Nowadays it's hard for me to review games after playing The Last Of Us because so many now just seem so lacking, no, no don't be like that! While the game has only furthered my game snobbery there are still many others out there that are remarkable fun and worth looking at. After playing through Enslaved for the third time I was reminded of my love for left field games like these; no franchises, just a really good solid one off story with great gameplay and a heap of fun. Enslaved is a very overlooked game, not took many people know of it or what it is which is a shame considering the quality. The game isn't a perfect 10 but it rates high in the graphics, audio, narrative and gameplay department. When I talked about The Last Of Us earlier this week I noted that Mark Richard Davies had a fair portion of influence over the games development and if you've played both it and Enslaved you'll notice some similarities in terms of the locales and environment.
Enslaved takes place 150 years into the future on the ravaged planet Earth and follows the epic journey of Monkey and Trip across the countryside. It's important to note at this point that the game is a re-imagining of the ancient Chinese story 'Journey To The West' and is loosely inspired by the books events. In the future the Earth has been savagely torn apart by global war with only a few remaining human colonies and the monstrous mechanical war machines left over from the conflict. After narrowly escaping from a Slaver aircraft the two find themselves forced to work together in order to escape the war torn New York and find salvation from the Slavers in a distant community of Trip's. The overall story is simple but drives the plot well enough to make you want to find out more. The interactions between characters and cut scenes in between gameplay are excellent allowing you to develop and strong bond with the characters. At some times it can come across as a little cliche or wacky but it's a fun little adventure with great reward.
Something that still stands out for me are the graphics, while not the greatest for a console they are exceptionally pretty. The modified Unreal Engine that the Ninja Theory team uses really does portray a beautiful mix of colours and realistic effects. For a game only two years old it stacks up very well as you would expect, while it can be a little buggy at times it isn't enough to really put you off gameplay. The plant ridden streets add a vast array of colours to what could've been a very bleak brown and grey city scape. The controls for Monkey are about as smooth as you can get with adventure platforming, there were some instances where I couldn't find where to jump to but I think that majority of the time it was to do with the camera positioning, not bad controls. Running and jumping through the environment does have that fun accelerating feel that you'd expect from games like this or Uncharted, so you'll be wanting to push through just to find out what happens next.
Combat is amazingly fun at times with it only getting more enjoyable the more you level up your abilities. Monkey has two primary weapons, his gauntlets and his staff which is capable of shooting high powered blasts or EMP's. The fluency between hand to hand combat and utilising the staff is flawless which allows you to keep the momentum flowing without slowing down. Building combo's and executing finishing moves on Mech's is exceptionally satisfying as you really feel every hit that you make. The AI is relatively clever to running head on into a crowd of enemies and engaging in combat can sometimes result in death; this is good however because it breaks up the mindless hack and slash with strategic combat. Naturally one would think that escorting Trip through the ruined locales as well as protecting yourself could be deemed quite frustrating at times but she's actually quite alright and knows when to duck and hide or provide distractions for you to slip behind enemy lines. In some instances Trip can become a little frustrating but it's all within reason and doesn't slow down the pacing at any points.
Enslaved: Odyssey To The West is a fantastic little game that executes a very simple but compelling story, it's a great deal of fun and exceptionally beautiful to look at while you play it too! Here's a link to the trailer I hadn't seen before; it's a little corny but kind of cool at the same time. Those interesting should check it out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FLiDeURhL0
Genre: 3rd person Action Adventure Platformer
Platforms: PS3 & 360
Score: 9 / 10
