Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Remember when platform adventure games use to be good, before they became fighting games with the occasional wall. Remember back in the good old days of Tomb Raider when climbing walls and jumping from ledge to ledge was the most challenging part of the whole game. It’s all Prince of Persia fault, bouncing from wall to wall with the majestic beautiful grace of a ballet dancer on speed. The creators were so afraid you’d cramp his style they took as much control from the player as possible.

Its clear that the creators of Enslaved were just as afraid of you causing the hero Monkey embarrassment that took away even more control when it comes to the platforming sections. The climbing parts couldn’t be easier you simple take Monkey to anything glowing and press A, then simply sit back and watch Monkey scale the walls and jump for pole to pole as comfortably as…well as a monkey would. You couldn’t even fall off the platforms if you wanted to. It makes me long for the when you had to tip toe around ledges in fear of falling off and having to start the section again and remember when you had to hold down a button to grip a ledge, things like that was what made games like this so intense and exciting.

But enough about my bitching for a moment, Enslaved is based on the novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en The story revolves around Monkey a… come to think of it they never really explain the back story behind the characters, anyway its starts off with him trying to escape a Slave ship that’s flying though the sky about to crash . On the ship is where he meets Trip a young girl skill in hacking doors and making things more difficult for Monkey after escaping the ship with little help from Trip, Monkey finds that Trip has attached a devise to his head to force him to help her find her way home. The idea is you have to make it though the game while keeping her safe, if she dies you lose if you wonder too far the device thinks your running away and you die, and then lose. Set in a post apocalyptic future, how it became a post apocalyptic future it didn’t really explain… between you and your goals is a army of robot killing machines of “Mechs”, soldiers left over from a war that ended but where never switched off after and have just been hunting anything they can. Ow wait that sounded like back story… although it never explains what the war was about, hmm.. Maybe the reason Monkey can’t fall off ledges is so he doesn’t fall though any plot hole?

The combat is what you would expect from any action game, it’s a case of taking on multiple enemies, dodging and blocking attacks until you get the opportunity to counter, my favourite parts were the sections where Monkey and trip have to work together to avoid attacks from turrets by taking it in turns to draw fire while the other sneaks up behind it.

By far the best part of this game is the surroundings, I mean my Dickens it’s pretty really pretty, I strongly recommend downloading the demo just for that first level to see how beautiful it really is. It has it faults but I enjoyed it it’s not the most challenging but even with the plot gaps the characters I really likable and have some fun dialogue between now and again.

I’d recommend it, it beats Call of Duty any day.

Available @ Amazon.co.uk

See how long you can stare at this picture of Pigsy before running off to play Beyond Good and Evil…I dare you…