Enslaved: Odyssey to the- Wait, What?

I find it quite astonishing how many people I speak to who have no idea what Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is. Even my friends that skim game sites on a daily basis weren't in the know (save for a a select few). In hindsight though this speaks to reason as the lackluster sales of Enslaved has dashed the hopes of a sequel ever seeing the light of day. The news came from the studio itself (Ninja Theory) who are currently hard at work on the Devil May Cry reboot/prequel. The news made me sad, so I decided to finally sit down and record my thoughts about Enslaved.

Enslaved, to me, is a fantastic example of a strong linear narrative in an interactive medium. Keep in mind that I do not use linear here as a negative, just don't come into this game expecting emergent storytelling. There, now that I've got the pretentious explanation out of the way I can get on to the good stuff. The characters and the world they inhabit are simply stunning. This game has incredible art direction. It takes the drab apocalypse and turns it into a fab apocalypse! The lush, colorful environments are a welcome change to the games I've been playing lately.

The story is loosely based on the Eastern classic Journey to the West (in about the same way the first Resident Evil movie was based on Alice in Wonderland). It ends up being fairly broad in its scope and execution, or at least more so than I thought it would be. Basically, I went into this thinking it would be Escape From New York, but it ended up being more along the lines of, say, Visions of Escaflowne.

The characters are strong, which they should be, as there are only three. The performances tend to avoid the uncanny valley and would at times elicit the occasional emotional response. This was a wonderful treat seeing as I had just finished playing Oblivion in which the grand total of characters I had an emotional attachment to was zero. In fact is was probably somewhere deep in the negatives because I actively hated many of the people in Oblivion...

The actual game play mechanics is where some say the Enslaved falters. The staff swinging and shooting of monkey can be a bit wonkey at times, but it remains enjoyable for the most part. Sometimes platforming can get frustrating as jumping is irritatingly context sensitive.

In the end I would certainly recommend this title. In fact I would love it if the Enslaved got a large, noticeable boost in used sales, making it financially viable to make a sequel. I'll admit, there's not much here in the way of "games as art" other than just being a fun game, but that's not a bad thing. I think back on my time with Enslaved like a good book, one I will certainly revisit later because of the vibrant art direction and enjoyable characters. Anything I'm willing to play twice can at the very least be considered a good game... or at least an okay game... well by any means it's certainly a game.