Incredibly memorable characters, and a vivid game world go a long way to make up for fairly average gameplay.
Despite being post apocalyptic, one stunning thing about Enslaved is it's near complete lack of the gray and brown colors so predominant in games these days. Ninja Theory developed a powerful, appealing, and vivid game world that is a joy to explore. If you've watched the series called Life After People, you have an idea of what to expect, nature reclaiming a major city like New York, which is in a crumbling ruin, long abandoned over a hundred years or more ago. In this world, overrun with mechs hellbent on killing people, and slavers capturing them, you play as Monkey, an aptly name agile expert climber, escorting an AI partner named Trip, a young female hacker whose appearance is a tribute to the teams heroine from their early PS3 game Heavenly Sword, Nariko.
At the time of the escape from the slave ship at the start of the game, Trip uses a recovered slave headband to trap Monkey, forcing him to help her get back home, having full control of him with certain commands, and a fail safe that kills him if her heart stops for any reason. The relationship between the two changes over the course of the game, coming a long way from the rocky relationship they start off with. I won't go too much further into details for fear of spoiling it for you, but it's a great journey well worth experiencing for yourself. It doesn't hurt that the game play is pretty strong too. Enslaved employs a simple yet fun combat system, again similar to Beyond Good and Evil, and also a great exploration/climbing mechanic.
You also get to experience some thrilling boss fights, as well as some white knuckle chase sequences. The climbing is very smooth, with minimal frustrating falls to the death that other games experience when doing this. The combat, as I said, is kind of simple, but good. It can be exciting and cinematic, and moderately challenging at times, but on the whole, fairly easy. It can clock in at just over ten hours, and as mentioned earlier, can already be found rather well below full price. Taking that and it's great qualities into account, a purchase is a no brainer, unless you just hate quality games.