Enslaved is an engrossing adventure thanks to it's great characters and visuals that help make up for it's other flaws.
The story is very loosely adapted from Journey to the West, a rather famous Chinese novel written in the 1590's. The game is set 150 years in the future after a war has ravaged the planet. The few survivors of humanity gather together in communities to start again in a bid for survival. The world is still wrought with danger however with mech soldiers from the war still roaming the planet killing anything that moves and slavers kidnapping people. You play a character called Monkey who wakes up in a slave ship having been captured, he breaks free following a young girl called Trip who initiates an escape, things don't go well for Monkey however being on the wrong side of a launched escape pod, waking up after the crash he finds himself wearing a headband making him Trips slave as she needs his help to get home, and hasn't the manners to ask.
The characters in Enslaved are probably it's strongest point. They are surprisingly well developed as the adventure winds on through not only superbly crafted cutscenes but also in set pieces of dialogue while traveling. Trip's vulnerability and obvious fear mixed with Monkey's strength and almost animal will to survive create a great contrast and interesting relationship between the two characters.
Unfortunately the relationship between Monkey and gameplay isn't quite as strong. Enslaved is a third person action title where Monkey wields a staff in combat. The combat's weak point though is really that it is pretty basic. Monkey can alternate between light and heavy staff attacks, can do a charge attack to stun attacking mechs or do a large sweep attack to hit multiple foes and buy some breathing room. On the defensive side Monkey can do some basic block and counter attacks and he has a ranged attack where he can fire plasma from the end of his staff and that is about it. The moves work well enough as there are only mechs in the game and certain enemies have to be stunned to get through their shields which does add some basic tactics, but with only one weapon the combat does get slightly stale towards the end of the game. Though each of these moves can be upgraded by Trip, they merely grow more powerful rarely giving extra variety.
The camera gives a pretty close almost cinematic view during fights and can be excellent especially when it zooms close in slow motion when a mech explodes. The problem is that when there is more then one enemy on screen the zoomed in perspective makes it impossible to see the other enemies and the camera especially struggles in tight quarters often giving a view of nothing enabling the mechs to pick Monkey apart.
There is plenty of platforming to go along with combat as Monkey and Trip travel through ruins. This in itself has some problems though as it is practically fully automated with only certain places where Monkey can jump and only certain objects Monkey can climb. It sadly makes it far too easy to pose any challenge and can also get in the way of the immersion when Monkey rolls instead of jumping as he isn't quite facing an object at the correct angle to register.
The gameplay in Enslaved does feature some rather unique ideas that do work well that help bring the experience together. First is Trip herself, though she does none of the grunt work she uses some clever electronics skills to help Monkey out. She has a way of projecting a glowing hologram decoy in the air for a short period of time helping to distract mechs with machine guns to give Monkey time to close the gap on them without being used as a bullet sponge. Secondly, using a little dragonfly modified with some sensors she can send it on scouting missions ahead to identify where there are mechs or mines as well as show the objective of an area before entering it which is a nice touch. The dragonfly can also identify weak points on certain mechs that with some quick time events after they have been damaged enough can be used as bombs or EMPs to destroy other mechs nearby giving Monkey a bit more advantage in combat.
There is also Monkey's "cloud" which acts like a hover board for him to glide around on. It can only be used in certain areas however allowing him to glide over water and other dangerous obstacles as well as some set piece chase scenes which can involve a bit of trial and error as getting too far away from Trip means instant death for Monkey. All boss fights can use the cloud giving Monkey extra speed to maneuver around them. None of these fights are overly challenging even on hard mode but add some good variety to spice things up.
Lastly there are plenty of clever puzzles in Trip and Monkey's way often requiring the use of both characters to get past, while not tremendously brain taxing they help set up some nice pacing to break up the combat during chapters.
The post apocalyptic future Ninja Theory has created is a beautiful and lush world with a nice variety of enemies. Artistically Enslaved is stunning to look at with nature having reclaimed what humanity had taken with trees growing through ruined buildings, deer running through the streets with plenty of colour, metal rusted red, green grass through cracks etc. Character models are detailed with some great animations, especially in the faces of the characters pulling off a variety of emotions. There are a few minor technical issues though that are apparently renowned with the Unreal Engine 3 that Ninja Theory used. First is that that though the textures look great and are detailed, there is a lot of pop in, especially just after load screens between chapters. The game also suffers from a large amount of screen tearing most noticeable when there is a lot happening on screen. Neither of these really detract from the beauty of Enslaved but are fairly noticeable none the less.
Enslaved is surprisingly lengthy for an action title lasting a good 12 - 15 hours depending on how much of the world you take in though it is linear in nature. There are plenty of orbs to collect spread throughout Enslaved that act as currency for leveling up Monkey in which the percentage found is displayed for each level in the chapter select but other then that unless you're a trophy junkie there is little else sadly to be had once the main adventure is finished.
All in all Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a captivating adventure due to it's great characters and gorgeous visuals that succeeds despite some gameplay issues holding it back. Any action fan that wants more then just combat should certainly check out Enslaved.
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+ Colourful and gorgeous world.
+ Some great enemy variety.
+ Trip and Monkey are interesting characters.
+ Lengthy adventure for an action title.
- Combat is pretty basic.
- Texture pop in and screen tear mar otherwise stunning visuals.
- Almost no replay value or extras.
- Camera is terrible.