Beautiful and bizarre. Dreamlike and disturbing. Gorgeous and grotesque. All of these adjectives and more describe the sweet alien fruits of Chilean development house ACE Team’s labors. Indeed, it may sound like cheap, boilerplate hyperbole to say that there’s nothing on the market today quite like Zeno Clash–a nice splash for an advertisement or the back of a retail box–but that makes it no less true. And now, with the help of Atlus, (never a publisher to shy away from fringe titles) console gamers can finally step into the world of Zenozoik themselves.

I first heard about Zeno Clash not long after its release on PC last year. It looked and sounded unlike anything I’d seen in recent years (indeed, if not ever) and if there’s one thing I’m a sucker for, it’s the strange and unique. I eventually pounced it during one of Steam’s many amazing sales and promptly began not playing it. You see, unless it’s an MMO or strategy game, I’m not very adept with a mouse and keyboard under my hands and Zeno Clash seemed very much like the kind of thing that would play better with a controller. Only I didn’t own a wired 360 controller. And I never got around to buying one. And so it sat — paid for, but not yet installed–on my Steam account for months.

So it was with no small amount of jubilation on my part when I heard that Atlus was going to assist the boys at ACE with porting the game (as well as tweaking, re-balancing, and adding new content, such as the Zeno Rush time challenge mode) to Xbox Live Arcade as Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition. My reluctance to spend $30 on a controller had not been in vain after all.

Set in an alien fantasy world called Zenozoik, Zeno Clash tells the story of an odd young man named Ghat. Ghat has a rather dysfunctional family life, you see. The game begins with him having just seemingly killed his parent–the birdlike, hermaphroditic Father-Mother–and fleeing his home in the city of Halstedom, with his now-murderous brothers and sisters hot on his heels, bent on revenge. After escaping with the help of his companion, Deadra, Ghat recounts to her the events that led him to this point, the narrative bouncing between past and present.

While the visuals themselves may not wow in terms of fancy technological trickery and flashy effects–textures are generally a bit flat, sometimes blurry and the lighting leaves everything feeling static and oddly lifeless, a world in stasis–the rich, vibrant weirdness of the environment and its inhabitants more than makes up for it. Animalistic humanoids and mutated grotesqueries are par for the course in this sparse, desolate world. Picture a lovechild born of the joint imaginations of Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch (One of ACE’s admitted influences) and the more fantasy-inspired work of Clive Barker and you might be a third of the way there.

Zeno Clash‘s already unique style is complemented by the game itself being a first-person beat ‘em up, not a genre that’s known for having an abundant back-catalog (quickly: name five off the top of your head). Like most brawlers, you have a standard mix of light and strong attacks, degradable weapons, dodges, throws, and blocks. Combat doesn’t match the typical format of mashing the same buttons over and again as rapidly as you can, however; there’s a unique rhythm and flow to Zeno Clash‘s face-smashing. For instance, holding down the right trigger for light attack will actually begin a three-hit combo move; something you don’t get by tapping it three times. This turns battles into a well-timed dance requiring awareness of your surroundings, as you’re often facing two or three opponents at once. A lock-on feature allows you to stay focused on a single foe at a time, should you prefer.

Maybe I’m just getting slow in my old age, but dodging was always a dicey prospect for me. Enemies didn’t seem to telegraph their attacks with enough of a window for me to avoid them, but when it does work correctly, dodging is a very effective tool; things slow down for a split-second and your follow-up attack packs far more punch. Also, one of the new features Atlus added for the port, an “Awareness Mode”, doesn’t really do its job too well. As I mentioned above, you’re almost always outnumbered in a fight, so to help keep you from getting flanked and surrounded, a small icon of each adversary will appear on the edges of the screen, showing you where they’re located relative to the direction you’re facing. A good idea, but poorly implemented in that the icon only appears when said enemy is practically on top of you. And by that point, it’s too late — you’re already getting hit.

The only other potential complaints I have is that the game is a little on the short side, weapon controls are slightly dodgy (especially guns) and combat can get a little repetitive, but with brawlers such is the nature of the beast. Also, the ending is a little unsatisfying in that it seems to pull the by-now typical cop-out of setting up a potential sequel instead of offering a decent degree of closure. That being said, I fully support ACE putting out a sequel (or any other properties set in the world of Zenozoik) as soon as is humanly possible. Come on–you guys don’t need THAT much sleep, do you?

Indeed, where Zeno Clash succeeds in spades is in its delivery of a unique engrossing world that leaves you craving more, despite the meagre, almost non-existent threads of history and narrative you’re given. The original project that Zeno Clash emerged from (a game then titled Zenozoik) had planned to incorporate a larger world and RPG mechanics and while such a project seems obviously beyond the scope of such a small team of developers, the idea of a larger game set in the same universe made me salivate. I want to know so much more about these monstrous characters and the world they inhabit.

The finest praise I can offer is the following anecdote. During the chapter entitled “Return,” as Ghat, Deadra and the mysterious Golem silently guided their boat along a strange, preternatural river flowing through another world, everything fell perfectly into place–the solemn atmosphere of the “Otherworld”; the tense, dreamlike strains of Patricio Meneses’ “Land of Zenozoik” in the background; the uncomfortable conversation unfolding between the passengers as I fended off rock-throwing creatures on the shoreline–that I didn’t realize until much later on that I had just played through a level that was essentially a sub-par on-rails shooter.

And I didn’t mind. At all.

It was a sublime moment and I felt as if I’d just been drawn out of a waking dream. Sometimes my dreams are pretty damn weird, mind you. That actually may go a long way in explaining why I enjoyed Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition as much as I did. If you find your dreams skew similarly dark and strange, I advise you to pick this game up with all due haste. Zenozoik awaits.

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Things We Liked: A strange, surreal world populated by strange surreal characters. Everything made the port from PC, and then some! Pit and Tower challenge modes can be fun, if frustrating. Beautiful score by Patricio Meneses. Nothing else like it out there. Plays as good as I’d hoped on a controller. Explosive squirrels.

Things We Disliked: New “Zeno Rush” mode felt disappointing – needed more meat. Could have had a more satisfying ending – where’s my Zeno Clash 2, ACE Team? Felt some combat elements (esp. Awareness Mode) could have handled better. Somewhat short.

Target Audience: Lovers of the unique, weird and bizarre. Brawler buffs looking for a new take on the genre. Fans of “experiences.” Anybody who wants to replicate the mood of that “accidental” cough syrup overdose without gagging or being nauseous.

(Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition – Developer: ACE Team. Publisher: Atlus. Available on Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade. Original version, without Ultimate Edition enhancements, available on PC. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. Unfamiliar with CFD!’s review system? Read our newly revised explanation here.)