Enslaved

Ninja Theory's latest game Enslaved, following 2007s PS3 killer app Heavenly Sword, updates Journey to the West moving the action from ancient China and India to post-apocalyptic America.

You play as Monkey, who after being captured by slave traders escapes with a girl called Trip. After the ship you are on crashes she places a headband on you're head so you have to obey her, meaning you'll be escorting Trip back to her village, fighting through a ruined New York filled with dangerous mechs and you better keep Trip alive because if she dies the headband will kill you too.

The presentation is phenomenal. Huge colourful vistas fill the screen and the characters are beautifully rendered, their movement looks smooth and natural and the use of motion capture for facial and body movement give the characters a realistic look but never falls into the uncanny valley. The unique setting makes the game stand out from the crowd. Most post-apocalyptic games have a muted brown colour palette and Enslaved is the complete opposite. Going through the ruined city with its bright sunshine, vines, foliage and blue rivers makes playing the game refreshing. On the PS3 the graphics occasionally glitch, but this never gets in the way of the game play and takes nothing away from the overall look of the game.

The story in the game is also one of its strong points. Scripted by Alex Garland with Andy Serkis playing Monkey, doing both the voice acting and the motion capture. The script and the acting justify the updating of the story, which lets face it is completely unnecessary. The main characters have depth and make surprising choices that you do not expect from a video game. The relationship between Trip and Monkey develops slowly and many actions throughout the story are ambiguous, you are never really sure of the characters motivation. At the end of the game the there are many loose ends, it has no happy ending and raises some interesting, if clichéd, ideas. Though the story is not groundbreaking or original, for a video game it offers depth and complexity that few other games do. The graphics, especially the facial animations, means that story is not simply delivered through speech, more subtle emotions can be shown through facial expressions and movements. The game was originally envisioned as a movie using the graphics engine and this is obvious from the story and characterisation.

Enslaved is riddled with flaws however. The biggest problem with the game is the game play. The basic game play is platforming with combat sequences, the majority of the game plays like Uncharted. You'll run and platform until you reach am arena where you fight some mechs, and the only enemies in this game are mechs. There are also some levels where Monkey uses his cloud, think the hover board from Back to the Future 2 only this works on water, and some shooting levels. The most distinct aspect of the game is that its basically one long escort mission. As Monkey you have to make sure that Trip is kept safe, if she dies you die. You have to distract enemies so they don't attack Trip, take her up to areas she can't reach. Though she can help you by healing you or distracting enemies she is never involved in combat. Though this is an interesting game mechanic it does get tired after a few hours. Go too far from Trip and you start to lose health or just die immediately. This gets really annoying in the sections where the game offers you an chance to explore rather than just follow a linear path.

The game play is repetitive and gets dull towards the end of the game. In the platforming sequences you cannot fall off platforms and all the handholds are highlighted. This makes them incredibly easy to play, you'll never fall off and die when climbing and its not until the later levels, where fire is involved, that you'll even lose health while climbing. The combat is easy, hand to hand combat never develops into anything much more than button mashing and there are no combos to learn and perform and your attacks will always look the same. The ranged combat is unwieldy and can be difficult to control and you have two types of ammo that'll be used over and over again for the entire game. Every enemy and danger in the game is highlighted, you will always know where every danger in the game is. The sections on the cloud are fun but it is often impossible to steer accurately and there are sections where you if you make any mistakes you will die. The sections of the game based around the cloud offer the most challenge in the game, but they are few and far between.

The game is also very short. I managed to complete this game on hard in 5 hours. The story is well told and doesn't need to be longer and the game play could not sustain a longer game. However Enslaved would be a better game if it was longer and introduced new game play elements to break up the more repetitive sections. If you're paying £45 for a game it should last much longer than 5 hours.

It might not sound like it but I really enjoyed Enslaved. The game has its flaws but the storyline is engrossing and the graphics look beautiful The game play is fun if repetitive and I played through the more frustrating sections of the game because I wanted to see what happened to the characters and what environments you'll experience next. For all its problems Enslaved is one of the more unique and enjoyable games I've played recently.