Game review: Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

I picked up Enslaved: Odyssey to the West because I'd heard it got an award for best game of the year from a writer's guild. I did some research and found the developer talking about how they wanted to make a game where character development was just as important as good graphics and game play. These were all siren calls to me, but what I discovered was a game so good, it's going to spoil me to have high unrealistically expectations for other developers. This will be a long review, and one prone to gush. But trust me, I will have some complaints to balance out my squeeing. The game isn't perfect, but damn it's really close.

Let's starts with what the designers did right consistently, which is the character's "acting" skills. The Unreal engine is used to animate the world, and I have never before seen 3D models in a game with such expressive and "alive" eyes. Often video game makers botch this and don't add any secondary motion to eyes during cut scenes, resulting in staring "dead eyes." Also, a lot of the times a voice actor is aiming for an angry voice, yet the character's expression doesn't fit. Or worse, the game makers don't bother with any expression and just make a sloppy 3D puppet show. This is not so with Enslaved. The expressions are so realistic, and this combined with their eyes makes for an acting experience on par with a Hollywood film.

But there's more to the eyes than just realistic movement. Take Monkey's red war makeup for instance, which makes a strong contrast to his blue eyes. This is an intentional artistic effort to draw the viewer's attention the character's eyes, and it makes one even more aware of their depth and realistic appearance. Trip's green eyes are just as lovingly rendered and during certain  scene, I found myself dawn into her eyes as effectively as Monkey was in the game. So yes, fantastic art skills went into making these eyes, and as a lover of expressive eyes, this game was totally pushing all my happy buttons.

Something else I liked about this game was having mechs for enemies. This is because it frees me from a complex moral quandary. When I'm fighting people in games, I always wonder if the game might give me other options to just sneak around instead of using the kill 'em all approach. In Enslaved, you do have that choice available. You can fight all the mechs, or you can sneak around most of the clusters while they're still inactive.  But either way, there's no guilt for blowing up a robot that's express purpose for existing is exterminating me.

Now on to the plot, the meaty, sweet, deep plot that rarely had to resort to clichés to keep the tension and pacing. On a slave ship, a prisoner, Monkey, sees another prisoner, Trip, escape her pod and hack the ship, resulting in the ship beginning a crash course. Monkey gets out of his prison cell, and the first level is his attempt to chase Trip to the escape pods. This plays out like a blockbuster film, and when Monkey accidentally destroys one on the ship's engines, the look on his face is perfect for the moment. It's one half of the classic Urkel "Did I do that?" look and one half, "Now what, stupid?" Brilliant.

Monkey is forced to ride outside Trips escape pod and makes a hard landing on a well placed old mattress. When he comes to, Trip has fitted him with a command headband, drafting him to get her safely back to her village. A great deal of the early game is Trip and Monkey crossing New York to get to the crash site and recover Monkey's motorcycle. After that, the story picks up a third character, Pigsy, and now I need to pause for a moment of culture.

You see, Monkey, Pigsy and Trip are actually Songoku, Pigsy and Sandy from the classic epic Journey to the West. "Aaaah," you say, "so the name of this game is a hint at what the inspiration was." Yes, exactly, and the visual clues are all there if the naming convention of the men didn't make it obvious enough. Monkey has a sash acting as his tail, but in all other respects, he's a proper Songoku. He has an extending power staff, a monkey like way of moving and a number of martial arts moves at his disposal. Oh, and he rides a "cloud" although this only works in certain segments of the game. (More on those later, both bad and good.) But if his appearance and affectations aren't good enough, Pigsy has some cyber additions that help drive home the pig theme, in more ways than one. He's a proper male pig, which here is used to some comedic effect well enough that I was laughing at his attempts at machismo.

Trip is kind of like Bulma from Dragonball, in my opinion. Being the tech head of the team, she hacks computers and throws switches that might be out of Monkey's reach. Early on in the game, she hacks a "dragonfly" droid, and she feeds this camera-linked information to Monkey through his head band. This also explains the HUD in a way that doesn't feel silly, and the dragonfly's flyovers provide a logical way to look ahead at a level that fits in nicely with the rest of the sci-fi elements of the story. The game interface and story elements are fused so nicely that there's only a few times when a misinterpreted jump sends Monkey flying back at the platform he'd just left, resulting in me being kicked out of the "flow" of the story. (And also possibly sending him into harm's way if that handhold was crumbly, or worse, already gone.) Later levels also involve more classic platforming tropes like dodging gears and jetting exhaust flames. In between the platforms are combat sequences, but as I said, many droid are initially inactive, giving you the chance to sneak around them rather than slog through a battle.

Nevertheless, there are times when you will have to fight, and the combat system is pretty simple to understand. I don't care for trying to shoot using a game pad, but then I'm still weak when it comes to FPS games on the Xbox game pad. This is why I preferred beating mechs to pieces over blasting them to bits. Still, I found that many sequences were set up as shooting set pieces, and once I got into the right rhythm, the gunfights were as much fun as the martial arts flurries.

After returning to Trip's village and finding the place ransacked, Trip swears to kill whoever is responsible for the mechs and their constant assault. She then commands Monkey to come with her. But by then, Monkey isn't hanging around because of the headband. He and Trip grow closer together over the course of the journey, so much so that at one point when he is offered freedom, Monkey chooses to say with Trip. This is not some attempt at a fast wishy-washy romance, but rather the slow development of a relationship based on interdependence. Over time, both characters come to care for each other, and while this is not love, the story gives the impression it could be, someday, if only the world will give love a chance to blossom. I really, really liked this aspect of the story, and could probably spend a few pages gushing if I didn't rein myself in.

A lot of games have tried to make me feel something for the main characters, but this was one of the few that successfully instilled in me a deep concern for the characters and for the story. Where does this story end? Will Monkey forgive Trip for using him as a slave to get revenge? Who is behind the mech attacks, and why are they enslaving the surviving humans? These are all questions I NEEDED to know, but I wouldn't have felt so keen to know more if the main characters weren't so interesting. It's a combination of great writing, voice acting, and facial animation.

As an example, Pigsy's reaction to seeing Trip all grown up is pure elation, and yet his face crumples only seconds later when he learns that his best friend has died. His chubby face projects these emotions so clearly that I got choked up over his reaction. No other game has managed to make me feel this much over the death of a bit character who I never meet. That's writing talent so good, I have to give props, but it wouldn't be nearly as effective without some talented animators backing the writing up. So this is a quality team effort.

And, since I've pointed out how Trip isn't opposed to using the tools of her oppressors to make Monkey her slave, it should be obvious that these characters are not instantly likable. Monkey comes across as a dick only interested in surviving and caring for himself. And Trip comes across as an aloof technocrat with no idea of how terrible the world around her has become. But as the chapters wear on, both characters reveal inner layers of conflict. It's really fantastic to see the relationship develop between Monkey and Trip, especially when the writers did so without resorting to too many cliché tropes.

Pigsy too is a flawed character, but his flaws are played up a bit for clownish effect, and it does come off as a bit clichéd at times. Also, near the end of the game, he  pulls a dick move that's so awful, I can't understand how Monkey or Trip shrug it off the way they do. He still redeems himself later, but I did feel it strained belief in what was otherwise a near flawless plot.

(Side note: I also wanted to give kudos to the writers for finding a way to slip a classic scene from Romeo and Juliet into the game. It was just another nice touch in a game full of little artistic flairs.)

I do have some complaints about the cloud and how it was used in a lousy way TWICE in the game, but before that, I want to heap praise on the places where the cloud was fun. The first time the cloud is made available, you're given a wide open space with lots of ramps to experiment with. Think of the cloud like riding a short hoverboard. Pass over an energy source, and it will cause the cloud to accelerate for a short burst. While this is loads of fun in a wide open space, the game makers quickly restrict this to a form of movement while facing bigger mechs in tightly confined fighting areas. At these points, I found it almost enraging to try and use the cloud when it required shutting down the cloud to use my staff.

Then the other use of the cloud IS enraging. In two chase scene set pieces, Trip suddenly loses her brains and must be rescued from a giant mech. Monkey chases after on the cloud while Trip screams at him to hurry. I failed the first chase about forty or so times before finally getting a single chance to catch up. But the second time around, I hated the circumstances of the chase just as much as I hated the chase itself. Thus, everything that occurs after that second chase, I saw by watching a walkthrough on YouTube. Later on, I plan to go back and play the game on easy to see if this slows down the chase scenes to the point where I can complete the game. But on normal difficulty, I'm incapable of doing with the game-makers want. These sequences gave me sore hands and a mean temper flare-up, and little else.

And I have to say, I find it REALLY annoying how Trip, a woman who had the presence of mind to bring down a fucking mech slaver ship by herself, suddenly becomes so panicky and helpless in these two scenes that she forgets the EMP device she's wearing. It was repeatedly seen that even while being attacked by mechs, Trip had the presence of mind to activate her EMP and shut down the mechs long enough for Monkey to arrive and lay a beat down on the incapacitated droids. Yet, both these scenes take away Trip's brains to give Monkey another reason to use the cloud in a clumsy race. It also reduces Trip to the princess who needs saving, and in a story that mostly avoids this trope, having it show up like this is glaringly annoying.

I know the developers were trying to aim for a sense of urgency, but this sudden shift for Trip was out of line for her character. Plus, me having to do those scenes over and over tainted my enjoyment of the cut scenes that came right after. I was still too busy fuming to pay attention. In short, the game itself kicked me out of the story by working to be too hard relative to the other sections. Everything else had a flow to it, so that even if I might die once or twice, once I've seen where my mistake was, I could just keep going through the rest and still feel like I was into the story. But those chase scenes kicked me out so hard that even later, I was still going, "Man, I hated those levels!"

I won't spoil the ending, but there's some shades of The Matrix mixed in with Journey to the West and Mad Max. Also, there's giant robots. Which is awesome. I liked how the story ends, and I feel it brings a sense of closure while at the same time implying that there's a lot more in store for Trip and Monkey in this desolate world. Trip's final question in the game is a great closing line, and it's even better because Monkey doesn't have an answer ready.

So let's add this up: great voice acting, great story, great dialogue, great animation and character design, and great game play only occasionally marred by a challenge being made insanely painful to complete. Based on these factors, I'm going to give Enslaved: Odyssey to the West 4 stars and recommend it to gamers looking for a meaty plot to go along with great graphics and solid combat and platforming set pieces. I really wish more game companies cared this much about their stories and character development, and like I said, this will probably spoil me by setting a new watermark in terms of game quality. If it hadn't been for those chase scene woes, I'd be ready to give this game five stars and offer free sex to the writer and the modelers…okay, to everyone involved in the game, except whoever acted as the model for Pigsy.