Enslaved: Odyssey To The West

Title: Enslaved: Odyssey To The West
Platform Played On:  Xbox 360
Release Date:  October 5, 2010
Date Played:  December 2011
Time Played:  12 hours
Completed (Y/N):  Yes
Score:  4/5




Opinion:
Enslaved came out under everyone's radars, but quickly gained popularity among the gaming press and fans of the action genre.  After hearing good things about it I promptly added it to my long backlog of games.

Enslaved Features Great Character Art and Animation

To be honest I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I popped Enslaved disc in.  I attempted (successfully) to avoid all and any spoilers  over the last year in order to keep the story interesting.

Imagine if Uncharted, Fallout, The Matrix and Planet of the Apes had a baby... probably hard to imagine actually.. but basically Enslaved has the pretty graphics and climbing mechanics of Uncharted, set in the post apocalyptic future of Fallout with Planet of the Apes aesthetics and overarching story thread of the Matrix.  I am a fan of all four of those, so naturally Enslaved grabbed me immediately.

The game starts out with you making an escape off of a slaver ship along with the girl named Trip.  This whole sequence is arguably the best one in the whole game.  It throws a ton of WTF moments at you and presents some incredible set pieces to play through (clearly the developers at Ninja Theory are fans of Uncharted).  Speaking of Uncharted, Monkey (you) navigates through the environments very similarly to Nathan Drake, jumping from rock to rock, ledge to ledge and pipe to pipe, this mechanic is used throughout the game and is overall executed very well.
Without spoiling anything I will say that the relationship between Monkey and Trip are an important part of the narrative, and as you progress through the story that relationship changes in pretty interesting ways.

My only complaint about Enslaved is the fact that a lot of the combat happens with you essentially locked to a small area fighting waves of enemies. The combat has plenty of unlocks and abilities that keep it interesting; however I feel that the game would flow and play better if every encounter (perhaps with a few exceptions) was a single wave.  The enemies take a beating as it is, and it simply gets frustrating having to fight a wave after wave of enemies just to see the story progress.  Not to mention that Enslaved does not do a very good job with checkpoints and having played through the whole thing on Hard I found myself having to replay decent chunks of the game over and over again just because I would successfully kill 14 guys, but would die on the 15th (last one).

Overall Enslaved presents an interesting story, although I do feel like the developer dropped the ball, and missed a lot of opportunities to take the story in a more interesting direction and have a much better ending.  To be honest, ending left noting but "What the hell was that?" feelings in me.  It is either a hugely missed opportunity or there will be a sequel (and I am fine with that, I will pick it up and play it for sure). That being said Enslaved is a great action adventure with a story that will keep you guessing until the very end in a world that is a very interesting place with a ton of stories waiting to be told with and without Monkey and Trip.  If you want a good action adventure, with a unique setting and unpredictable story you got to play Enslaved. It is pretty, exciting, and fun... there is no reason not to play this one.