You know, when I first played the three-level press demo of Zeno Clash, I thought THAT was fun. When I received the full game, though — that was the stuff! It’s almost good enough to ingest directly into your system.

Zeno Clash is a first-person combat game. It’s made by the indie team ACE Team and has been in the works for a rather long time. The game uses Valve’s Source Engine, which has been used in such games as Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2’s assorted episodes and basically every game made by Valve. It’s also used in other third-party games like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic by Arkane Studios and, of course, Zeno Clash.

Zeno Clashis so stunningly different from every other game out there, so I don’t know where to start. I guess I can start by telling you about the constantly shifting graphics. What I mean by this is that throughout the course of the game, you’ll meet incredibly detailed characters and then directly meet one that was sloppily done. They’re all acceptable, just very noticeable. The rest of the graphics, however, are beautiful! The skyboxes are absolutely fantastic, and the maps have such detail that one could only hope to find in a Valve game.

In Zeno Clash, one of my gripes is that you move through way too many different scenes in such little time, which can make it hard to judge where you are. It’s mainly because of your flashbacks — which I’ll tell you more about later.

There are a few different attacks in Zeno Clash. You have your standard three-punch attack, which I prefer not to use. Then, you have your strong attack. This is basically a very strong attack that, if the enemy is not guarding, will do a hefty amount of damage. If you manage to stun an enemy, you can approach and grab them, choosing to either knee-bash them or throw them in another direction. Alternatively, you can throw an uppercut and send them flying — hopefully into your adversaries. This will leave them disabled for a few seconds, during which you can kick them while they’re down.

There is a rather unique enemy type, the behemoth or heavy. The heavy enemies can only be hurt via a hammer or any other bashing weapon. It takes three hits with a bashing weapon, and they then hold their heads. Bash them on the head, and they crumple to the ground — only to get up again. Crap. You have to go through the entire cycle three times before they finally, finally, FINALLY die. An interesting note is that behemoths charge at you to attack, and if you line up one of your enemies with a charging heavy, sometimes they’ll start to attack each other. Let them take care of each other and get a few hits in here and there.

There are guns in Zeno Clash. Most of the time, you’ll have to get them from your enemies. The most common guns are the fishing hook guns. Then there are the rocks-that-explode crossbows, and you have your grenade launcher. Yeah, there’s a grenade launcher. In Zeno Clash. I digress. All the guns require you to hold down the right mouse button before firing.

There also are a few advanced moves. For example, while blocking, you can evade right and throw a quick, strong punch directly into their face. Or, perhaps you could knock their attack out of the way and kick them with a snap kick? Who knows? Well, I do, but ... you know, it’s for effect.

The story is mainly told through a series of flashbacks. You, Ghat, run away with your potential lover Deadra. (I see the way she looks at Ghat!) Ghat tells Deadra his story as they travel away from their hometown of Halstedom, fleeing something terrible Ghat did. During these flashbacks, players take control of Ghat, and there’s always at least one fight to be had. The story is very engrossing, to the point that I was on the edge of my seat whenever it threw another twist at me. Yes, games can physically throw things at you. Duck.

The voice acting is rather strange to be honest. A lot of the voices are superb, yet some just stand out in such a way that it makes one want to go to his neighbor’s house and steal his/her Xbox 360 HD cords and then drop them somewhere in the wilderness where two fugitives will find them, then start whipping people with them, one being named Ghat. Well, maybe not exactly like that, but something along the lines of insane and ridiculou. For example, one woman’s voice sounded so American and modern, yet almost all the other voices are dark.

Aside from the story mode, there is the challenge mode. This consists of a tower made of five levels, each with a few levels of its own. Each level gets progressively harder to the point that you’re fighting three behemoths at a time! There also are leaderboards, but I’m not faring too well in those, unfortunately.

All in all, I had a blast playing Zeno Clash. It’s the most amazing game you’ll ever play — OK, maybe not. But it’s very good, so it makes you think you’re playing the best game out there. I recommend this to anyone who doesn’t have a fear of NOT being able to take down an enemy with an auto-shotgun.