I've spent a good chunk of today playing “Enslaved: Odyssey to the West” on the 360, I missed this when it was first released but remembered it a couple of weeks ago. Well thanks to my LoveFilm account I can finally see what all the fuss was about.
When Enslaved was released it had pretty much universal acclaim, with a story co-written by Alex Garland, the same man who wrote the screenplays for 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go and the upcoming Judge Dredd movie “Dredd”. The Story itself is an adaptation of a 16th century Chinese story, which has been adapted into the movie “The Forbidden Kingdom” and the manga/animé series “Dragonball”
The motion capture was performed by Andy Serkis, Gollum from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.. I'm pretty sure everybody has watched those films.. if not.. shame on you.
The story is simple enough, you play as Monkey, grabbed by slavers and accidentally set free when another future slave escapes and manages to crash the transport to the slave camp. The other slave is Trip, a tech savvy but innocent young lady who wants to get home and forces you to help her by strapping a head band on you that not only forces you to obey her commands, but will kill you if she dies. Things happen, truths are learnt, and we all grow a little inside... you know, the usual type of story.
My first thoughts on Enslaved were of how absolutely beautiful the game looks, you can tell a lot of care and attention has gone into Enslaved, the characters, the scenery and backgrounds look absolutely stunning. The opening few minutes of the game did leave me with a general feeling of “this all looks very brown” but after a brief tutorial you are exposed to the world of the future, more specifically future New York. Seeing the once great city in a complete state of disrepair was breathtaking.
Controls are easy to learn, and to be fair not that much harder to master. There is a good mix of platforming and combat, so far so good..
But...
The one problem that has plagued third person adventure games since time began, the case of the god awful camera!.
Maybe its a bit harsh to say the camera is god awful. Its not fantastic, at times it got confused at what it should be looking at, due to walking to close to a wall, or some rubble, or a leaf...
This was released in October 2010 surely somebody, somewhere can come up with ways to combat this?.
The lack of a target lock in combat did lead to a few well chosen words thrown at the TV, I cant think why that would have been left out, I cant actually think of a third person adventure game that didn’t have it
I wanted to play this and have a white light shine down, with angels singing out, welcoming me to the world of Enslaved, congratulating me on a fine purchase/rental.
Instead I was met with a pretty average game, albeit a very, very beautiful looking one, with a slightly better than average story. It was a good attempt though and it definitely should of sold more than it did, I've read it sold less than 500,000 copies
I'm glad I rented, it can be picked up pretty cheap now though.
If your a fan of Tomb Raider, Uncharted, or to an extent the Assassins Creed series you should enjoy this.
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