Long version. Zeno Clash is an indie game released last week-ish. There is a demo available on Steam. I highly recommend trying the demo - it's one of the best titles I've seen, indie or not. The visuals, which are very nice if you are like me and love the weird and bizarre, are easy to find, so I won't comment on them further.
The game itself is a first person fighting game with fps elements. It follows the traditional fighter modus operandi: you go through a series of small, enclosed levels, beat all the enemies within them, and then progress linearly to the next one. It differs from the Soul Caliber model, however, in several key ways.
First, the level design, while small (it takes about ten seconds to run from one end to the other, unless there is something in the way), is the sort of thing one expects from a shooter. There are obstacles, barriers, occasional weapons or healthpacks (fruit) lying around, scripted events, and so on. There are multiple enemies at a time, which you have to prioritize between.
Second, there is a decent story with good voice acting and some semblance of characterization.
Third, in stead of mashing buttons and triggering meaningless combos, the combat feels natural, intuitive-but-complex, and brutally fun. Well - unarmed combat is. Armed combat is horrible. Once you have a melee weapon in your hands, you are down to a single attack or throwing your weapon at the enemy - the former does a lot of damage, while the latter is only good for putting your opponent off guard for bashing his or her head in with your fists, elbows, knees, and feet.
Ranged weapons are standard for a shooter, except all weapons all have unlimited clips (with limited ammunition per clip) and do damage and knockback comparable to punching your opponents. There are similarly underpowered grenades.
All weapons are incapable of blocking and are knocked out of your hands when you take a single melee hit - the game's focus is very much on unarmed melee combat. The only case where they are not knocked from your hands is in the horrible boss fights.
Bosses can only be seriously injured using melee weapons. Some unarmed power attacks also do a little damage. The entirety of a boss fight is backing away, then running forward and trying to time your attack so that it hits as you arrive, but before the enemy's attack hits you. It's stupidly difficult even on the easy setting and none of the cool things from unarmed combat carry over - except from time to time one of your precisely timed weapon attacks will turn out to be a useless crotch kick that does nothing but earn you a sledgehammer-sized fist to the noggin
. Despite this, the unarmed combat and the art direction is extremely cool. You owe it to yourself to download the demo and see if you like it enough to ignore its flaws and buy the game.
