Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (PS3)

What a great game - we played it in 2010 when it came out - my best mate was one of the animators in Enslaved and he also recorded our first album so we ended up just playing it at his place while recording - it’s one of the happiest times I can remember. Bought my own copy just to play it again and man it’s still so good. 10 years later I can only say - GOOD JOB NINJAS thanks for a great game.

Beautiful game, well thought out, great fun and a pleasant change from all the killing (your enemies are robots so it's all about smashing them before they smash or kill you). That's not to say that the game doesn't deal with some complex issues - it does and very well - one might say the game is all about how some people deal with loss and fear of loss... or one might just say it's a great action adventure.

Goods just as described and excellent service.

I liked nothing about this game

If nothing else, you've got to give Enslaved some credit for it's premise. Taking the story of the Journey to the West and transplanting it onto a futuristic, post-apocalyptic Earth is a brave move. True, taking an old story and reimagining it in the present or future isn't exactly a new concept, but it's certainly new to see a western developer attempt it with a high profile, high budget title. It was quite a gamble on Ninja Theory's part, and one that apparently hasn't paid off judging from the game being considered a flop already. Shame, because despite some glaring technical issues, this is a decent game, but it could and should have been a great one..Playing as 'Monkey'(Yes, that's all the name you get), a prisoner on a ship filled with mysterious automaton soldiers who have been abducting everyone they can find in a ruin covered, desolate future Earth, the game opens with Monkey making his escape as the ship falls from the sky, leading to a pretty impressive opening level where you must navigate the large ship inside and out to get off of it before it crashes. It is during this escape that Monkey is knocked unconscious and wakes up in the ruins of a city with a girl called Trip standing over him, having just fitted him with a headband that causes him pain when he tries to disobey her and will kill him if anything happens to her. So, blackmailed into escorting Trip back to her home village far across the ruins and wastelands, Monkey has to navigate killer robots, crumbling skyscrapers, treacherous mountains and all manner of other dangers as he finds a way to get his new 'master' safely home. The plot is fairly well put together, with strong character development, an interesting central threat and a genuinely surprising twist ending that was quite satisfying, but won't please everyone. The strong plot and characters are the best thing about the game.Gameplay is not QUITE so strong, with functional platforming controls that owe no small amount of thanks to the Uncharted games, but lack any of the polish that makes those games such a joy to play. The game is fairly linear in layout and heavy on set pieces(eg. boss battles with giant robots) and is quite fun a lot of the time... However, there are a few sequences that are extremely rough and don't really work too well at all, most of them are the sequences involving using Monkey's 'Cloud', which in this game is a Back to the Future 2 style hoverboard you use to navigate over water and swamps and what have you. The controls for the Cloud are not nearly as easy to get to grips with as the standard platform controls, which aren't exactly a masterclass in intuitive control design themselves, and there are some sections that require you to line up and execute precise, well timed jumps with the Cloud that are so annoying and anger inducing I had to 'take a break' from the game on more than one occasion before I had to stomp it. This is all before you even get to the repetitive, irritating combat sequences, which are only one step away from mindless button mashing. It's a game that's long on ideas, and short on execution.The graphics are quite nice to look at, with decent texture work and some incredibly impressive animation, in particular the facial animations. However, the game has absolutely ATROCIOUS performance, with regularly dipping framerates and heavy screen tearing to a pretty distracting degree. It's a textbook example of a game that had more development time spent on making the game look good rather than properly polishing up how it performs. There have been too many better looking games on PS3 that haven't had the performance issues Enslaved does for such shoddy work to be acceptable.The voice work is deeply impressive though, with Andy Serkis in particular putting in a stellar turn as Monkey. The soundtrack work likewise is deeply satisfying and further shows how the game just oozes high production values. Shame those high production values didn't extend to the gameplay development is all.It's a decent game with some shoddy design work and even shoddier technical issues holding it back from being truly great. There's a lot here to like in terms of visuals, story and some of the platforming/puzzles, but there is no getting away from how the bad points exceed the good, thereby making Enslaved a game that just doesn't cut it at a time when there are so many high quality titles coming out on a regular basis.

"Enslaved: Odyssey to the West" could have been great. It could have been a contender. Instead its a decent game with too many flaws holding it back from greatness.Enslaved is set after a war between man and machine which man lost and drove earth into a post apocalyptic era where nature is taking over the cities and crazed Mechs roam the streets attacking every survivor. Our heroes are Monkey, a brutish, tough loner type and Trip a sweet and smart girl who are taken prisoners by slavers. After a narrow escape Trip enslaves Monkey with a headband which will blow up if he tries to leave her behind or if she dies. Monkey is now forced to protect her from danger after danger as they try to make their way back to Trip's village.The story is paper thin but at the same time Monkey and Tripp are the strongest points in the game. They are wonderfully acted by the voice actors and very well written characters. They're very likable and we go along with them on this adventure and see their relationship grow and evolve. Its easy to bond with them and support them in their quest. Unfortunately the story never seems to go anywhere. There are few details about the war or Monkey's past and although the focus of the story changes halfway through the game there never seems to be any substance to the plot and everything seems quite shallow.Also shallow is the gameplay. You fight only three or four types of "robots" and three bosses some of which you fight more than once. The combat is satisfying enough but never rises above average and the excitement is somewhat diminished by repeating fights over and over again with little to differentiate them except the increasing amount of enemies at once as the game tries to create challenge by using the awful camera for the AI to get some cheap shots when you cant even see the enemy behind you. Even by the end when the developers throw everything at you desperately trying to squeeze a few more minutes of game time "Enslaved" is not hard as the combat is just so simplistic it just takes some button mashing. There's also a skill tree, every game has it these days and you spend the levels gathering little orange orbs to buy upgrades but other than health and some combat moves its all terribly bland and unnecessary.Other gameplay mechanics involve moving from cover to cover, using Tripp to distract a turret as you move closer and closer to disable it. Again this is repeated many many times and it doesn't take long for you to just be going through the motions trying to get to the next level.The other half of the gameplay involves platforming which is made so simple its borderline ridiculous. Monkey can only jump in very specific spots and every jumping sequence has highlighted spots so you know where to go and well... basically you cannot fail. This means exploration is minimal as Monkey simply refuses to jump anywhere he's not "programmed" to and you're on what is pretty much a rails sequence where you push X and watch him go. Its auto platforming with no excitement, no sense of danger and no skill involved. This adds even more to the huge linearity which plagues "Enslaved" from the first to the last minute. Every step of this journey is carefully planned and there are no hidden or alternate paths to discover. If you take some time to watch the environment or even to grab some of those orbs, Tripp quickly urges you to hurry and move along. This is somewhat ironic considering how short the game is at about six hours on "hard difficulty".I may seem overly critic of "Enslaved" but I quite enjoyed the ride. Monkey and Tripp are very likable as is Pigsy, a character introduced halfway through that strikes the perfect balance between annoying and funny and the art and graphics are absolutely stunning. This is quite honestly one the most beautiful games of this generation with some truly incredible sights. The soundtrack is also amazing and the dialog is well written and even with some repetition the game is never boring. So even though it had flaws I was enjoying "Enslaved" right until the ending. The problem with the ending is that there isn't one. The game offers no closure on the characters or their "journey" and no closure to their relationship. And what little ending there is has a twist which seems out of place in both the game's tone and previous plot. To be honest it hardly makes sense considering the rest of the game. And then it just ends abruptly. Its an obvious cliffhanger for both future DLC and a sequel. Neither will ever be made as "Enslaved" was a commercial flop and so this is what we get. No sense of accomplishment or closure.It leaves you sour and bitter and disappointed and kills what little replay value the game had. Because really... why bother? Going through linear levels with lackluster combat and auto platforming for this... again? No, I don't think I will.