Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West takes inspiration from Journey to the West. I don't know anything about that story, but the Steam store page (and game's subtitle) shows they aren't hiding their major source of inspiration.

The game opens with a failing slave ship descending towards post-apocalyptic, futuristic New York. The main character, known as Monkey, is initially trapped in a cage, and sees a woman, Trip, escaping and using her technological skills to open doors. After an explosion frees Monkey, he follows her, but Trip seems intimidated by Monkey's size and aggression so doesn't stop to help. Monkey eventually uses an escape pod alongside Trip, and after Monkey wakes up, he finds he is enslaved once more, this time by Trip. She has placed a Slave Helmet on Monkey in order to force him to help her reach her old tribe. The helmet allows them to always communicate, have augmented vision, as well as killing Monkey if he attempts to run away. He also has to protect Trip; because if she dies, he dies.

Monkey is played by Andy Serkis, and also appears in human form in some hallucination sequences that Monkey sees.

There's really no story development which means the ending sequence seems very left-field, and seems very much influenced by another massively popular Sci-Fi film. There's no antagonist, twist, or even much foreshadowing. There's character development though, and you do see a bond form between Monkey and Trip, although you would think it would take more for Monkey to forgive Trip for what she has done. You do meet another companion in the final third of the game, although I wasn't sure what to make of him. He seems slightly jarring tonally, and comes across as a bit brash and seedy.

Monkey and Trip have different attributes which mean they need to work together to navigate the ruined New York environments. Monkey has pure strength so can fight, jump larger distances and is better at climbing. Sometimes you go alternate routes, like Trip crawls through a small crack; sometimes you have to platform up to push a ladder/object down for her to climb up; sometimes you have to throw her up/across; and sometimes you have to pick her up and jump/climb to the next area with her on your back.

Trip acquires a dragonfly which she uses to scout the area. This informs you how many enemies are nearby, and some of them have weaknesses (they may explode and stun nearby mechs when defeated, so it's beneficial to take them out first).

During the early game, you will move from cover to cover, to get up to the mechs to take them out. Mechs have ranged guns, whereas Monkey has a staff, although it does have a limited ranged attack which you will use more often as the game progresses.

Sometimes the mechs will have you pinned down, especially when there are turrets. Trip has a "Decoy" ability which will cause all mechs to target the decoy for a few seconds. This gives you a chance to move forward.

The combat is a little simplistic really. Monkey basically has a weak and strong attack, and pressing both buttons performs a wide attack for crowd management. He can dodge and block. The enemies at the start of the game are simplistic and can easily be defeated with simple button mashing. Later on, they attack in bigger groups and often have shields that you have to take out first. It definitely gets more difficult towards the end.

You need to use your ranged attacks more often as the game progresses. With a few upgrades, you can carry more ammunition and fire faster. There's an attack which takes down shields and stuns enemies, then a standard attack that does large damage.

Monkey has a small energy shield which takes the initial damage, then your health will deplete. The shield regenerates after a few seconds, and health is restored by pickups. After a few chapters, you are told Trip can now heal you but I never used that ability. Later upgrades give you regenerating health anyway but I think I mainly made do with the pickups.

Trip also has hacking skills so will bypass locked doors. Sometimes you will have to defend her as a few waves of enemies come in, which are often turret sections (which Monkey has hijacked).

The gameplay often alternates between platforming and combat, with a few puzzle sections here and there. The puzzles are basic and are usually an excuse for more platforming as Trip guides you through the steps.

Large parts of the level design are very linear. Areas often have small crevices/rooms/corners with extra orbs to collect which are spent on the combat upgrades.

Climbing sections in these games are usually slapped in there for a change of pace and a visual spectacle. It works well enough here, but I felt they should have included more inspiration from Prince of Persia. Near the end, you have to start timing your jumps because there will be hazards, but earlier you are just moving from one highlighted object to the next, and can just hold a direction and repeatedly press jump to go through many areas.

Sometimes it's a little fussy where you can drop down from a ledge. There's some crumbling buildings which are typical in modern action games. The camera can be fairly restrictive - a bit too zoomed in at times.

There's one section where there is a large body of water and Monkey reveals he has a hoverboard called Cloud. He does remark that he doesn't understand how it works, but only works in limited areas which is why he hadn't used it before this point. It might have helped get through the minefield otherwise! He does use it in some land areas, so it's not like it only works on water.

Overall, I did enjoy Enslaved, although it doesn’t excel in any area. It’s just a competent action game.

- extremely cringe character design, the moment I saw the protagonist I was wondering "hes gonna put a shirt on right? " bad dialogue, cliche forced 'romance', trite story

- game mechanics are barebones and handhold casual shit. the 'platforming' is a total joke. imagine if in Mario all you do is hold a direction and spam jump button and you cant fail. thats the platforming in this. its rediculously simplistic. it looks like your character is doing all sorts of crazy acrobatics but in reality youre holding a direction and spamming 'jump' with no chance of failure.

- besides the platforming the only other real mechanic is a barebones modern game design batman style beat em up. mash button for light attack, then hit button for strong attack. dodge button, block button. really boring and generic. the game is so god damn linear you cant even jump off platforms where you want. there isnt actually a standalone 'jump' button. you can only jump at very specific designated points. if you are on a ledge and you want to drop down, you cant just jump off the ledge. you have to walk specifically in the 'here is the scripted jump part' and toggle it. IT SUCKS. it barely feels like gameplay. you dont feel like youre actually playing the game half the time, just engaging in a series of dumb fucking scripts.

- WAY TOO MANY CUTSCENES. the control of the character is constatnly taken away. I don't mean story based cutscenes, like every 40 seconds some new script will trigger that will show you something or spin the camera around or show you some enemy spawn or show you x. its nonstop. the game is so fucking scripted its painful.

- weak forced in upgrade system where you can upgrade health/shield/'combat moves' which are almost entirely pointless, and your 'gun' staff that shoots lasers. i mean the whole game is fucking stupid. your staff shoots lasers. its retarded.

- game feels like its PG13 designed by a bunch of housewives or something. the overly saturated disney looking color pallette, the rediculous shirtless buff main character with dragon ball Z hair, the cliche 'le strong but dumb man' and 'le weak but really smart haxor woman' its just so cheesy and cringe. the dialogue is embarrasing at times.

- enemy design is really boring. its all just metallic mechs. some of them shoot at you so you have to run around taking cover trying to advance towards them to kill them, the others are just melee robots. i never find it fun engaging or satisfying killing robots in any game. its about the worst enemy type in any game ever. i hate robot enemies they are just plain boring to engage and it feels like they only used them in this game to be more PG13

- the story is retarded and i figured out the plot twist like 2 hours in. theres really unfitting real life photographs randomly shoved into your vision and it just looks stupid as hell. the ending has the most obvious but '2deep4u philosophical dilemma plot twist' when really its the most shallow surface level shit ever. also it uses a real life video of a man and looks absolutely stupid in the context of the disney like graphics of the game.


- not really much good to say about this game, it was only about 7 hours long and it felt too long. i was just waiting for it to be over. it felt like a drag. the mechanics do not evolve. like I said you either have REALLY shallow handholding 'platforming' or you have really generic and boring beat em up. there are some boss fights and they were probably the most fun in the whole game but they were still underwhelming and most of them just involve hitting switches and shooting at X which barely even feel like a boss. theres this stupid hoverboard mechanic that you have to use sometimes that just feels like a massive gimmick. the graphics are OK but the artstyle is SHIT. some of the vistas are nice to look at and sometimes the color pallette is nice but like I said the character designs and the enemy designs are just so awful. the plot is awful. the cliche generic 'romance' is awful. the PC port also sucks and has low framerate drops and stutter. keyboard and mouse does not work properly it feels like its emulating a joystick. so I just used controller. not a good experience overall.

4/10

Mixing the action-adventure gameplay of Uncharted with the Saturday-morning sci-fi of Ratchet & Clank, Ninja Theory's Enslaved: Odyssey of the West manages to be gritty while also being cartoony enough to be lighthearted.
Keeping a nice tone for a story goes a long way in sustaining interest, but the game hits some imbalancing bumps with its awkward ideas of gameplay: there's a limited variety in its combat features (five kinds of melee hits and two sorts of shooter ammunition) and since climbable materials indicate themselves with an obvious shine, getting to places feels more passive than the climbing in Uncharted, where you at least had to look for the climbable spots. (Although I can understand ditching Uncharted's system as it resulted in multiple suicides -- players jumping off-camera into pits of death in faith of a platform.)
Those instances where you race around on the "static plate" (you know, the one almost impossible to navigate) were pretty questionable, too. I thought the levels incorporating that were pointless until I realized that they served as the ever-obligatory vehicle sections in action games these days. In fact, a lot of Enslaved is pretty much a checklist of obligatory things in action games: redundant combat, mindnumbing exploration, sexy protagonists, indulgent graphics that aren't really that visually interesting, etc... More similarities to Uncharted and Ratchet & Clank.
The story and characters were alright, if not meekly-developed and a little tinged with predictable drama and this uncomfortable mix of juvenile and family-friendly humor. The ending forces in some unnecessary philosophy, too -- probably to distract the player from its abruptness.
But I shouldn't let these quibbles sour the whole game; Enslaved is a pretty pleasant experience on the whole, it's just that for me personally "pleasant" things often translate to "boring" -- hence why a lot of my favorite art either outrages or scares the piss out of most other people. I guess what I'm saying is that while I wasn't crazy about Enslaved, keep in mind that I am a person who genuinely loved Spec Ops: The Line, so if the flowery things I said about Enslaved attract you, check it out, if not, I don't care; nobody reads what I write on here anyway.

Enslaved Odyssey to the West is an average action adventure game. Good and playable but average. The story is cool, and the game is visually great, but apart from that there isnt a lot to hold on here. The combat is very simple and straight forward, with very little skill involved, and the platforming sections are way too easy since the game only lets you jump to where you are supposed to (and those things are usually highlighted as well). The game also has a lot of camera issues, and its a really bad pc port which suffers from a bad unchangable control scheme. The best thing about it is the story, which is pretty predictable, but the characters are written convincingly enough and the game is entertaining in that regard.

Its still decent enough, but not really worth playing imo.

During many moments in Enslaved, it’s easy to forget that you are playing a game. The performances, story and art direction of the Ninja Theory's epic are among the best its generation had to offer.

Enslaved is a sci-fi retelling of the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en, telling the story of two prisoners trying to find their way home. Between screenwriter Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Sunshine) and actor Andy Serkis, who brought Gollum to life in the The Lord of the Rings films, there is some noteworthy Hollywood talent behind this title, and it shows. The exchanges between the game’s characters are alive and natural. They capture a nuance that has always been amiss in video game performances. The world feels equally inspired. Players climb and run through a post-apocalyptic United States full of bright green and red flora under a cool, blue sky.

Unfortunately, playing the game isn’t nearly as enticing as uncovering the secrets of the plot. Enslaved is a jack of all trades, but master of none. You sneak, shoot, fight, solve puzzles and climb stuff. All these elements are equally superficial and contrived in their execution. Nearly every battle and obstacle feels like filler in between memorable set pieces and cutscenes, but the game delivers when it counts. Enslaved opens with one of the most intense, awe-inspiring introductions in some time. You escape from an airborne prison ship, jumping across wings as the ship squeezes between weathered New York skyscrapers covered in weeds. It’s in these great moments of spectacle, when the tight leash of its gameplay goes unnoticed, that Enslaved succeeds.