Enslaved: Odyssey To The West Preview

06 Sep 2010 at 13:40:56 by John Robertson

While perhaps not the game we were all hoping it would be, 2007’s Heavenly Sword was one that boosted just enough impressive and interesting elements to make us believe that the creative minds at Ninja Theory could yet provide us with something special. And so when we were afforded the chance to sit down and play what we were told was pretty much final code for Ninja Theory’s upcoming Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, we were genuinely excited to see what they’d come up with.

Enslaved puts you in control of ‘Monkey’, a nimble, muscular powerhouse of a man who answers the question of what Jak (from Jak and Daxter fame) would look like if he embarked on a life consumed by protein shakes, an abundance of red meat and the weights room. Apparently, the game is loosely based on the same books that inspired the Monkey TV show; hence the lead character’s name.

The opening sequence shows our boy Monkey imprisoned on a giant space-faring slave ship heading for ‘Pyramid’. As Monkey indiscriminately bangs and pounds away at the interior of his pod-like cell in a typical testosterone charged manner, he notices that a girl (who we later come to call ‘Trip’) has managed to escape her cell and is hacking her way into a computer terminal. Soon enough, all hell breaks loose. The ship begins to fall apart and drop from its orbit; the chaos rendering Monkey’s cell useless and allowing him to escape it.

Long story short, after battling his way past robots and along the ship’s outer hull, Monkey reaches an escape pod only to find that it’s occupied by our computer hacking friend, Trip. Despite the rather large cargo clinging on for dear life and begging her not to hit the button, Trip hits the button and the pod blasts away from the exploding ship with Monkey in tow. Fade to black.

With the prologue out of the way and the basic control scheme now familiar, it’s time for the real game to begin. Upon awakening from his less than soft landing, Monkey is less than pleased to find out that Trip has fitted him with a slave band across his head that forces him to obey her commands. She explains that she wants to get back to her village and needs your help to get there. A few painful attempts to overcome the slave abnds power complete and Monkey is satisfied that he has no chance but to assist her. Upon closer investigation it turns out that you’ve landed in New York City, albeit a deserted one set 150 years into the future in which the local flora have all but consumed and made their own.

The main focus of the gameplay is centred on using Monkey’s brawn and Trip’s brain to overcome the threat posed to you by the mechs that litter the environment. Remnants of a war that all but destroyed the human race, the mechs are programmed to attack any humans they encounter. Despite visually looking like a cross between Uncharted, Gears of War and Bionic Commando, Enslaved doesn’t play much like any of them. This is an action game first, an adventure game second and a story of a mutually beneficial, if unlikely, relationship third.

Combat is primarily hand-to-hand centred on effectively wielding Monkey’s quarterstaff to keep your aggressors at bay. Aside from the odd well timed block, combat is more about looking good and pulling off slick, quick moves as opposed to being overly technical and playing too much like a beat ‘em up. At times we found ourselves surrounded by a number of enemies but Monkey was easily quick and powerful enough to counter anything that was thrown our way.

To aid you in your combative encounters Trip has a few tricks of her own up her sleeve. She can create a holographic decoy of herself that concentrates the mech’s attacks, giving you time to sneak to a new piece of cover in a bid to get close enough to launch an assault of your own. Early on in the game she hacks a robotic dragonfly that grants you ability to scan the area in front of you and highlights any enemies and landmines that await you. 

This ability to look around soon becomes critical to success and gives you the option of avoiding enemies or taking them on in combat; we usually went straight in for the kill regardless, if only to watch Monkey spin and jump around the screen dispatching each mech with the suitable level of grace.

The game is designed in such a way that it forces you to make use of both parties skills in tandem, there are numerous ways to traversing dangerous areas (at least in the areas we saw) but almost all of them involve sticking with, and making use of, Trip.

Combat aside there are a fair few platforming sections to make your way across, be it on the outside of a plummeting space ship or up the side of an ivy and/or moss covered New York building. Once again, in keeping with the mantra applied to the combat, these sections are designed to invoke a sense of razzle dazzle rather than pose a technically challenging test. Available hand holds glow white to prevent you from getting lost or searching around for too long and jumps are context sensitive, removing any need to time a leap or worry about whether you’re going to overshoot the landing.

While, in a sense, all control is essentially taken away from you, it makes sense when you see Monkey in action springing from place to place in a wonderfully exciting and cinematic way that would impossible were the assists turned off. Essentially they’ve followed the example set by Uncharted 2, and followed it very nicely. It’s great to see a developer designing a game with the desire to create something fun being the ultimate goal, not adding needless puzzle or other moments that slow the pace of the gameplay.

Indeed, from our time with Enslaved the thing that sticks out about it most strongly of all is its cinematic style. From the stylish fighting and platform sequences to the relationship at the core of the story and the flashy, MTV-generation style cinema positions, the entire project swims in techniques more readily associated with the movie biz. The character’s movement have been created using motion capture of Andy Serkis’ (Lord of the Ring’s Gollum) and Lindsay Shaw’s (10 Things I Hate About You) movements, both of which also voice their characters providing a level of acting so rarely achieved in videogames. Add to that the fact that the script has been co-written by The Beach’s Alex Garland, and you’ve got yourself a team that demands some attention.

With such a highly regarded team behind the project it’s easy to get worked up and excited, but it looks as though the potential Ninja Theory have shown in the past may have blossomed and come of age. The only nagging issue I came away with was that the futuristic New York City setting was impressive initially but, soon became monotonous and dreary; whether or not the same setting continues beyond the first three hours remains to be seen.

Due for release on October 8th, on 360 and PS3, Enslaved will seal the reputation of the developers at Ninja Theory as the industries nearly men or as gaming heavy weights. Let’s hope it the latter.

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