Enslaved: Odyssey to the West by LaughingMan

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West



The spiritual successor to one of my personal favorite games of all time, Heavenly Sword, has its ups and downs which I will be extremely brutal with in my nearly finished review.

Check out an excerpt below:

Gameplay

The gameplay in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is, like Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, bountiful in its diverse features. First and foremost, there is the basic hand-to-hand combat, followed by the puzzle-solving using interactions between Monkey and Trip, a few minor ‘shooter’ segments, some fun ‘cloud surfing’, and finally lots and lots of climbing. However, out of all of these gameplay features, the only aspect that actually feels fulfilling is the puzzle-solving between Monkey and Trip.



The hand-to-hand combat, in comparison to Devil May Cry, God of War, and even the predecessor, Heavenly Sword, is virtually featureless and quickly dissolves into a stale button masher. Your basic combat revolves around utilizing quick and heavy attacks, much like God of War and Dante’s Inferno, but you are severely limited to the number of combination attacks you can execute. Despite my frantic usage of different button combinations, virtually all of your attacks result in the same 3-5 attack combination. You are, however, allotted a crowd-control action, where Monkey’s staff glows blue and Monkey does a 360-degree spin that knocks back swarms of enemies. You can also upgrade Monkey to have a sort of overdrive attack where his staff glows fiery orange, and by pressing the right combination of buttons Monkey will automatically unleash a barrage of flashy attacks. The problem being is that this is one of the very rare times when Monkey’s pummeling has any variety. There are no upgrades to unlock additional combos or move sets like Heavenly Sword, which is as disappointing as hell and turns combat into a boring-ass experience.

The shooter segments I mentioned are sort of interesting. By pressing the left trigger button, Monkey will aim his staff and shoot at enemies in a Resident Evil 4, over-the-shoulder POV. Depending on how you upgrade these attacks during the course of the game determines how useful this particular feature will be to you in the heat of combat, but I suggest making increasing the damage of individual blasts one of your top priorities. Ammunition comes in two flavors: Blast and Stun. A blast is your basic offensive projectile attack, while stun ammunition not only momentarily stuns your robotic enemies, but it can also strip them of their shields. There are segments in the game where you are required to do a Stun/Blast combo to first strip a distant enemy’s shield, and then blow him back to the scrap yard, which makes for some fast and frantic gameplay in comparison to the hand-to-hand combat.

You might be wondering what the hell I mean by ‘cloud surfing’. What I mean is that there are segments where Monkey must ride atop a glowing hover disk (which he calls his ‘cloud’) in order to advance in the game. Whether you are using your cloud to solve puzzles, outrun ‘dogs’ (giant 4-legged mechanical beasts), or racing to save Trip from being killed, the cloud surfing parts of the game are a welcome addition. There are three scenarios when you will have the ability to cloud surf:

1. Transversing over water to solve puzzles
2. Boss fights against giant 4-legged mechanical beasts
3. Saving trip from a mechanic beast



Luckily the usage of each scenario isn’t used more than twice, which (while feeling slightly repetitive) doesn’t make me throw down the controller and scream: “This shit AGAIN?!” In fact, if each scenario was only used once, I probably would have been pissed because I enjoyed these parts of the game the most, and I would have wanted to have played it more than once anyways. So, overall, the cloud surfing is a comfortable addition to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

Speaking of overstaying its welcome, there’s the hours and hours of climbing that you are required to do. You have to realize that I’m climbed out. I’ve played Assassin’s Creed, both Uncharted games, and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and ALL of them require that you do more rock climbing than a Mount Everest expedition. But there is one thing that Enslaved: Odyssey to the West has above all of the other climbing games: The climbing itself is REDICULOUSLY EASY.

How easy? You can make spastic half-circle movements with your left joystick while tapping the jump button as though you are intentionally trying to wear out your controller, AND YOU WILL NEVER FALL AND DIE. I am not kidding when I tell you that you cannot possibly die on the climbing segments of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. Ever. It’s virtually impossible to die while climbing because the precision is so loose in comparison to other games like Uncharted or Castlevania: Lords of Shadow that you wonder if Enslaved: Odyssey to the West wasn’t some sort of video game adaptation of the latest Disney/Pixar movie, rated “E” for “Early Childhood namby-pamby bullshit”.

Probably the one thing that is actually fulfilling (and mirroring my feelings on the story of Enslaved) is the interaction between Monkey and Trip.

One thing that honestly kept me away from Enslaved: Odyssey to the West was the misguided impression that Enslaved would be a long, drawn out “escorting” sort of game.

You know the kind of game I’m talking about when I say “escorting”. We’ve all played games where you have to defend someone or something from a never-ending barrage of relentless enemy attacks. And, within the first 20 minutes of the person/thing you are escorting being killed or blowing up in your face, you wish that there was an option in the game where you could tell the enemies that you want to switch sides because the hatred that the enemies harbor towards the person/item being escorted shadows in comparison to the venomous rage and contempt that has possessed you. And after your head stops spinning and you mop up the pea soup from the walls and floor, you decide to give the game another shot.

Rinse and repeat.

But (luckily) Enslaved: Odyssey to the West actually isn’t that sort of game.

Then what sort of game is Odyssey to the West? I have been interested in this game because of the art style so I will be waiting to read your opinions about it before I contemplate a rental or possibly a full purchase.

I think that my brother played this game once. It looked fun but I am not a very good judge of games just by looking at them.

I'm postponing making the Enslaved review featured until Wednesday so I don't crowd in on Ken's interview with the Gamer Symphony Orchestra, but you contributors can have a first look:

http://www.cheshirecatstudios.com/reviews/enslaved-odyssey-to-the-west/

You know, this is why I need to distrust Yahtzee and Zero Punctuation in most cases because your opinion and review are much more informative than the rant/nitpicks in ZP. Then again, ZP blatantly emphasizes rants and hides good values for the sake of entertainment.

That's actually the nicest thing anyone's ever said about my reviews.

Big thanks! I hope everyone else feels the same with all of our work here at CCS.

I actually DID watch Zero Punctuation's review a while ago, and after playing the game there's a lot to like about it. The same can be said about Splatterhouse, Castlevania: LOS and 99% of ZP's rants (the 1% he's spot on is Final Fantasy XIII). God forbid that he ever praises anything about a game or analyzes one in depth to find the bad AND the good.

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Isn't that why we love him so much?

In all seriousness, from my own personal experience I can easily assure you that negative reviews are as important and vital as positives ones, and Zero Punctuation in this case delivers. For example, have you ever seen any "professional" reviewer rant about, or, indeed, just point out the fact how in 95% QTE are flawed, if not entirely useless, in modern video games? If your answer is no, then, basically, here's the reason why the bloody things have become so prevalent and ubiquitous in modern action games (as well as the whole dog shit brown/gun metal gray graphical style )

As for LM's review - brilliant! It was entertaining, interesting and informative, as well as had your distinctive snarky style Though I must confess, I did almost pull out my hair in anger when I read that you are going to post the review today i.e. the day when I finally finished my goddamn protracted tribute/review, which I was supposed to post two weeks ago... Oh well, I'll just postpone it til Friday if none of you gents mind

P.S.
Ahem...

...as usual, blame the fantards

Thanks!! Glad you liked it.

I didn't know!!!! *runs away crying, and then returns to keyboard*

I will give Yahtzee credit on this one. My overly positive, snarkless 5 part review of the recent Sam and Max games were, as others have criticized me, "a humor drought". I'll agree that (for me) humorless, serious, positive reviews of games have bitten me in the ass (5 times in a row, so it seems), so there is value in 'ranting', but there's got to be some positive with the negative. Even Yahtzee's (ZP's) lambasting of Castlevania or Splatterhouse had very little positive to say about either game, and while they are entertaining rants, they're not as fully flushed out in terms of actual 'reviews'.

Meh, I dunno... LOL.

I can clearly see what you mean, but I'm afraid I'm in no position to criticise the man because when it comes to movies and/or TV-series, I'm even more of a cantankerous prick than he is!

Seriously! If I ran a show similar to Escape to the Movies where I would review the majority of currently released films, I dread that with the current amount of generic trash and unmemorable mediocrity in the film industry, every 2nd review would've been filled with bile and contempt. So, maybe, just like in my situation, it's a clear case of hatred as a result of love and passion for the industry

Hey! You know, maybe I should get off my fat lazy ass and steer all that ire and enthusiasm into writing genuine reviews more often then, you know, once a fucking month at best! Yup, I'm done reprehending myself...

That would actually be really cool!