Tales of Kenzera: Zau
TALES OF KENZERA: ZAU is a solid Metroidvania with a timeless story to tell
Mythologies often paint the sun and the moon as complementary opposites, two sides of an enormous shiny coin, as it were. And rarely has this relationship been clearer than in Tales of Kenzera: Zau, inspired by the Bantu folklores of southern and central Africa, where solar heat and lunar cool together help you survive its Metroidvania challenges. In short, it’s the stuff legends are made of.
Indeed, most of the freshness in Tales of Kenzera stems from its setting, given that African mythologies (ancient Egypt excepted) remain a largely untapped resource in games.
Playing as young shaman Zau, there’s a real sense here that you’ve been dropped into a legend passed between distant ancestors, drawing on regional lore of magical artefacts, spirits and gods. And Zau’s mission is as much about his personal growth as his quest to reclaim his deceased father from the land of the dead.
As for the sun and the moon, their power is infused into a pair of masks, and our hero can quick-change between them to banish the hostile spirits loitering around the otherwise deserted lands. Don the moon mask and you can sling magic bullets as if wielding an automatic pistol, while the sun mask is suited to closer encounters, letting out flurries of melee blows or a launching strike. In later levels especially, you need to juggle attack styles, as combat becomes a kind of frantic puzzle where you try to stay mobile, make use of harmful scenery for quick kills and select the right rock to blunt your opponents’ scissors.
There’s a real sense here that you’ve been dropped into a legend
It can get untidy at times, to the point you might lose track of Zau’s position amongst a mob, or find yourself sucker punched by a projectile homing in from offscreen. But you always feel there’s a way to avoid such mishaps – getting rid of the missile lobber first, for example. A bigger disappointment in fact is that the game’s three major regions don’t have their own bespoke cast of enemies, with only around eight kinds in all, barring bosses, so a sense of repetition slowly creeps in.
NEED TO KNOW
A Metroidvania based on African folklore, and the debut title from Surgent Studios, founded by actor Abubakar Salim
£18
Surgent Studios
EA
Intel Core i7-10750H, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070
No
ea.com/en-au/games/tales-of-kenzera/zau
SWITCH HITTER
Outside of combat, Zau’s pretty well-stocked with moves from the start, with a double jump and a wall jump among his default skillset. But he soon adds extra combat skills and a series of more momentous abilities bestowed by ancient relics. Each such mythica
