Slave Zero X review – Shou ’nuff

If there are two things I love, it’s sitting down with an old anime series and booting up a classic fighting game. Throw on a few episodes of Guyver for some of the best anime body horror-action from the ’80s, boot up a PS2 disc of Guilty Gear for some of the best sprite animations in the business, and sit back for a night of retro fun. That’s a recipe for fun in my nostalgic mind and one that Slave Zero X replicates to great success.

Surprisingly, Slave Zero X – from publisher Ziggurat Interactive and developers Poppy Works – serves as a prequel to Slave Zero, a 1999 action video game developed and published by Infogrames back in the age of the first Star Wars prequel, the rise of Fatboy Slim, and Australia winning the Cricket World Cup. Slave Zero X takes place five years before Slave Zero, and is set in a Megacity ruled by the biomechanical fist of the Sovereign.

As a vengeful warrior hellbent on rising up from the city’s rotting foundations, it’s up to you to master the power of your stolen Slave Unit prototype and put it to good use against the forces of the Sovereign. It’s a story where you fight fire with fire, becoming a red devil in your quest to kill a false god.

A side-scrolling action game in the tradition of the great beat-em-ups from a bygone era, Slave Zero X combines that push-forward approach with lethal hack-and-slash action that’s reminiscent of old-school 2D fighting games. There’s a bit of Shinobi and Strider in its DNA as well, as Shou’s arsenal starts off with a basic three-hit light combo and a heavy attack that can be charged up.

For fighting game connoisseurs, this is where Slave Zero X gets interesting as you’re motivated to develop enemy-crushing skills by chaining together quick combos and never pausing in your onslaught. On that note, Slave Zero X doesn’t adequately explain these mechanics, especially its more complex and nuanced systems for staying a step ahead of unforgiving enemies.

For example, your dash ability affords you a few frames of invincibility and if you time it just right, you can parry attacks with your own offense. These require a precise level of timing to successfully pull off, and doing so when you’re swarmed with enemies can be a challenge.

But the most crucial technique that Slave Zero X doesn’t teach you about–unless you sat down for a developer video diary on its gameplay–is its golden circle loop of offense and defense. This incorporates two of the abilities that Shou has at his beck and call: the Burst to clear enemies away from you, and Fatal Sync to briefly power him up with more lethal combo options. Shou can extend his combos when he’s in Fatal Sync with EX, recover health, and charge his Burst ability up much more quickly. Get the loop right, and you can use Burst to clear some space while earning a full EX meter for your Fatal Sync, which in turn allows you to quickly recharge your Burst as you press the offensive against enemies.

There are a few other tricks up Shou’s sleeve, as he has a limited supply of bombs that can be used to juggle enemies into combo-extending positions, and he can deflect attacks by spending some of the EX meter. Overall, it’s a fun and deep system of slashing, leaping, sprinting, and flipping your way through a grim biopunk world.

But it’s a world that shows no mercy, and unless you perform at peak condition 100% of the time, you can find yourself on the receiving end of some unfair retaliation. I experienced numerous deaths thanks to enemies ganging up and unleashing unblockable attacks on me in succession, shaving away chunks of my health bar at a time, leading to numerous resets until I scraped by. Slave Zero X regularly throws you into a meat grinder of difficulty, and while I can appreciate a game that rewards precision action, there were moments where I wish the controls could have been just as precise in their execution.

Fortunately, this didn’t happen too often, but on the occasions when I confidently thought I’d set up a perfect golden circle, and was left without any burst defenses or enough EX meter, the end result was a blood-soaked return to the last checkpoint. You can upgrade Shou’s abilities to stand a better chance against the forces of the Sovereign, but you’ll need to choose your augments wisely as the game is stingy when it comes to rewarding you with credits. I can understand that this comes from Slave Zero X wanting to be replayable as you grind for credits, but when the game charges an arm, a leg, and most of your organs for unlockable cosmetics and filters, that miserly approach can be off-putting.

On the cosmetic side, though, I’m in love with what I’m seeing here. Slave Zero X looks like it was ripped straight from a forgotten age of video games, as it effortlessly combines detailed lo-fi character designs with fluid animation and 3D environments that look like they were designed by HR Geiger. Fun fact, the environments were built inside of open-source Quake map editor TrenchBroom, giving the game some genuine pedigree to its retro design.

On the audio side, Slave Zero X sounds great as well. There’s a terrific industrial synth soundtrack to tap your foot to, providing some excellent beats to slay to, and you can flip between the English or Japanese voice cast for the story. A quick shoutout to prolific voice actor Sungwon Cho AKA ProZD AKA Dragon King for voicing the second coming of Senator Armstrong from Metal Gear Rising, the burly Hercules J. Thorman who you’ll encounter early in the game.

Slave Zero X is out on 21 February for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series consoles, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC.