Dr. Seuss, but with more fist fights - Clash: Artifacts of Chaos Quick Review

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Play it if the idea of an off-beat beat ‘em up appeals to you, or if you have fond memories of 2000 AD comics. Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is a new game set in Zenozoik, the strange world of the Zeno Clash games. It’s full of strangely shaped mutants, aggressive wildlife, and a wiry old hermit named Pseudo who’s just trying to help a little bird boy get rid of a curse. It’s a game that fully commits to a punk rock, hand-drawn art style and actually manages to pull it off.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve spent six hours exploring the wild, Seussian world of Zenozoik, and during that time I have punched many weirdos, animals, and even plants directly in the face. While Pseudo doesn’t seem like a particularly violent guy, Zenozoik is a rough place, and the only law is that everyone has to accept the results of ritualistic pre-fight dice matches. I’ve explored the first five areas so far and unlocked several new fighting abilities for Pseudo.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Punching stuff. Clash: Artifacts of Chaos’s third-person brawling probably resembles 2018’s God of War more than anything else, but without Kratos’s mighty Leviathan Axe. Pseudo instead uses an expanding variety of fighting moves and stances, and each strike lands with a satisfying thump. Finding special totems hidden off the beaten path allowed me to unlock new special moves, which I could then slot into my loadout as I saw fit. Landing hits and parrying at just the right moment raised Pseudo’s fighting meter, which allowed me to enter a first-person view and pummel enemies with even more special moves. Combat is about dodging in and out, looking for the right moments to strike, and unleashing flurries of punches and kicks after an opponent whiffs with an ill-timed haymaker. It feels simple at first but gets challenging quickly.

• Warmth and kindness. Zenozoik is a place where everyone seems resigned to using violence to settle their differences, but there’s a surprising amount of heart under the surface. While Pseudo is a gruff and prickly old guy, he’s also refreshingly kind and sympathetic towards both the boy he’s taking care of and the oddball mutants he ends up fighting. “Everyone wants to sell me to Gemini,” the boy sighs at one point. “Do they hate me?” Pseudo reassures him gently: “They don’t hate you,” he says. “Honestly, I think everyone’s just scared.”

• Terrific visuals and a great score. I mean, just look at this game—it’s stunning! The graphic novel line art style has helped the Borderlands series stand out from the crowd, and I think Clash: Artifacts of Chaos does it even better. Characters are shaded with inky cross-hatching, and the hills and trees in the background fade and lose detail just like you’d see in a colorful comics panel. Developer ACE Team has even included a black-and-white mode if you want a hardcore graphic novel look, and it’s stunning to see the detail in every frame. The soundtrack moved seamlessly from wistful choral sounds that would kick in when I caught sight of an especially beautiful vista to primal drums and chants when a fight began.

WHAT SUCKS

• It’s easy to get lost. The colorful and stylized art direction in Clash: Artifacts of Chaos can make navigating unpleasantly tricky. I often found it hard to tell at a glance whether I was looking at a path forward or a barrier. Even when I could, there are almost no straight routes, and heading in one direction will usually send me looping around in another. Even finding my way back through places I’ve already been has been a challenge at times, and I have a pretty reliable sense of direction. For some players, this may be part of the fun of playing, but others will no doubt find it unduly frustrating. There’s a map of sorts that pops up during loading screens, but it’s of no help when trying to actually plot courses through the maze of footpaths and caverns.

• Awkward menus. Navigating the various menus in Clash: Artifacts of Chaos can be a pain. When I tried to back out of the submenu for changing combat stances, it closed the menu entirely. Swapping items in and out of my ritual belt was annoying and counterintuitive—I had to move my cursor down several rows on the left-hand grid until I could move it over to the single row where my equipped items were located, unequip one of them, then move the cursor back over to the left-hand panel to pick the one I want to replace it with. These aren’t game-breaking issues by any stretch, but they bugged me every time I had to use the menus.

• The world feels a bit empty. Zenozoik is always amazing to look at, but there’s not a lot going on outside the battle encounters. I’ve run into local wildlife here and there, but many places feel weirdly vacant. When I reached the town that stands between Pseudo’s initial camp and the mountains where he’s heading with the boy, I was surprised to find only four residents—and that’s if you count the sleeping turtle who’s blocking one of the roads.

💬 Will you be traveling to Zenozoik with Pseudo and the boy, or is the unique art style not something that appeals to you? Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.