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review

A spirited adventure game, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West benefits from rich, engaging characters and a compelling story, but suffers from some minor control missteps.

The story takes place hundreds of years in our future. It's a war-ravaged, post-apocalyptic setting, and - as expected given the title of the game - slavery is an overarching theme here.

You take on the guise of Monkey, a loner who has been captured by slavers from an enigmatic place in the west known as Pyramid. As the game begins, Monkey manages to escape the slave ship in which he is trapped, but finds himself bound to another captor.

Trip, a smart young girl with wizard technical skills, has hacked a slave headband and fitted it to Monkey in order to compel him to be her protector. If Monkey sees her safely home, to a self-sufficient, wind-powered community in the mountains, Trip will remove the headband. Until then, if she dies, so does he. And she can, if he steps out of line, kill him with a thought.

The story, co-written by novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later), is loosely based on the classical Chinese novel, Journey to the West, which tells the story of a monk travelling to India to find Buddhist sutras. Enslaved is also about enlightenment, but the freedom being sought is more literal than spiritual.

This is an action-adventure in the same vein as the Prince of Persia and Uncharted games. In other words, you will be fighting enemies, running and jumping through platform sections, and solving environmental puzzles in order to progress through the game.

The art direction in Enslaved is astounding, and while the environments you'll see are varied, the developers at Ninja Theory never waste an opportunity to show off a vista. The magnificent backdrops provide a sense of scale and a sense of the past.



  • The Goods Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360 Publisher/Developer: Namco Bandai/Ninja Theory The Good: Compelling characters and superb performances that have an emotional impact; gameplay that is varied enough to stay interesting throughout. The Bad: Problems with the controls and the camera; lacks polish. The Verdict: It’s too bad the game suffers from some irritating problems, because Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a game that never gets boring and often surprises.

There are glimpses into the apocalypse that befell our civilization. Signs indicate evacuation zones, degraded posters with photographs of missing people plaster walls, a "Stop the War" banner hangs from a street lamp, and a massive tree grows up through the pavement.

New York, where the game begins, has never been so verdant; nature has reclaimed the city.

But it's not empty, either. The remaining creatures, known as mechs, are everywhere. These robotic creatures, from an era long gone, are still programmed to attack people on sight.

You'll use Monkey's brawn and Trip's brain to navigate through the landscapes. Monkey can distract enemies to allow Trip to advance from one hiding place to another. And Monkey can ask Trip to use her technical skills - projecting a hologrammatic decoy, for example - to provide him with an opportunity to sneak behind mechs.

But when there is fighting to be done, it's all on Monkey. He uses a staff to battle in close that can also fire plasma bolts for ranged attacks. His armband can throw up a force shield when he needs to block.

Collecting orange orbs scattered in the environment and dropped by defeated enemies provides the currency to purchase upgrades to Monkey's equipment and abilities.

Monkey moves like one; fluid and even graceful despite his bulky frame, and with a sash around his waist that flutters back when he jumps, looking just like a tail.

But it's in controlling the movements of Monkey where Enslaved's biggest drawback is exposed.

When you're climbing you won't have any problems, and you don't have to worry about inadvertently falling off the edge of a cliff. But trying to walk in a straight line is often troublesome.

Some objects in the environment, for example, can be vaulted, but not all similar objects can. And Monkey will, at times, stick to the edges of things. For a game that has sections requiring you to run from enemies, or take cover to avoid damage, this is more than a small annoyance.

The camera perspective, which is controlled by the game, will also cause you some frustration. It can leave you disoriented when it spins around to a new vantage point, and from time to time, will get caught in and behind objects.

You may experience the odd glitch, too. In one I stumbled across, the level failed to load completely, so I was unable to solve the puzzle. If I hadn't thought to reload from the last checkpoint, I'd still be trying to figure it out.

With some extra development time, these problems could have all been sorted out and solved. It's one indication that Enslaved would have benefited from some more time to polish the experience.

But you will grow accustomed to the controls as the game goes on, and are advised to ignore the occasional glitch. Because Enslaved is sophisticated storytelling.

The performances, in particular, are astounding. Andy Serkis and Lindsey Shaw play Monkey and Trip, respectively, using voice recording and through performance capture, in which an actor's subtle movements are recorded and translated to the digital character.

So when Monkey cocks an eyebrow, or Trip narrows her gaze, the movements are as natural and realistic as if they were made by a real person. (Because they were). In fact, the actors' performances are so strong that we can sense what Monkey and Trip are feeling without needing dialogue to tell us.

The relationship between Trip and Monkey may start out as master and slave, but it becomes something much more. This is not a trite romance, either, but a complex, human relationship. The developers earn every shift in the dynamic between the two main characters.

And while the story comes to a close much too quickly, as though a looming deadline caused the developers to wrap things up - Enslaved shines as a story and is definitely worth playing.

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