Most people have a very limited idea about what fantasy, as a genre, can be. Peter Jackson and the late Gary Gygax hold most of the blame, for even as they were mainstreaming gigantic pretend worlds and tying them to humid basements full of neckbearded dice rollers, they also pin-holed fantasy as nothing more than an extension of Tolkien’s ideas. Fantasy has elves, dragons, wizards, heroic short guys and ugly things that live under mountains and eat babies. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, and then Mom yells down the stairs, asking how the supply of Cheetos is holding up. What ACE has done with Zeno Clash is remind people that fantasy is not bound by these rules; it isn’t bound my any rules at all. It doesn’t have to make any sense, it doesn’t have to try to explain itself. Fantasy should be interesting, foreign and bizarre. Zeno Clash accomplishes all of this, all while playing better than any of the previous attempts at first person brawling by larger and better-funded developers.

There have not been many successful attempts at first person hand to hand combat. Most FPSs have it in some degree, but it’s always feeling detached and inaccurate, and as long as the guns have ammo there is no reason to use it. Mirror’s Edge tried, but that placed a much greater emphasis on getting places than doing anything, and the combat understandably suffered. Breakdown, Chronicles of Riddick and Maken X were all valiant attempts, but Breakdown had a little too much platforming for its own good, Riddick is not nearly as good as anyone remembers it being and nobody played Maken X at all. Zeno Clash’s gameplay is much more focused than any of these: hitting things in the face with blunt objects. No jumping. No puzzle solving. This is much closer to Streets of Rage than anything else, and that focus makes the combat much more enjoyable. There is an initial breaking in period where punches miss, blocks are timed wrong and generally the player gets his ass kicked by elephant men with odd shaped heads. Then it suddenly clicks. After a few battles I understood why each fight is preceded by a Street Fighter style versus screen. Battles with each bizarre opponent are different, battles with a bunch at the same time are insane, and they all require unique strategies. ACE has gotten right what EA, Namco, Sega and Atari have not, and I haven’t even gotten back to how unbelievably bizarre the game is.

I have never found myself under the influence of any hallucinogenic substances. No offense to anyone who has, but I take my solace from a bottle, not something cooked up in someone’s basement with leftover chemicals from under the sink. If I were to imagine, however, what some really good shit would do, Zeno Clash would about sum it up. Every character, from the bird legged androgynous father-mother to the player character’s bestial siblings to throwaway NPCs in a bar that serves rooster blood, are unique and just slightly disturbing. The Corwids of the Free are especially strange. One walks only in a straight line, another plucks out opponents’ eyes because he wants to be invisible, and another eats people, all just because that is what they do. Zeno Clash presents itself in a very matter of fact manner, which makes the setting and relatively thin plot much easier to accept. Time is not wasted on anyone explaining why, things simply are because they are. Environments range from towns where the houses are strangely organic to a beach front with a massive beached something stinking up the shore, only faltering in the middle with a generic old temple filled with same looking mud creatures. Thankfully that section is over quickly and it is back to Jim Henson nightmare fodder fueled by the best third party use of the Source engine since, well, ever.

As good as most of Zeno Clash is, ACE slips in a few new developer quirks. The voice acting is, for the most part, terrible. I realize that paying for big name voice actors is probably not in the budget for an indie title like this, but some of it is embarrassingly bad. Ranged weapons are also handled poorly. They are required for several engagements, and useful for most, but it is more difficult than it should be to switch from ranged to melee combat. Targeting opponents in general is awkward, usually switching to a new bad guy instead of releasing the target so you can run away. These can be fixed easily by mapping one button to either holster or manually drop a weapon and another to un-target an enemy without choosing another. These are both small warts on an otherwise grotesquely beautiful game. Zeno Clash is focused, brutal, and among the strangest of games I have ever played. Now I am going to play it again, just because that is what I do.