Well, “if you’re gonna borrow from a game then borrow from the best.” It’s not a bad mantra for a games developer to work by these days as just about everything seems to have been done before in one way or another. Enslaved’s intro level steals so mercilessly from the excellent PS3-exclusive Uncharted 2 that, previously unaware of the game’s existence as I was, it had me checking the developers to see if they were the same.
Not far into the game our hero Monkey gets to use a disc-shaped hover board called a “Cloud,” this section played so much like one of Uncharted makers Naughty Dog’s older Jak & Daxter games that I had to check the gaming press to see if Ninja Theory had any ship-jumpers from the Sony-subsidiary working for them. Given their geographical locations that seems about as plausible as Enslaved’s plot, which was co-written by Alex Garland (28 Days Later) and is madder than a sack full of cats, presumably inspired by the old Monkey TV series (due to the central character’s names, although God only knows how or why.) Various other influences continue to show throughout and although the storyline and the characters may be all their own, Enslaved continues to borrow (or to put it less politely: steal mercilessly) from the likes of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Prince of Persia, Beyond Good & Evil and maybe even good old Half Life 2.
If that’s made Enslaved sound like an unoriginal pile of derivative codswallop then I’ve given the wrong impression, because for the most part the game does things so well that it’s a breeze to play, entertaining, exciting and fun right until the end, and it always maintains just enough originality and character to make you want to see the end of the story, something that a few other games have failed to do for me of late.
The plot goes that the playable character Monkey has been captured, and imprisoned aboard a massive flying slave ship is bound for the sinister Pyramid Corporation’s slave processing plant. Monkey is a muscle-bound bad-tempered loon, and the look of maniacal rage on his face when he finishes off certain fights is a sight to behold. We never really discover too much about Monkey’s past but maybe that’s being held back for the inevitable sequel. The slave ship is manned by defence mechs and slave humans, mind-controlled via headsets they wear. Something goes horribly wrong (or right as far as Monkey is concerned) and the ship starts to blow up, sending it into a slow dive. During his escape Monkey sees a beautiful girl (Tripitaka, or ‘Trip’ for short) also escaping. The innocent-looking Trip is a computer whizz and can hack into any system, re-programme it and make it do what she wants, and she uses these skills to unlock the ship and make her way to the escape pods—the only way off the doomed ship.
If you’ve played the excellent demo that’s available on Xbox Live or the PlayStation Store then you’ll know all this, and what happens next, which is vital to the plot. Trip makes her escape and fires the escape pod with Monkey on board. Crashing to the ground in a post-apocalyptic New York City Monkey ends up unconscious (don’t really know how he survived the crash!) and Trip takes the opportunity to install one of the slave headsets onto Monkey’s head, meaning that he has to do whatever she says, can’t stray too far away from her and if she dies, he dies too—from then on Trip and Monkey are irrevocably linked.
From the off the game involves a lot of climbing and handholds, ledges—anything usable glows so you won’t be getting lost or searching and puzzling over where to go next for long—Tomb Raider this isn’t. You soon get into the easy—lazy even—style of gameplay; find glowing handhold, press ‘X’ (PS3) or ‘A’ (360), point Left stick towards next handhold, press ‘X’ or ‘A’ (you might actually have to press ‘Circle’ or ‘B’ sometimes to drop down to a lower ledge too!)… You’ll quickly find yourself heading for the glowy thing rather than trying to climb something that actually looks scalable, and it’s an almost constant shame that the landscape wasn’t more explorable, because despite looking wide-open at times the game is incredibly linear, painfully so in fact. For instance, a level that is made up almost entirely of massive scrapped mechs is very impressive, but the feeling of scale is at times both grand and misleading as the opportunities to stray from the narrow game corridor are rare. Early on Trip modifies a robotic dragonfly to act as a spy camera; the dragonfly scans the area ahead and marks all enemy mechs and turret guns on Monkey’s HUD, and I can’t help feeling this process removes a lot of potential excitement from the game as you can pre-plan each area, and sadly you don’t even get to fly the spy-dragonfly around.
As I said the game involves a lot of climbing, and some climbing sections are no more than gratuitous filler, where Monkey will hurl Trip up to a ledge and then “have” to go another way for no other reason than it strings the level out a bit. Other than a few rotating gearwheels and flames to negotiate the climbing sections are mind-numbingly easy, and some jumps feel almost automatic. There are a couple of puzzle sections that will slow the pacey adventure a little, but in the main it feels too “safe” and on-rails for my liking. In fact the game is so safe that it’s actually impossible for Monkey to fall off a ledge to his death, and despite sometimes giving the impression that all around you is collapsing these sections are often set pieces and the collapsing bits don’t actually collapse until you’re safely on the next bit. Occasionally, however, when you throw Trip across a gap too wide for her to jump she’ll slip, and fall to her death (killing you too of course) if you don’t quickly leap across and haul her to safety, and this kind of event combined with Trip’s undeniable physical appeal make you feel both protective towards her and resentful as she orders you around, and forms a fascinating game dynamic and virtual relationship that probably wasn’t explored far enough.
Like the recent Prince of Persia game the camera becomes fixed at times (third person) and is above and behind Monkey most of the time (second person), this works quite compared to some games but whenever a camera is fixed it can cause problems. When out in a wide open area the game exhibits a lot of horizontal tearing, and this spoils the look of what is graphically a nice game to look at, but it’s so common in this generation of games that I almost feel churlish even mentioning it.
Monkey fights using a staff or lance, and he twirls this and twats mechs to pieces with gay abandon, like Darth Maul on steroids. There are fast and heavy attacks, a shield block and useful combos and special moves to unlock. It does become samey but it’s never less than enjoyable in the same way as the recent Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands game (sorry for mentioning it again.) Trip also upgrades Monkey’s staff to shoot plasma and this can used to stun mechs and remove their defensive shields as well as snipe distant mechs that can’t be reached to melee.
There are odd glowing “masks” to collect throughout the levels (these give you mysterious flashbacks, the origin of which becomes clear at the end of the game) and orangey-red tech orbs scattered all over the place too. These orbs also drop from destroyed mechs and act as currency to allow you to upgrade both Monkey’s fighting abilities and weaponry, so they’re well worth rounding up. The extra attacks, shield and health upgrades you can unlock for Monkey make a second play through of the game even on its “Hard” setting a doddle, and it’s a fun adventure and at 5-6 hours not exactly long game so you won’t mind going through it again, you might even feel you should in order to get your money’s worth.
As well as directing the whole shebang Andy Serkis plays the massively powerful Monkey superbly, motion capture and all. Andy is less-than-muscle-bound and probably most famous for supplying the voice of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, but he also did a remarkable job of portraying Ian Dury in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and also stars in the recent Burke and Hare movie. He’s also voice acted in games such as Risen and Ninja Theory’s previous game Heavenly Sword. Lyndsey Shaw does an equally good job with Tripitaka. The game is beautifully presented and loading times are well disguised by Trip hacking a terminal or locked door or an elevator sequence or something similar, so the game flows superbly.
Although the presentation is slick, the game has a rather generic look as it uses Unreal tech and so everything looks a bit too shiny. The central characters are full of personality and well animated, but they don’t always mesh with the scenery or the landscape very well, so they can be stood in mid air or clip through a wall or door – I was shocked to see Monkey’s head disappear into a door when he lifts it, and this is an animation that gets used several times in the game, so it looks unaccountably sloppy. The collision detection during melee combat seems vague at times and sometimes shots from Monkey’s staff seem to go clean through an enemy without causing any damage. There’s also a horribly (and inexplicably) jerky boat journey section in which the frame rate drops and the game feels like it’s going to crash.
The designers tried to add some variation but fall back on Enslaved’s staples too often; climb—fight—chase, and so on. If they wanted to add some variety there are hundreds of mechs of various sizes in the game, and yet you never get to control one (despite Trip’s aptitude with computers and hacking), and there are a couple of long excursions in the game portrayed via cut-scene only – why weren’t they playable? Especially as one was on Monkey’s tripped-out motorcycle. The Enslaved story also constanly lends itself towards co-op play, so why no co-op mode? Even if it were online-only it'd have given the game more legs.
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West was a pleasure to play through, but over way too quickly, like a lot of games of late. 5-6 hour life spans might be great for us games reviewers but they are a worrying trend nonetheless. The game’s brevity and ending makes it feel like no more than the first instalment of a series, but it's good enough to justify sequels—I just hope they're a bit longer and fit in a bit more originality and variation to the gameplay. The conclusion I’ve come to is that Enslaved was extremely enjoyable and for the most part plays like a dream, and while it not be among the best sellers come December, it may just turn out to the most rented game of the year.
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