By Adam Delo of thegamingliberty.com
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is set a few hundred years after an unnamed apocalypse has ravaged the world and wiped out most of humanity. It follows the story of a young woman named Trip who, after being captured by slavers, escapes a slave ship and causes it to crash in what used to be New York.
Knowing she will not survive the journey home on her own, she reprograms a slave headband — a device that causes intense pain and even death to a disobedient wearer — to be controlled by her voice and fits it to an unconscious fellow escapee who goes by the name ‘Monkey,’ forcing him to help and protect her as she makes her way home.
While a game that is basically one big escort mission may not sound at all appealing, let me assure you that this is not the irritating mess that escort missions usually are. Ninja Theory have intelligently designed the levels around the whole escort concept, and so Trip never gets stuck or lost and is rarely in harm’s way, and even if she does get attacked she isn’t totally defenceless — she has an EMP attack that will stun any enemies that get too close for a short period, giving her time to escape or for you to intervene.
Ninja Theory have created the most beautiful post-apocalyptic world yet
Trip also has a few more tricks up her sleeve that you will rely upon throughout your journey: she can create distractions, scan an area before you go through it and warn you of any hidden dangers or where enemies are; allowing you to plan an effective way through, and she can upgrade Monkey and his combat capabilities. It really isn’t the case that you’re guiding her through the levels, but that you’re dependent on each other’s abilities and skills and forced to work together in order to overcome the challenges that present themselves throughout the journey.
Combat is a simple affair, you won’t find anything in the way of complicated combos and aerial juggles, so if you’re looking for God of War or Devil May Cry-style combat, you will come away disappointed — but it isn’t an inherently bad thing. Yes, it’s simple, but it’s sharp, responsive and refined, and combat scenarios are usually quick, fast-paced encounters where huge combos would likely feel a bit muddled and unfocused — and each time it started to feel a little repetitive, it threw a new enemy into the mix that required a slightly different approach, serving to keep things fresh.
Much of your time out of combat is spent climbing and swinging from pole to pole in the vein of the Prince of Persia series. This again is a simple affair — you don’t really need to aim your jumps well for example — but it’s a lot of fun, and getting across the terrain quickly in a swift, flowing acrobatic movement is joy to behold thanks to brilliant character animation and beautiful environments.
The remnants of a once-great civilisation now reclaimed by nature makes for stunning scenes, rich with colour and character that really bring the game to life, along with the absolutely incredible animation and voice acting.
We’ve no idea what’s going on here but it does look explosive
At the start of the game, Monkey obviously resents Trip and the burden she has forced upon him, but as the game progresses you witness a deep bond forming between them and this isn’t shown just through dialogue, most if it is relayed through body language, facial expression and tone of voice. All of this is presented in a very natural and believable way — this culminates in one of the few games in that even the most stone-hearted misanthrope such as myself will actually care about the person you’re protecting, which is quite a contrast from most games where by at the end of an escort scenario you’re more likely to want to bash the escorted in the head with anything and everything you can find lying about (I’m looking at you, Dead Rising) — this is a great achievement and Ninja Theory should be very proud of themselves.
There are one or two issues present in the game, but I must say that I feel like I’m nitpicking here. There were one or two areas that had some frame rate issues, and sometimes in cut scenes the lip-synching was fraction of a second ahead of the voices — but then again you only notice this because of how good the voice acting and animation is!
There were also a few times after a camera change where Monkey would move in the opposite direction to where I wanted him to go, though the game seemed to quickly realise its mistake and he’d turn around again without me needing to repeat the movement, and luckily it never put me in danger or caused me to fail a section. I found that occasionally the game had trouble interpreting my movement commands in climbing sections and Monkey would either jump to somewhere other than where I had intended, or not move at all — but again, this never actually caused me to fail anything.
These minor problems aside, Enslaved is a game that deserves to be played — its characters are lifelike and easy to empathise with, The Beach writer Alex Garland’s story is strong (and what an ending!), the game tells it very well and while the combat and climbing may be a little simple, it’s great fun to play… and that’s the important thing, right?
Format: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC; Developer: Ninja Theory
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