Zeno Clash II, at it again.

Every few months I drop back into one of the Zeno Clash games to see if i can get anything done.

 

I never can because it requires Mortal Kombat style combos to really progress and the SETTING IS TOO DAMN DISTRACTING.

Zeno Clash is a hand to hand first person combat game in an open world that lies somewhere between Heironomous Bosch, Planescape Torment, and that terrible 90s Sandman tv show.

Yes there are guns that fire teeth, yes all grenades are skull molotovs wearing jawbone crowns.

Yes you are rescuing the BabaYag-esque andgrogonous  FatherMother who was your creator and nemesis in the first title from laser space Golems.

A roundup of this latest hour long session:

-Leashed blackbirds serve as line of sight markers to map travel-points

-An outrigger raft made by lashing the bloated corpses of half a dozen walrus' together with wood and furs.

-A 12 foot predatory flamingo beast

-A 4 foot flea/crustacean with eyes floating in a transparent face-ballsack

-A man with a palette grafted in place of a jawbone who desires large moths to grind into pigment for his artworks. In constant fear of not being able to create.

-The entire city is home to small packs of baby pigs, the only clean and naturally proportioned creatures in this universe..

-Scifi laser mandalas placed by a mysterious authority, assumedly by the musclebound Orwellian space dandy that makes MotherFather seem like family again. (I found out you can blast them away with your moon-beam focus gauntlet)

-Just noticed the Coliseum is built into the head of a giant stone bust for some reason.

-I have a cool cyber/bronze gauntlet grafted to my forearm and I cannot remember why or how (its been months since I played last.) edit: if aligned with the sun or moon it focuses a deadly beam that can blast enemies between you and the solar source. Thats right, you pull energy from the sun. With your fists.

-Better tooth guns than ExistenZ yes you heard me right. two of them. Fish skulls. Bone shards. Lots of teeth.

-an area full of camels that have pockets sewn on their humps and wrought iron cupholders on their harnesses.

All of these things I would like to see in an RPG. Its like a Slavic influenced, orwellian garden of earthly delights in which you murder lifelong friends with your bare fists because of mythical daddymommy issues.

Pity as a video game it is mediocre at best. I would kill for a graphical remaster or an art book to be released.

It reminds me of all the No Mans Sky screen-caps going around.

Oh and then there is the dark undertones of fate and purpose to these twisted beings. Destiny is cruel in this world and everyone has a purpose to play.