Review: Enslaved Odyssey to the West

This game shows up from time to time on those "Top 10 Overlooked Games" lists, and yet I can't find a single person among my friends whose heard of Enslaved. "Idiots!" I yell. "Voice acting! Facial animations!" I argue. Then I realize that just yelling features doesn't really sell people on a game. Let me try to lay my thoughts out a little more intelligently.

..Story..

Raise your hand if you've played a game set in a post-apocalyptic world. Your hand is probably raised. Just for fun, keep it raised for the rest of the review. Now, raise your other hand if you have played a game set in a post-post-apocalyptic world. Ah HA! Not so fast, eh? This isn't the typical war-torn, brown and grey backdrop from typical Post-Apocalyptica - nature has reclaimed most of the landscape - making for beautiful vistas against the backdrop of destroyed cities.

Enslaved takes place 150 years after the human race has been nearly annihilated in a great war between mankind and robots. A few brave people survive and still roam the countryside eeking out a meager existence. But between the remaining bloodthirsty robots (called Mechs) and a mysterious group of people called "Slavers", humans are fading quickly from the Earth.

New York, son.

You play as a guy named "Monkey" - a trader who's been captured by a slave ship. He also has an inexplicably thick Brooklyn accent. You and a girl named Trip escape the ship and wake up in the wreckage of New York City. While you're knocked out, Trip puts a "slave headband" on Monkey which forces him to obey her, but she only wants his help getting back to her home. The headstrong Monkey isn't too pumped about being a slave, but this sets up the interesting dynamic between the two characters.

The story continues from there, and is delivered incredibly effectively. Cutscenes are used sparingly and most of the dialogue happens real-time within the game. You actually don't learn the names of the characters until about an hour in to the experience - and it happens just while you're exploring the landscape. It's little touches like that that make the story all the more believable. The script is is so conversationally written and the voice acting so perfectly performed and the facial animations are so subtle and convincing that the characters become real people that you care for a great deal. 

Monkey and Trip go through four major acts together culminating in a fantastic, but conflicted and ambiguous ending. The finale makes for interesting discussion as it has a ton of moral questions and thought provoking issues. A little more closure would have been great, but I like what they did with it. Not a cop-out ending by any stretch.

..Gameplay..

Beating the balls outta robots has never been more fun.

What if you were told the following sentence: "The only thing you'll fight in this game are robots." You'd be kinda bummed out right? I mean robots can't be vindictive. You can't feel like you're taking revenge on a robot. There's no emotional investment or resonance in dismantling machines. And yet the feeling of empowerment you get when ripping these things apart is a testosterone laden monster truck steak beer football game of a man boner.

Given that your main weapon is a staff, the majority of the combat takes place in close quarters, and it becomes so visceral. The feedback you get visually and physically really sells the weight of the combat and makes it a very real thing for the player. It plays out similarly to the Arkham games where you're usually surrounded by foes and have to prioritize attacks based on the biggest threat at the moment. You'll also have to think strategically as some Mechs are triggered to explode while others have a countdown timer which summons more Mechs at 0 seconds. So while the button combinations are incredibly simplistic and the combat rarely poses a challenge, it never becomes a chore, but rather something I looked forward to.

FU*K YEAH!

The other side of the gameplay coin is the climbing and exploration sections. You might remember these elements from such games as Uncharted and Uncharted 2 and also Uncharted 3. And while it certainly feels like a copy/paste job from the well known series, it doesn't feel like a cheap knock off. Nothing's worse than a game trying to emulate a better game and failing. This feels just as fluid and natural as Drake's games and it also makes sense within the Enslaved universe. You're running around in the wreckage of former cities - of course you'll need to climb things to get around. Again, this element poses nearly no challenge as you're essentially led by the nose to your next objective. But its a fun way to traverse the landscape and see the sights of the ruined cities.

..Presentation..

Enslaved's presentation should be considered a blueprint for every game of this genre. Everything is perfect. The voice acting is among the best I've ever heard with the actors delivering subtle performances that do everything they can to convince the player that these are real people. They're beautiful, selfish, honest, pigheaded, deceitful, kind and bullish - flawed. Human. They've achieved even more than Uncharted in this area. Nathan Drake's devil may care attitude and hair style is fun, but unrealistic. Enslaved manages to create realistic, human characters without falling into the macho guy/girly girl archetypes.

The music is rapturous with peaks and valleys at all the right moments. Lighting and animation are all at the top of their game. And why does this all work so well? Because they realized that game designers are not film directors. They hired a professional script writer, professional actors and composers to make this cinematic experience that programmers have been trying to do for 15 years now.

Strip away the excellent story, top notch presentation and emotional investment in the characters and you have a pretty standard brawler. But all those things on top of a pretty standard brawler make for a game that shouldn't be missed by anyone who feels like games can transcend the Call of Duty nonsense and become a respected art form.

You can put your hand down now.

GRADE: A