It doesn’t matter if you take your inspiration from Viz’s Phat Book of Fart Jokes, if the gameplay and story can’t support that initial burst of solidity then the experience falls down. Enslaved: Odyssey To The West gets dangerously close to collapsing with the unexciting combat and awkward controls but still manages to tell a stunning tale based on the ancient Chinese story – Journey to the West. With well-written characters and tremendous animation coupled with excellent voice acting, Enslaved is an impressive cinematic experience.

The premise: Breaking free from his imprisonment on a slaver ship you play the role of Monkey as the vessel crash lands in a post-apocalyptic New York. On waking up you realise that the young girl you see in the tutorial has enslaved you with a slave headband and now charges you with leading her home.

YAY!

Interesting characters – All three main characters, Trip, Monkey and Pigsy are well written, develop over the course of the game and have some of the best voice acting I’ve ever experienced. That last point might seem inconsequential but when a game only has three characters the entire game hinges on whether their performances are up to snuff. Yeah, that sounds like I’m commenting on a film right? Well, that’s because Enslaved feels more like a cinematic experience than a videogame thanks to these larger than life characters.

Out of the three Pigsy stands out the most. His dirty old man attitude, disgusting run animation and banter between himself and Monkey felt incredibly natural. The voice acting of Trip sold me on her emotional state and after a serious revelation you could still hear the tremor of grief in her voice many minutes later.

All great ingredients to build a compelling and dramatic narrative experience.

Art Style - the visuals have a habit of looking a bit ‘OMG YOU’RE USING UNREAL ENGINE 3′ some of the time. But that technical snarkiness is made irrelevant by Enslaved’s art style. Usually a game set within a post-apocalyptic landscape or city looks grey, oppressive and uncomfortable. Enslaved brings vibrant colour into this staid cliched setting, showing how the power of nature would reclaim New York City in a real apocalypse. It’s beauty and destruction rolled into one tragic scenario and it gives Enslaved a unique look and identity that other games, like Darksiders, failed to achieve.

UNGH!

Combat – it ain’t bad by any stretch of the imagination but I never felt particularly engaged whilst swinging around the weird energy staff of Monkey. Levelling up shields and new moves felt good at first but there were so few of them that by halfway I’d already unlocked anything that looked interesting.

Flashbacks – These brief moments of real-world images were fascinating at first. I thought that it would lead to some moving or emotional stories about the destruction of the planet or the tragedy of human suffering. But no. It fed into the anti-climatic epilogue and really didn’t go anywhere at all in the end.

The Judgement:

For all of my misgivings about the combat and odd ending, Enslaved is a cinematic feast. Not in the stupid and over-wrought way that Heavy Rain tried to be, but in an involving blend of character development, action set-pieces and platforming puzzles. The three leads make this experience incredibly worthwhile and shows that videogame characters can actually act – and act well.

Enslaved: Odyssey To The West - review, 10.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating