If you were ever a human being, you probably had some difficulty in high school. You might have been awkward, gangly, overweight, short, too tall, pimple-ridden, acne-scarred or your head was an unusual shape that might have resembled a thing that was kind of like what you saw in a sex ed class and even though you knew it was just an awkward growing phase everyone would keep saying you had a neckphallus and everyone said don’t let it get to you but then you went and wrote a book so you COULD PROVE THAT SHITTY JANIE SIMMONS WRONG, I HATE YOU SO MUCH, SIMMONS.
…anyway, you probably heard this phrase said of other, prettier people: “She’s lucky she’s got looks.” You probably didn’t believe it. I didn’t. Until I played Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.
Very, very loosely based on the Chinese classic Journey to the West, the game’s story follows Monkey and Trip, slave and captor respectively, as they escape from slavers and set out on a long and perilous journey across a nature-reclaimed post-apocalyptic America to return Trip home. Terrorized by mechs, ancient weapons of the war that destroyed humanity, Monkey leaps, climbs and fights his way through the hauntingly beautiful landscape to return a captor who is slowly turning into a friend to all she has left in the world.
This game comes from Ninja Theory, the same team that brought you Heavenly Sword: the story of a kung-fu superwoman who kind of was like the female Kratos and that brought up some uncomfortable questions for you. If you could fault anything about Heavenly Sword, be it its derivative gameplay or awkward controls, you certainly couldn’t fault its writing. The dialogue was well-constructed, the delivery was fantastic and it’s probably the only game that actually put more than two and a half shits into facial expression.
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West follows proudly in the footsteps of having exquisite characterization and amazing writing. By novel standards, the story isn’t really complex. By video game standards, though, it’s at least a step above most. Where the game really shines, though, is the chemistry and growth between Monkey and Trip, thanks in no small part to the fantastic acting and delivery. You either know you’re a writer or know you’ve got mental problems when you utter the words: “My God…that ellipse…so perfect.” Both were confirmed to me when I began to nerd out over each piece of conversation they had.
Beyond that, I’m really impressed with the characters of Monkey and Trip. Monkey is silent, grim and brutal, which is about as uncommon in video games as syphilis in Dresden, but what really seals his character is that he does so much while being silent and grim. Unlike characters that are grim and somehow full of pithy remarks, he actually struggles with words and summarizing his feelings, so simply opts not to talk.
And while Trip is determined to reach her home again, she’s also (rightly) terrified of crossing a war-zone full of killer mechs with a man who threatened to snap her neck. Occasionally, I have the vague feeling that a lot of writers are terrified to show women in anything that could be considered compromising. They don’t want to show women as vulnerable, scared, angry or hateful because that’s just so unladylike (somehow, lusty never factors into those taboos). And if we do get those, they always seem shoehorned into the generic Supercilious Badass Action Woman when the writers realize they’ve made a cliche instead of a character, rather than as a natural development of the character. It is exceedingly refreshing to see the occasional script that realizes that women are actually also people and their character motives might be longer than “she’s a girl.”
Combined with the lush landscapes, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a positively gorgeous game that’s really fun to watch.
…and that’s it.
The gameplay is surprisingly boring. For a dude who has the upper body of the simian he’s named after, Monkey’s platforming sections are amazingly dull. The scenery glows and flashes against the landscape to indicate where handholds are and what you can climb and you can’t move until you’re at the very edge of that (if you’re even three feet off the ground, you still can’t move until you find the exact spot to hop off of). Admittedly, this is a design choice: the developers valued the appearance more than the gameplay. That’s fine. I just don’t agree with it. The rage inducing phenomenon to platformers known as the “is-that-a-ledge-or-isn’t-let’s-jump-and-find-out-oh-no-I-dropped-to-my-death” is pretty much the entire allure of it. Without it, there’s no danger.
The combat is also pretty dull and repetitive. You have light attack, heavy attack, shield, dodge, counter, sweep and everything else you’d expect to find in a shirtless action hero’s combat log, but you need only the light attack. There’s no discernible difference between it and everything else and you can get by perfectly without anything else. This is sadly rather common these days and, at the risk of appearing a total fanboy, is something that God of War routinely got right: if you put a combo in, that combo must do something. Chekhov would be proud.
Mechs aren’t that varied and, frankly, that’s a pretty big disgrace. Robots are like any other monster: full of possibility, don’t necessarily have to make a lot of sense and the quality of which are defined by how psychotic you can make them. It’s pretty pathetic when your enemy variants are sword-bot, gun-bot, sword-gun-bot and dog-bot.
Ordinarily, I like to think I can value story over gameplay. If it’s a little weak in the platforming or combat, I can still get into it if the characters drag me. Enslaved tested me to unreasonable proportions, though. If the cutscenes are far and away the best part of a game, you got issues, bud.
Recommended for English majors who are bad at Uncharted.
You beast. I was good at Uncharted!