Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
I don?t envy Enslaved. From the moment I turned on my x box and inserted the disk it was under an immense amount of pressure. It had to convince me that I had not just thrown away £40 pounds of my student loan for a mediocre game and a flashy box. It also had to deliver on that magic word, ?chemistry? which every reference to the game I could find threw at me, leading me to believe I project the image of a romantic nerdy ?live my love life through the Gilmore Girls? gal through Google searches and not just conversation.
Anyway, I?m happy to say, that?s £40 pounds I won?t be crying over, even if I do have to go without food for a few weeks.
The game has somewhat of a claustrophobic beginning. Just in case you didn?t know by now, you play as Monkey, and you?re introduced to him as he breaths heavily inside a containment pod, groaning at the window and the camera. Once treated to a close up glimpse of his manly shoulders and gruff chin, we see the mysterious lady through the small window, and then the helpless monkey slaps the glass and repeatedly asks for help.
Cue the explosions and the popular ?punch your way out of your pod with one fist? shot (which begs the question why not do that in the first place) followed by a high speed chase through a crumbling ship.
I say high speed, but it?s not. As evidenced by my constant pauses to chat on msn and express my excitement(or if I'm honest, just search for the next thing I had to grab on to), the explosions are activated by trigger points, and once you realise this half the tension floods out of the window. This is the tutorial ?chapter?, though the tutorials keep on coming until around chapter 8. You begin it with no weapons, no partner and no health bar or shield. On my second play through I made the mistake of thinking, ?hey, no health bar... Maybe...? And was promptly shot down by a machine gun handed mech. A short jaunt around the plumbing later and I had my staff, my shield and my nifty red gloves. A short jaunt back and the tutorial continued.
I realise this is all in the demo, so I?ll stop talking about like some alien concept.
The point I?m trying to make is that Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is full of these short jaunts here and there to pull this and that or throw your woman up so she can kick a ladder down. It reminds me of the very little I?ve played of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, except there?s no rewind button if I accidently toast monkey.
Unlike the Prince, you can?t just fling Monkey in the wrong direction and send him spiralling to his doom. He will catch on to the next object, all you have to do is press A and wiggle the stick in the general direction of the next pipe. What makes the climbing difficult (at least towards the second half of the game) is that often the pipe that comes next in the chain is covered by a flame for five seconds, then clear for another three. However, these don?t really pose much of a threat when you know what you?re doing, and by my second play through I was swinging through the pipes like a... monkey I guess.
I?m neglecting an important part of the game here. Monkey would be nothing without Trip. She pulls levers, distracts turrets, turns off fire in some cases, and is genuinely likable. That being said, when you first meet her she has just enslaved you, but that?s a grudge I couldn?t hold on to for very long.
I very rarely like support characters, especially ones you are charged with protecting. That?s usually because I?m not very good at protecting myself in a game, let alone any surplus baggage but Trip doesn?t feel like baggage. She?s not being led by the hand, most of the time she is leading! She even has a nifty ?dragonspy? accessory which lets me see which enemies can be cinematically torn apart and which I just have to hit over the head with Monkey?s big staff. Full of helpful tips and a well of quirky dialogue and chemistry, Trip makes the game a journey.
The characterisation is strong. Andy Serkis does a great job with the voice work in my humble opinion. Monkey is gruff, of course he is, he?s the big shouldered loner with the sad past and I don?t think being voiced by Julian Clary would have had the same effect . He also has unbelievably big hands, but that?s probably not important. It?s a natural sounding gruffness, and it breaks when he?s worried, it softens when he?s talking to Trip (after the initial death threats and such, but those are to be expected); it sounds human. Most importantly, it fits Monkey?s (or Serkis?) character and physical appearance very well. In fact, characterisation as a whole, the movement and voice acting is superb in this game, and I played it on a rather small square TV.
On the note of my viewing apparatus, I would like to see how it holds up on a larger screen, or a HDTV, because I feel I can?t give a true enough review of the graphics. I should be entering the territory of the HDTV near Christmas, and I didn?t want to wait until then to post this.
Now for the negatives. I found a lot of the dialogue around Pigsy to be stiff and cringe-able, though the best Chemistry between Trip and Monkey is found while he?s around. From the moment he enters, the tone of the game changes. There were still the serious overtones, and still the beautiful landscapes, but he added something I would rather wasn?t there, or at least left me alone after one or two Chapters. He was comic relief when there didn?t need to be any.
I also found it difficult to pinpoint where exactly the difficulty came in to it. My first run on Normal seemed just as hard if not harder than my run on Hard. I think the difficulty comes through the number of enemies, but this doesn?t appear to change. On medium the same enemies can one hit kill you as on hard, and as you get to keep all upgrades and tech orbs throughout play-throughs (although you can?t use them until Trip says she can offer you upgrades) then difficulty hardly matters at all. For the record I did find the Mech spam tiring, which made me appreciate Monkey slightly more when he voiced my concerns, ?How many more of these guys can there be?? Unfortunately this quip came too later and the developers were only able to listen to me and Monkey for one Chapter, and what I was spared in mech spam they made up for with swinging on pipes to aim at targets, then swinging back to aim at more targets.
Finally, the ending, as artistically accomplished as it was, left a few things unsettled in me. Firstly, I didn?t feel it was a logical conclusion from the plot at first, and the very fact that it is titled ?Epilogue? and consists of one long cut scene gives the game a pretentious air. I was disappointed, perhaps because I had given two days of my life, £40 pounds, my interest, frustration and all that time I should have spent eating and possibly doing reading for my university course, only for it to fob me off with a shiny cut scene and a ?what would you have done? conundrum. Looking back I can see that actually what irked me the most, if you don?t mind me telling you this, was that the Romantic Tension between Trip and Monkey is never confirmed (in the fan girlish glee way).
Well as upset as the romantic in me was at first, I think that this is a positive attribute. Really, would I have preferred for him to uncharacteristically sweep her off her feet or announced any romantic feelings on the top of his lungs in a cut scene in the middle of the final boss battle? Well maybe, but still, the relationship is handled subtly, through facial expressions and dialogue for the most part. If I want any of that trashy novel stuff I?ll run a search on Deviantart.
There are one or two cut scenes that will make you think ?wow, that?s a stupid thing to say/do/stand on', but for the most part, the writing holds up.
Overall, Monkey is a character I liked, but that much was easy. The question is how do you like the person who has enslaved you and forced you in to fighting off wave after wave of enemies, killed you every time you stray too far away from her and spends most of the game telling you to ?find your own way around.? Well quite easily, and if you like Trip and you enjoy a bit of platforming cinematics and some combat then you'll probably like Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.
That?s all she wrote.
Oooh, and also, I played it on the xbox 360.
I don?t envy Enslaved. From the moment I turned on my x box and inserted the disk it was under an immense amount of pressure. It had to convince me that I had not just thrown away £40 pounds of my student loan for a mediocre game and a flashy box. It also had to deliver on that magic word, ?chemistry? which every reference to the game I could find threw at me, leading me to believe I project the image of a romantic nerdy ?live my love life through the Gilmore Girls? gal through Google searches and not just conversation.
Anyway, I?m happy to say, that?s £40 pounds I won?t be crying over, even if I do have to go without food for a few weeks.
The game has somewhat of a claustrophobic beginning. Just in case you didn?t know by now, you play as Monkey, and you?re introduced to him as he breaths heavily inside a containment pod, groaning at the window and the camera. Once treated to a close up glimpse of his manly shoulders and gruff chin, we see the mysterious lady through the small window, and then the helpless monkey slaps the glass and repeatedly asks for help.
Cue the explosions and the popular ?punch your way out of your pod with one fist? shot (which begs the question why not do that in the first place) followed by a high speed chase through a crumbling ship.
I say high speed, but it?s not. As evidenced by my constant pauses to chat on msn and express my excitement(or if I'm honest, just search for the next thing I had to grab on to), the explosions are activated by trigger points, and once you realise this half the tension floods out of the window. This is the tutorial ?chapter?, though the tutorials keep on coming until around chapter 8. You begin it with no weapons, no partner and no health bar or shield. On my second play through I made the mistake of thinking, ?hey, no health bar... Maybe...? And was promptly shot down by a machine gun handed mech. A short jaunt around the plumbing later and I had my staff, my shield and my nifty red gloves. A short jaunt back and the tutorial continued.
I realise this is all in the demo, so I?ll stop talking about like some alien concept.
The point I?m trying to make is that Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is full of these short jaunts here and there to pull this and that or throw your woman up so she can kick a ladder down. It reminds me of the very little I?ve played of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, except there?s no rewind button if I accidently toast monkey.
Unlike the Prince, you can?t just fling Monkey in the wrong direction and send him spiralling to his doom. He will catch on to the next object, all you have to do is press A and wiggle the stick in the general direction of the next pipe. What makes the climbing difficult (at least towards the second half of the game) is that often the pipe that comes next in the chain is covered by a flame for five seconds, then clear for another three. However, these don?t really pose much of a threat when you know what you?re doing, and by my second play through I was swinging through the pipes like a... monkey I guess.
I?m neglecting an important part of the game here. Monkey would be nothing without Trip. She pulls levers, distracts turrets, turns off fire in some cases, and is genuinely likable. That being said, when you first meet her she has just enslaved you, but that?s a grudge I couldn?t hold on to for very long.
I very rarely like support characters, especially ones you are charged with protecting. That?s usually because I?m not very good at protecting myself in a game, let alone any surplus baggage but Trip doesn?t feel like baggage. She?s not being led by the hand, most of the time she is leading! She even has a nifty ?dragonspy? accessory which lets me see which enemies can be cinematically torn apart and which I just have to hit over the head with Monkey?s big staff. Full of helpful tips and a well of quirky dialogue and chemistry, Trip makes the game a journey.
The characterisation is strong. Andy Serkis does a great job with the voice work in my humble opinion. Monkey is gruff, of course he is, he?s the big shouldered loner with the sad past and I don?t think being voiced by Julian Clary would have had the same effect . He also has unbelievably big hands, but that?s probably not important. It?s a natural sounding gruffness, and it breaks when he?s worried, it softens when he?s talking to Trip (after the initial death threats and such, but those are to be expected); it sounds human. Most importantly, it fits Monkey?s (or Serkis?) character and physical appearance very well. In fact, characterisation as a whole, the movement and voice acting is superb in this game, and I played it on a rather small square TV.
On the note of my viewing apparatus, I would like to see how it holds up on a larger screen, or a HDTV, because I feel I can?t give a true enough review of the graphics. I should be entering the territory of the HDTV near Christmas, and I didn?t want to wait until then to post this.
Now for the negatives. I found a lot of the dialogue around Pigsy to be stiff and cringe-able, though the best Chemistry between Trip and Monkey is found while he?s around. From the moment he enters, the tone of the game changes. There were still the serious overtones, and still the beautiful landscapes, but he added something I would rather wasn?t there, or at least left me alone after one or two Chapters. He was comic relief when there didn?t need to be any.
I also found it difficult to pinpoint where exactly the difficulty came in to it. My first run on Normal seemed just as hard if not harder than my run on Hard. I think the difficulty comes through the number of enemies, but this doesn?t appear to change. On medium the same enemies can one hit kill you as on hard, and as you get to keep all upgrades and tech orbs throughout play-throughs (although you can?t use them until Trip says she can offer you upgrades) then difficulty hardly matters at all. For the record I did find the Mech spam tiring, which made me appreciate Monkey slightly more when he voiced my concerns, ?How many more of these guys can there be?? Unfortunately this quip came too later and the developers were only able to listen to me and Monkey for one Chapter, and what I was spared in mech spam they made up for with swinging on pipes to aim at targets, then swinging back to aim at more targets.
Finally, the ending, as artistically accomplished as it was, left a few things unsettled in me. Firstly, I didn?t feel it was a logical conclusion from the plot at first, and the very fact that it is titled ?Epilogue? and consists of one long cut scene gives the game a pretentious air. I was disappointed, perhaps because I had given two days of my life, £40 pounds, my interest, frustration and all that time I should have spent eating and possibly doing reading for my university course, only for it to fob me off with a shiny cut scene and a ?what would you have done? conundrum. Looking back I can see that actually what irked me the most, if you don?t mind me telling you this, was that the Romantic Tension between Trip and Monkey is never confirmed (in the fan girlish glee way).
Well as upset as the romantic in me was at first, I think that this is a positive attribute. Really, would I have preferred for him to uncharacteristically sweep her off her feet or announced any romantic feelings on the top of his lungs in a cut scene in the middle of the final boss battle? Well maybe, but still, the relationship is handled subtly, through facial expressions and dialogue for the most part. If I want any of that trashy novel stuff I?ll run a search on Deviantart.
There are one or two cut scenes that will make you think ?wow, that?s a stupid thing to say/do/stand on', but for the most part, the writing holds up.
Overall, Monkey is a character I liked, but that much was easy. The question is how do you like the person who has enslaved you and forced you in to fighting off wave after wave of enemies, killed you every time you stray too far away from her and spends most of the game telling you to ?find your own way around.? Well quite easily, and if you like Trip and you enjoy a bit of platforming cinematics and some combat then you'll probably like Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.
That?s all she wrote.
Oooh, and also, I played it on the xbox 360.
