Often when games advertise their writers, they’ll trumpet the script as “from the acclaimed writer of Duck Farmer 12: Mallard Malady” and expect gamers to be glad a ‘real’ writer deigned to glance at the interactive medium. Enslaved, by contrast, has names that would make you prick up your ears for a Hollywood movie: script by Alex Garland, voice acting and motion capture by Andy Serkis, soundtrack by Nitin Sawhney, and it shows.
The story is based on Journey to the West, a traditional Chinese story anyone who was a kid in the late 80s would know best in the form of the 1970s Chinese television series Monkey Magic. Apparently Monkey Magic is more of an Australian phenomenon than anything else, so a lot of American players might simply pause and appreciate the re-telling of a traditional story in a new post-apocalyptic science fiction setting. In Australia, however, we will stop every so often and say “teehee, it’s sci-fi Monkey Magic. The nature of Monkey was irrepressible.” And then be somewhat put off by Tripitaka being more bared-midriff steampunk chick than prepubescent Buddhist monk (admittedly a prepubescent monk played by a woman, a confusing situation for a growing young lad watching the show).
The story goes something like this: Monkey and Trip are on a slave ship which crashes for unknown reasons in the ruins of post-apocalypse New York. Trip uses one of the bands used by the mechs to enslave their victims to enslave Monkey. She can control his moves, talk directly into his brain and if her heart stops beating he dies. Monkey has to get Trip back home. Cue adventures. The story takes some gentle curves which propel the action along nicely, although I found the ending to be a bit of a predictable twist. The quality of the story in this game is not in its arc, but rather in the scene to scene interactions between the characters. Serkis’ Monkey is nuanced and understated where he could have easily overshot into a caricature. Lindsey Shaw’s Trip is better than I would have thought from her past roles. Even the comic relief, Pigsy (Richard Ridings), has some unexpected depths. It takes some doing to make a conversation between a cyborg pig fetishist and a man called Monkey about power cells or shield levels sound like anything but hackneyed mission exposition, but do it the actors of Enslaved do.
Why am I going on about the story so much? Two reasons, really. First it’s a big part of the promotion of the game; there is more space on the box dedicated to its Hollywood chops than what sort of game it is, or what it’s about. Secondly, a review of the gameplay is quite short if you’ve played games before. Observe: it’s the combat from God of War (complete with weapon upgrades and glowing red experience orbs) and the platforming from the cel-shaded Prince of Persia reboot. Competently executed, no doubt, and some of the shooting/puzzle combined sections are very good, but nothing that will change your understanding of the third person action genre. The only gameplay issue that annoyed me for more than a moment was the checkpoint system. Widely spaced checkpoints with clear save markers is fine, no indication of when a checkpoint has been reached is fine if the checkpoints are every couple of minutes. Checkpoints up to half an hour apart with no indicator that your progress will be recorded for the next session, however, is a crappy system.
Graphically the game looks great, a combination of lush green ruins and ramshackle survivor outposts that reminded me of Borderlands mashed into Uncharted. There are a few sections near the end of the game where the developers have pushed the engine maybe a few frames per second too far but it’s in the name of enormous mech battles, so it’s acceptable. There is, however, one decision in the presentation that I just don’t understand. Throughout the game, Monkey’s headband glitches, flooding him with visions of stuff (I’m not being carefully anti-spoiler here, the visions are of some pretty random stuff). These visions come in the form of photographs, and some live action video, which seems incongruous in an otherwise entirely CG game. When the big reveal comes on these visions, the decision seems an even stranger one (now I being all anti-spoiler). I’d like to think it’s a deliberate decision but it feels a little bit like they didn’t have time to model it all and just went with some stock photos instead. It didn’t take up much of the 7-8 hours I spent finishing the game, but every time it happened I felt like I was being ripped out of the reality of the game.
Overall I’d classify Enslaved as a game that would qualify as an overlooked gem if Namco had tried to release into the crowded holiday window. As it is, Enslaved is a pretty good game that shows how much difference genuine acting and writing talent can make to gameplay which isn’t earth shattering.
Final note: Below left is Nariko, the heroine from Heavenly Sword, Ninja Theory’s previous game. Below right is Trip from Enslaved. Just saying.
