Reviews// Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is, I am told, a re-imagining of the ancient Chinese religious saga that inspired the 1970's TV series / Chinese Classic, Monkey. So if, like me, you were hoping and waiting for a The Water Margin game, this may come as a disappointment to you. If, however, you enjoyed Heavenly Sword greatly, and were eagerly and impatiently awaiting another game of that ilk, then you may be not so disappointed.

The pretext to this game is that some people are enslaving some other people, and you are on a huge great flying thing, and it crashes... and then I skipped a bit because the cutscenes are, to be honest, quite dull. Then I (and when I say I, I mean the hulking man-beast (Monkey) I was controling in the game) was wearing this headband that meant I had to do whatever this cute NPC called Titicaca (named, I assume, for the south American Lake) asked me to do (It's Tripitaka Ed.) . I say “asked”, but most of the time during the game she helpfully but tersely tells you what to do in a way that becomes annoying almost instantly.

The flying thing, which is huge like a spaceship but which has wings, and is flying within the atmosphere, crashes in what was clearly, formerly New York. Now the city is a destroyed wreck, populated with "Mechs" who seem to have no other purpose than to kill you and Tripitaka.

Wu Cheng Clan
As I mentioned, the story itself comes from the classical 16th century Chinese novel via the classic 70s TV show and the "classic" 2007 Damon Albarn stage production. Personally, I never read the book nor watched the TV series, though I did endure the stage production, and I cannot see what the fuss is all about. Clearly, the video games industry needs stories on which to hang games - even if no one cares about those stories. And clearly, raiding long-out-of-copyright classics is a cheap and easy way to get these stories.

Much has been made of the fact that Enslaved is written by Alex Garland, though the adverts have to go all the way back to 28 Days Later (or maybe the video game sequence from The Beach) to find one of his works their target audience will be familiar with. Do not forget that this man is responsible for the utterly appalling Sunshine.

But the thing is, the game was clearly written by Wu Cheng'en, and while Garland may have brought it up to date, he has also removed much of the original story, and substituted it with some fairly dire dialogue. And still got a fat pay check!

I am Not the Camera
The game does not have the fluid feel of, say, Uncharted. Character movement is much more stilted. It's not terrible, but it just feels as if sometimes your character is marginally less responsive than you'd like him to be. This is occasionally frustrating, especially at times when you need good control.

For example, at one point Monkey is running behind an armoured vehicle driven by Triptych-Car-Car (named I assume for a piece of modern art, maybe by Gilbert and George) while being targeted by multiple mech-turrets. The section is short, but frustrating because Monkey's movements are just marginally less responsive than required.

The game progresses like many wandering adventure, puzzle, combat games of the type pioneered by Tomb Raider. And like many such games, it's on a guided path structure. But like Uncharted, and unlike Tomb Raider, it feels firmly on rails. You are directed pretty closely, and you cannot climb and very often not even walk into areas that are not directly involved in the game progression.

Often camera control is wrested from you in a way that makes even looking at some parts of the game world impossible. This is frustrating and annoying, because the game world itself is expansive and interesting and, rendered using the Unreal engine, it is up to typical standards of prettiness too. Especially annoying is the way that occasionally, to force you to have to listen to Trip expound her trite dialogue, control of your character is attenuated.

Monkey remains in your control but instead of running, as he usually does, he walks and it's just ANNOYING. As it is when, in times of peril, control is wrested from you and the console guides your character out of trouble in an integrated cut-scene.