Hands On: Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Earlier this year, Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades spoke about his “unease” at seeing the upcoming action-adventure title Enslaved: Odyssey to the West compared to the fantastic Uncharted 2. After spending some extended play time with the game at the end of last week, I can absolutely understand where those comparisons come from. Due out next month, Enslaved follows the journey of escaped slaves Trip and Monkey across post-apocalyptic America, and fans of Naughty Dog’s latest works will feel right at home. But Enslaved brings a whole heap of new and very interesting ideas that develop it into a very different beast.

Enslaved starts with the game’s playable character Monkey chained up in a cell. An explosion and a flash of red hair later and Monkey is free and on the tail of Trip, who has herself escaped. A few brief encounters with low-level guard bots follow, introducing the game’s core combat mechanics – light fist and heavy staff attacks, as well as blocking, dodging, a charge attack, and a shockwave that grants you a precious few moments grace when surrounded in battle. Whilst the combat looks stylish, it’s also a little slow, and once you’ve triggered an acrobatic barrage of staff smacks for example, there’s no way to quickly snap out of them and flee if that stunned enemy you were attacking suddenly wakes back up.

After fighting your way through a few of these areas, you open a door to realise that far from some kind of ground-based prison facility, you are in fact on a slave transport airship – and all those explosions haven’t been good for the ship’s structural integrity. On the outside of the ship now, Monkey must leap from wing to wing (using the glowing climbing grips), avoiding flying debris, and fleeing the disintegrating rear end of the craft. It is around this time that you also become aware of the countdown of remaining escape pods over the ship’s address system. With only a few left, the game ramps up the speed; opening a hatch accidentally blows out one of the ships engines and as you career towards the no-longer-so-distant city, the wing smashes into the Statue of Liberty and is ripped off. The player must then quickly scramble to the front of the craft and the last remaining escape pods, which, naturally, is already occupied by Trip. With Monkey clinging on to the exterior for dear life, Trip launches the pod.

Waking up in what was once Grand Central Station, now half-collapsed and covered in greenery, Monkey realises he’s got a bit of a headache. It turns out that Trip has modified a slave headband (she’s a bit of a technological whiz) so that she can control Monkey directly using her voice. Needless to say, Monkey isn’t so keen on the whole idea, but his attempt to attack her is met with a perfect demonstration of the headband’s control capabilities. Trip does have a reason for capturing Monkey though – she needs to make her way through the city and out to her village, but with mechs on the prowl there’s no way she can do it on her own, she needs Monkey’s strength (not to say he’s overly weighty, his name comes from his athletic prowess). Oh and there’s one last feature of the headband: if Trip dies, it will produce a lethal electrical shock, meaning Monkey will too. It certainly seems that the two are stuck together, but it’s not long before it is Monkey dishing out the commands.

Pressing L1 centers the camera on Trip and brings up a ring of commands, more of which become available as you progress through the game. Not long into the second chapter, Trip learns to project decoys that will attract enemy fire and allow you to sneak around, a very useful ability as whilst Monkey has his own shield, after that is down it only takes a couple of stray bullets before you’re dead. However, what this does mean is that most  of the second chapter (“The Old City”) can be completed by just telling Trip to use her decoy, running round the back of the robots and bashing them in, retreating behind some nearby cover and waiting for “decoy” to recharge and then doing the whole thing again until the area is clear. Thankfully, there are plenty of segments in both this and other chapters where Trip and Monkey are actually separated and so different tactics are required.

Another ability that Trip picks up early on is to scout out areas using a robotic dragonfly she has hacked. This allows you to see what’s ahead – normally mines that you otherwise would not have noticed, hidden mech turrets, or enemies with weaknesses that could help you in combat. As well as adding in a layer of variety, it also helps out with the biggest problem that I had during my time with the game, that it’s not always entirely clear what you’re supposed to be doing. If Trip is out in front that’s no problem, because you can use L1 to see where she is, but if she’s waiting for you to clear an area for example, and you’ve just not gone over an invisible tripwire to trigger the next action sequence, or haven’t interpreted Trip’s vague instruction to exactly what the game wants you to do, you can find yourself a bit stuck. These moments didn’t happen often, but in the three-and-a-bit hours I spent with the game (across the first five-and-a-half chapters), it happened a good three or four times, certainly enough to note.

Those Uncharted connections certainly show after extended time with the game though. It’s not just the dynamic between the male and female leads, or giving Trip a lift up so she can kick a ladder down to you, there are action segments that are very reminiscent: at one point a bridge collapses and you have to climb up, with debris falling down that you must dodge, in a similar way to climbing up U2’s train, or a sequence in which Trip and Monkey are being chased by a C-Dog (a massive canine-styled mech) where you have to run towards the camera  as you flee, like the similar tank escape in U2.

But then just when you think Enslaved is pooling ideas from other games, it brings in something new of its own. Whether it is a section that you can either scan and sneak your way around or take the full-frontal attack approach, clever puzzles, the “Trip Shop” that allows you to upgrade your abilities, certain enemies with weaknesses or that call for backup, commanding Trip, or something like the awesome “Cloud” hoverboard, just when you think a particular mechanic is getting old, Enslaved throws a fun new one at you. The story, script and voice acting is fantastic, and features some interesting twists and turns, even in the limited section of the game I played, the futuristic but natural setting is gorgeous, and the orchestral score is brilliant. My only concern is whether Ninja Theory can manage to come up with enough new mechanics to keep the gameplay fresh throughout the entire game.