WeView Verdict: Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

I was a bit nervous about selecting Enslaved as a game for WeView. I had a suspicion that it might not get a huge volume of you reviewing it, and it looks like I was right. Only seven of you weighed in with your opinion this week, our lowest turnout so far. However, that’s not enough to put me off; let’s dive straight into your opinions of the game.

Let’s start with haz360, who seemed to be utterly in love with the title’s characters; a fairly common theme. This seems to be largely due to Ninja Theory use of motion capture for its games, in a similar way to titles like L.A. Noire and the Uncharted series utilize it.

The real draw to Ensalved though are the characters and the way in which they are portrayed by their respective actors. This is what kept me playing Enslaved. The gameplay is great, no doubt, a mixture between simple, but tactile combat, and fun platforming elements, but what really kept me hooked until the end was the story of the two central characters, their journey and their developing relationship. By the time I saw the ending, I wanted to know what happened next, where were these characters going next, what was in store for them and were they going to stick together?

Whilst haz360 seemed to be strongly in favour of the game, cam_manutd had a slightly more mixed opinion. Although they kicked off with similar praise for the game’s actors, their opinions started to diverge shortly afterwards.

Enslaved shares many of the flaws from Ninja Theory’s previous console installment (Heavenly Sword) in that the technical attirbutes are arguably on the verge of brilliance with regard to voice acting and plotlines. The combat is clunky at the best of times but there is very rarely a 3rd person action adventure game in which it is perfected. The main gripe of this game is the woeful camera angles and restrictions..it really does limit performance at times. But in the face of either Uncharted or Tomb Raider, this game is a wonderful distraction and anyone with a strong interest in story/character driven titles then this one is for you.

As always there were those who weren’t all the pleased with the title, and in particular Kevling seemed to get very frustrated with things. I can share his pain about the game’s save failures, I’ve had similar experiences far too many times.

However, the killer for me were the hoverboard/cloud water levels. I managed the first few sections, but only got to the part just before meeting Pigsy and kept dying. I only had the one save, and just kept restarting in the middle of the water being fired on from several directions and dying in seconds as I frantically try and remember what the controls are. Yes that was partly my fault for poor save game management, but being left stuck in that situation was a game-breaker for me. It’s a shame, as I’d heard Pigsy was quite the character, so I’m annoyed I missed out on that part.

In this week’s monster review (these seem to be becoming a theme), Eldave0 was very keen on the game’s mechanics for traversing the world. These also impressed me when I got some time with the game way back at last year’s Eurogamer Expo.

The other huge aspect of the game play is navigation. Monkey certainly lives up to his name in this game, as he is brilliant at navigating a variety of different terrains. Expect to climb lots of hand-holds, swing between pipes and jump huge gaps. If this sounds familiar to ‘Uncharted’ it’s because it does feel a lot like it. Traversing is incredibly simple and all done via a single button but looks absolutely amazing to watch. Monkey will only follow your instructions if he is going to make the jump so there are no annoying deaths to worry about here, which obviously removes the challenge but certainly avoids frustration and keeps the game flowing.

With my pick of your opinions out of the way lets get to your verdict of the game. Although there were only seven votes on the verdict this week, it was a pretty significant result. There were two votes for Rent It but with the remaining five of the votes, Enslaved gets a verdict of Buy It from the TSA community. Now I just need to get my hands on it.

Finally, if you’ve got any games that you think we should cover, jot them down in the comments. I’ll be sure to consider every suggestion and try to judge how popular they are.