Another Game Down

My backlog quest continues as I finished my run through Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

Trip & Monkey

Effectively my journey through Enslaved started late Sunday evening, and ended around brunch on a Monday. Of course time was taken in between to gather plenty of sleep. Either way, Enslaved is a short game, and I might have been a bit upset with it if I had not acquired it via a sale.

Length of adventure aside, the team at Ninja Theory built an enjoyable tale that centers heavily on the relationship between protagonists Trip and Monkey. The game starts with Monkey escaping a crashing slave ship, and waking up to find that Trip has slapped a slave headband on his head to force him to help her get home. A begrudging relationship grows into one where the characters truly begin to care for each other, and thanks to great voice acting, and very nice facial animation so does the player.

I was really amazed at Ninja Theory pulled off in regards to facial animation since this is a game running on the Unreal Engine. On top of the facial stuff the world of Enslaved was also very nice to behold with junkyard locales, to cities overgrown by vegetation, and desert wastelands. I will note that were a few times that the frame rate in the game dropped, and the texture pop-in of the Unreal Engine did surface from time to time, but certainly not enough to mar the beauty of the game.

The combat of the game is very simple, but it works. A lot of mashing on the light and hard attack buttons, with some dodge rolling or blocking involved. A counter move can be purchased, but I rarely made us of it. A few sections become shooting heavy as you use Monkey's staff to fire off stun blasts, and plasma energy to take down your foes. Very simple, but not every game needs to have some complex combat system to make it enjoyable.

For me Enslaved really shines when it gets into the platforming, and the last few chapters have some great set piece environments to traverse. I will say though that the platforming is easy mode. The next thing that Monkey has to grab is always highlighted so you just have to move your joystick in the direction of the of the next handhold, and press the jump button. Also, you don't have to worry about coming up short, or flying off to the side of a jump as Monkey automatically makes the canned animation jump. Is it easy? Yes, but it takes out some of the frustration I've had with the likes of Assassin's Creed and inFamous where sometimes your character makes this really awkward off target leap leading to your death when those games feature a heavy magnetized system as well.

My final thoughts on Enslaved are that it is worth playing through once, but maybe only on a rental due to length. I was most impressed by the voice work, and facial animations of the game which really help carry the story over. While it won't rank very high on my all time game list it should certainly be considered if you have nothing else to play.

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