, you get the handicap. If you get good enough and don't particularly enjoy the Ritual (at times I loved it and at times I did not), you might just want to rush up and smack your enemies without playing the game at all, whereupon things just start.
There's a lot going on, gameplay wise. I mentioned a Souls influence earlier, but it's mostly superficial, sans the annoying bits that the From series has doubled down on as of late. There is the big, interconnected world, and you can open shortcuts to make it more interconnected; there, of course, is the famous "Souls" difficulty. But on the anti-Souls side, you can load any time; you don't lose experience upon death; the woody "spiritual" body Pseudo gains upon first death or waking up at night actually has its uses and is not just a big punishment for getting killed. The wooden body can go through bramble hedges, for example, that flesh-Pseudo couldn't traverse without skinning himself.
Storywise, it's a little vaguer than the other two games, though I mostly see what's going on. But once again, we have that great theme of connection between real and accidental family, between people in a greater society too. The way the mutant faces emote -- the ugly thumb mug of Pseudo, the big eyes of little birdy Boy, even the gnarled faces of Zenozoik's Cockney titans -- is wonderful. The voice acting, too, is at its highest point in the series. I could almost swear that Ron Perlman was the voice of Pseudo, but no, it's a very talented guy called Glenn Wrage.
It's a beautiful game that deserves play and praise, and with the success this installment has received, maybe I'll get to tool around one of my new favorite gameworlds yet again!