Reviews// Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

The narrow corridors and crawl spaces that you are forced along periodically open out into arenas - typically this indicates that you are about to enter a combat set piece. The game feels a lot like a series of linked set pieces.

Combat Devolved
The combat sequences themselves are enjoyable. There are a number of different mech opponents, each with different characteristics that require you to take a different approach to dealing with them. Often they attack in combination, and success is dependant on you taking out the biggest threats - the mechs with ranged attacks - first.

The traditional mobile robot mechs are supported by fixed gun turret mechs, which lay down a formidable pattern of fire that Monkey's shield can endure only for only short durations. The key to these situations is to use Titicaca (the lake again, sorry, but as a running gag it had fabulously short legs) to attract the attention of the mechs, and scurry between cover in the brief interval of cover that affords.

When you enter a combat arena, Trip will often dispatch her pet Dragonfly to survey the area and give you a short mission briefing, showing you the location of opponents, and the objective. This is a nice use of her character, but not the only one.

Trip also has the power to scan defeated mechs and use their technology to enhance your own. But to access this tech you'll need to have collected enough of the red glowing orbs that litter the landscape which are dropped by fallen foes. The upgrades are the obvious - bigger stick, more ammo, faster reload times.

Combat itself takes two forms. You can either hit mechs with your stick - staff, actually - or you can shoot at them with your staff. There are two kinds of bolts: stun and plasma. Stun does as its name suggests, and halts mechs for a few seconds. Plasma is a more typical destructive ranged shot. Some mechs are shielded from Plasma, but Stun still works on them, so you have to use a combination of Stun and melee or plasma bolts to defeat them - range and availability of ammo determining which will be best in each instance.

Lightweight Puzzling
The hitting and shooting is complemented by a small amount of lightweight puzzling. Nothing too taxing of course, because based on recent GCSE papers I've seen, that would be a way to alienate the majority of the yoof right away. But there is some, typically of the pulling levers in sequence variety. Mild novelty is afforded by the fact that you can instruct TrippyCarter (clumsy detective from 70 flying squad show?) to perform certain tasks, and without doing so most puzzles cannot be completed.

As any lazy reviewer might say, “If this sounds like something you might like, you might like this”. But it's true. If you enjoy those wandering-around-and-shooting, hitting-with-a-stick, puzzling games then Enslaved will not disappoint.

I've seen the TV adverts telling me that the game is "An Ultra Awesome Roller Coaster Ride that will change your life and the world forever". But it's not! The dialogue and story are not as good as Heavenly Sword, let alone Uncharted 2. The character fluidity is not as good as Bayonetta. The way control is taken from you and returned to you is at times annoying, the camera control (or lack of it) was too.

I've never, I think, used the word 'annoying' so many times in a review before. Which is a shame, because I DID enjoy Enslaved. None of the niggles is enough to make me want to stop playing the game, but all of them combine to make me long for Uncharted 3. Enslaved is great entertainment, but the rough edges are just too rough. A stronger power of veto in QA, or more preparedness to listen to that voice of caution by production could have risen this to the very highest ranks.

Conclusion
Enslaved is a decent crack at a well established genre. It does nothing truly new, but does much extremely well. But there are just too many minor frustrations with the game for me to truly love it. I do like it a lot though.

SPOnG Score: 78%.