Enslaved: Odyssey to the West Review

Its 2011 now! Can I please stop playing bad standalone 2010 games?

Well thats a bad way to start a review isn't it. Enslaved is a game by Ninja Theory, the same people who made heavenly sword, a game so short I completed it in 3 hours in a speedrun. Enslaved seems to take the worst from both of these games in my opinion, with its short length and the female character that I hate with every fibre of my being since she first opened her mouth.

There are only three major characters in this game, and I only really liked Pigsy, which is in effect the comic relief. Unfortunatly he comes in about three quarters of the way through the game, which is a shame as this makes me think that this character was introduced too late to make a difference and he was meant to have a bigger part in the game. I feel no attachment to either of the other two only characters in the game, "Monkey" who the player controls, and "Trip" who is possibly the worst female character I have ever played with as a escort character. The basic plot is that Trip needs to be taken back to her village, so puts a explosive headband on Monkey so that he will help her. I'll go into what I think of the story later, but believe me it gets bad.

The combat is great. It works, although a bit slow to react at some occassions, and some of the upgrades simply are not worth the money that you spend on them. All you need to know is that for the most part, the combat is near perfect.

The story on the other hand, is a huge mess. One second they are going to a village to check on a character's father, which was well organised if uninteresting, but then in quick succession they learn of a super mech, and go to "the Pyramid" to do.... something. There is almost no story in the narrativeafter the first half, and this is just wasted potential. No matter how good your combat is you can't just tell us that these characters are doing something now and its good. When you get to the pyramid as well there is one of the scenes that I think is the most I have ever seen for wasted potential.

*SPOILERS* You get to the pyramid, and you find out that all of the slaves have been put in virtual reality powered by one man's memory of the old world. He created this to give people a chance to live out their lives in the virtual world and it to be easy, rather than rebuilding the current world and it being hard. Monkey sees the perfect world, and Trip decides to kill the man powering the whole thing. This is just wasted potential. You could have had this scene go so many other ways. Lets just look at one of the ways you could have ended it, from a perspective if we eliminate any labels of good or evil. Trip goes to murder the guy, Monkey gets a choice to either stop her, or let her do it. If he stops her they go to live in the perfect world and live out their remaining days, and if he lets her kill the guy, they help to rebuild the lost civilisations. What we got however was a ending where Trip kills the guy and makes a bad cutscene even worse by saying "Did I do the right thing?". We never get a response from Monkey, or any closure as then the credits start.

What happened to the mechs?! Was that guy controlling them? Did he create them? How did he create them?! How does he control them! So many unanswered questions!

I paid just under £20 for this game, and I do think that I got my money's worth from this game. The thing is now though as we come out of the sales, this is how much this game is worth. If I had paid anything more than this for it, I would feel ripped off.

Overall, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West gets a competant score of 6/10, with the alrightness of the first half and combat, balancing out the ending that I thought was horrendous.

Lets hope that Castlevania: Lord's of Shadow can impress.

This is Tyramatt, signing off.