Clash: Artifacts of Chaos caught my eye thanks to its gorgeously created arty style. What I didn’t know was that I was going to play a combination of God of War and the Dark Souls games. After spending some time with it here at Gamescom 2022 I might say this is one of my biggest surprises yet.
Return to Zeno Clash
Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is created by ACE Team, the team behind the first-person combat games Zeno Clash & Zeno Clash 2. A lot of fans were asking the team to create Zeno Clash 3 and bring us a modern version of the classics. The answer is Clash: Artifacts of Chaos, a third-person brawler set in the same Zeno Clash universe. Fans of the classics will recognize the world while newcomers won’t miss out on the needed details. This isn’t a reboot or sequel, it’s a different story set in a familiar world. The biggest difference between the earlier Zeno Clash games is of course the fact that you aren’t playing this in first-person, at least not constantly.
You play as Pseudo who discovered a mysterious owl-like creature called Boy (insert God of War nod here). Although Boy was kept a mystery during my hands-on session, the developers did share that the creature holds certain powers. Powers that attract evil creatures who want to steal Boy from you. Throughout the story you’ll learn and better understand the importance of Boy and why Pseudo becomes its father figure, protecting the creature with his life. I didn’t get to see the story in my demonstration, instead, I went in to fight some monster.
Impressive fighting
At first, the game feels rather traditional when it comes to combat. There’s a light attack, heavy attack, and dodge. Things get interesting by using different stances, similar to what the weapons mean to you in the Souls game. Different fighting stances will give you different attacks and ranges. If I played in the Spear Stance, my pushes and kick would have more reach, allowing me to attack my enemies from farther away. When I faced off with my enemies, I had to combine my attacks and dodges to take them out. The team took some inspiration from games such as Street Fighter so I was able to cancel out certain attacks by launching another one. In the mid of my special attack, I could cancel that one out for a regular or dodge the attack. This will allow the player to come up with their own unique combinations of devastating attacks. It’s a rather deep system and it’s a system that can’t be demonstrated during such a short period.
With that being said, combat gets even more interesting when you trigger the first-person mode. This mode gets triggered when you successfully land a couple of kicks and punches, enabling you to hit the first-person button and take out the enemy for good. It’s a nod to the Zeno Clash games of course but it’s also your most powerful attack in Clash. By successfully punching in first-person mode, you’ll automatically finish off your opponents with an impressive finisher.
Bosses and the world beyond
Next to fighting regular creatures, I had to defeat three stronger boss-like characters too. Before I fought them, I challenged them to the ritual, which is an interesting dice game that will give you a tremendous benefit in the fight to come. Since I won the ritual, one of the enemies was chained down on the ground, making it easier to focus on the other two enemies first. The ritual is a powerful mechanic that can give you a huge advantage but be aware if you lose the game, you’ll get a huge disadvantage in the upcoming battle and since you can’t refuse to take part in the ritual, the stakes are pretty high. I loved this fun tactical mini-game which had some surprisingly deep mechanics to keep things even more interesting.
Talking about interesting mechanics, when you die, you get respawned to your last checkpoint as a different version of yourself, a dummy version so to speak. The land of the fallen heroes will offer online support so you’ll see other fallen heroes wandering around, helping each other out, or giving tips. I didn’t see this in action but it certainly does sound promising. As my dummy, I could go back to the place I died and when I managed to take down the enemies, I could wake up my body so that the adventure could continue. It’s rather a unique mechanic that makes the game stand out even more.
Early conclusion:
This is an interesting game with a lot of great mechanics. It won’t be an easy game to complete and there are tons of mechanics you need to master but once you do, I’m pretty sure this will be one of the most unique adventures of 2023.
