Enslaved: Odyssey to the meh...
"Journey to the West is about Tang San Zang's journey to the west and the difficulties he and his disciples face in between. It is overflowing with magic, demons, gods, immortals, and scrumptious action and adventure! It has lots of humor and some angst as well. Monkey King Wu Kong and the other disciples, a pig demon Zhu Ba Jie and the river demon Sha Wu Jing, have to battle hordes of demons, who all want their master because his flesh will give immortality"
- http://www.vbtutor.net/Xiyouji/journeytothewest.htm
Sounds cool huh?
Well what we get is a story about a guy called Monkey and a girl called Trip who are running around and fighting robots in a post apocalyptic world taken over by nature…
Storyline :
Enslaved is based on the old Chinese folklore "Journey to the West". Basically the only thing that has a resemblance to the story is the name of the characters and the idea that they need to get to the west. The story is about Tripitaka or Trip in short is the deuteragonist of the game (note: Trip is based on the folklores hero monk Táng-Sānzàng). She escapes a slavers ship while our protagonist Monkey is trying to find his way out of the ship as well (note: Monkey is based on Sūn Wùkōng the Monkey King). Trip puts a headband that, she hacked onto Monkeys head in order to force him helping her out on her quest of returning to her tribe if not, he would blow up... yes I said blow up. On the way they learn about each other, the world and the organization controlling the salvers and the deadly robots.
Soulderon's view:
To me the story was boring and slow paced. Review's all around the web talked about the dynamics between Trip and Monkey
talking to each other all the time and one always learns something about them. This is a good thing but, the stuff you learn about the characters is superficial and annoying. In the end you don't really care about them. Monkey is one of the shallowest characters out there -
No back story, no future… it reminds me of my D&D years where you had to write a back story to your character but you didn't have the strength for that so you wrote something like – " Orc's clan killed all of my tribe and I am the last one… lets go"
Trip had a back story and purpose (thank god…) but she is useless as the deuteragonist, you have to take her around and throw her all over the place to clear some of the puzzles. She reminds me of Elika from Prince of Persia 2008, another useless character for you to waste time on. Until I got to some progress in the "story" I didn't care anymore I just wanted to finish the damn thing… that is a shame
Presentation:
Enslaved is set in a post apocalyptic world where nature overgrowing. The graphics are amazing and the characters face expressions are life like.
Soulderon's view:
If I could have given 5 stars for the presentation then I would have given 4.
Too much frame problems that makes the game sometimes feel jumpy / laggy
Great vocal and facial acting I was amazed by the depth of details.
Gameplay:
You control Monkey and you fight the robots with your staff.
It’s a third person action, platforming game where you use combos to fight your enemies. You can also use upgrades to enhance stuff like health, staff abilities and combo's strength. The platforming part is where you need to get Trip to the other side of the level and figuring out the way to reach it yourself.
Soulderon's view:
Well the gameplay was most disappointing to me.
This is a third person action- game like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Prince Of Persia etc… where you upgrade your combos and enjoy the mess on the screen.
Enslaved has two combos…TWO!!!
When you fight the robots it’s the same routine over and over again.
And you can't stop your combos, if you started one as a quick player then you are doomed and you have to let Monkey finish the combo or get hit before you can move him and do something else. I played it on hard mode and felt fooled.
The upgrades are mostly pointless. I did find the health and shield as OK upgrades but all the other stuff were a waste of points. I found upgrading my combo's strength to be useless and I used them all on the health and shield which made the game as easy as pie.
The camera was a mess shooting body shots of Monkey when being attacked.
Which is cool and all but, I want to see the FREAKING enemy's when I fight them!
Platforming was not a day in the circus either – the game was designed in a way to enable you to jump from a distinctive point on the platform to another. So you will find yourself, in some cases, searching for that point.
Also throwing Trip about is not fun and I find this kind of stuff in games as a chore instead of being a cool innovative kind of gameplay.
Soulderon's Overview:
Enslaved is an O.K kind of game it's not good nor is it bad.
Weak script and poor choice of level design
At least the graphics and soundtrack are great
I gave it 2.5/5 just for the presentation which I find amazing and different from other games in the genre.
I hope Ninja Theory will learn from their mistakes in this game and make their next project (Devil May Cry) better.
