First-person fight club

by ERIK LEIJON

Since every other week there seems to be a new must-have first-person shooter game ready to rock our world, it seems only logical for other genres to go the first-person route—a Trojan horse designed to trick some burned out Halo-head to blast something other than aliens in between Red Bull chug-a-thons.

We’ve been treated to a good attempt at platform jumping via this camera perspective in Mirror’s Edge, while Orcs & Elves and Dark Messiah were commendable first-person dungeon crawling role-playing adventures. But Chilean developer ACE Team has completed an even more unlikely experiment by giving the old school beat ‘em up the FPS treatment in the Steam download service exclusive Zeno Clash (Steam PC/Valve, ACE Team).

Admit it, even if the game turned out to be a complete failure the lure of repeatedly kneeing someone in the head through the eyes of someone else would be undeniable. Like Streets of Rage and Double Dragon before it, Zeno Clash has its fair share of repetitive moments (despite being a short game) and is thoroughly brainless, but Zeno Clash is all about guilt-free B-game beat downs.

Playing as a gangly, native warrior-type fellow accused of killing the mysterious Father-Mother, one must kick, punch and mercilessly club the bevy of freaks—resembling the claymation characters from Tool’s music videos—that occupy the mystical, Western-vibe world.

The gameplay involves mixing up various hard and quick attacks, along with blocking and dodging manoeuvres, although fighting with enemies, especially multiple freakazoids, is naturally cumbersome using the keyboard and mouse. Deflecting and countering enemy strikes is useful, but learning to correctly time the various jukes isn’t worth the practice. Pummelling opponents with hard punches seems to work just fine most of the time, and if not, there will typically be a club or blunt object laying around capable of getting the job done.

Since it’s impossible to lock on to an opponent while holding a weapon, and the slow reload times render guns ineffective, the balance really swings in the favour of the macabre player simply looking to run fist first into every battle. If anything the lack of strategy proves to be the games’ greatest strength—mindless ass-kicking will always be en vogue.

Zeno Clash perhaps has a limited appeal simply because it’s a quick burst of sadistic mayhem, but little touches like the spiritually-influenced storyline and the much appreciated return of the pre-fight vs. screen makes Zeno Clash a small game with simple ambitions. Despite being one of the first earnest attempts at a first-person fighting game, Clash is amusingly campy and old fashioned in execution.

Robot Rock

XBox Live Arcade users looking for an original fighting game should check out the new port of the 1998 arcade classic Cyber Troopers Virtual-On Oratorio Tangram (XBLA/Sega, AM2). In Virtual-On, two colourful mechs fly around a 3D arena, blasting each other with weapons and using speed bursts, jumps and arena landmarks to avoid attacks. It’s one of the few fighters (Power Stone being the other that springs to mind) that truly rewards players for learning how to evade attacks.

Virtual-On still looks great over a decade later, and while the dual-joystick arcade controls made console adaptations back then difficult, the 360 controller’s two analog sticks finally allow Virtual-On to reach its potential. The default controls are different (more like an FPS), although the trickier and ultimately more rewarding awkward mech style of input is available. The battles are impossibly quick and the learning curve steep, but anyone looking for a different kind of strategic combat game should find Virtual-On a worthy challenge.