Review: Enslaved by Enslaved..!

Recently I took a trip to my local gaming store on a hunt for a bargain pre-owned game and once I had looked at about 20 copies of Halo 3 I came across Enslaved: Journey to the West.

Set 150 years in the future where a global war has ravaged the Earth and all that is left of humanity are small pockets of communities hiding from the constant threat of slavery. You play the lovable rouge Monkey who wakes up on a slave ship and sees a young girl called Trip who somehow has escaped her cell and manages to cause the ship to start crashing.

Once I got used to the kind of camera angles one would have seen in the original resident evil games which for the most part are dynamic and move somewhat with you and other times the camera is fixed which can cause you to become a little confused to which way you are meant to be moving in I was pleasantly shocked to find this game rocks..!

Now as stories go I wasn’t expecting much but by the halfway Mark of the game I was wanting a film or TV series, hay I would settle even for a cool cartoon of this as it has more creativity in the storyline than any film I’ve seen this year. And then the penny dropped and I realised why I knew somewhat more than I should have know as this games story & characters are loosely based on the story “Journey to the West” which was published around the 1590’s and is considered one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.

Not only that but you may recognise the weapon Monkey has i.e. his cool Chetara like expanding bo staff and his “cloud” which isn’t anything to do with Apple storing all your music and data in a magical place, No the cloud is a cool hover board like disc which can go over water as I guess it has more “POWER” or something like that, from the popular anime Dragonball Z which is also based on the same story.

Getting back to you cool staff weapon it has another function as it also doubles as a Stargate like staff blaster with the option to set for stun or kill. Also as the game progresses you pick up tech orbs which can be used to upgrade your abilities like better health or more shield strength..!

The voice acting is amazing and I was shocked to find out that Andy Serkis was not only the voice of Monkey but did a lot of the motion capture and he is also credited as a creative director too.

And then there is the games locations which are genius as when you first start the game you’re crashing towards a very overgrown New York and finally end up in Grand Central Station which has also seen better days. Other locations are a cool looking brookland bridge a windy mountain village and the hover dam all of which look stunning and not giving too much away about the ending but it was one epic journey to the west..!

One final point after the last boss fight you get given an epilogue which was one of the nicest I’ve seen And just when I though this game couldn’t get any better the credits rolled in and I was blown away by the song choice “No Death in Love” which totally set the mood of what had just happened in the previous epilogue.

Safe to say this is a game worth picking up and having a play through as it reminded me of a kind of Price or Persia meets Resident Evil meets Borderlands kind of thing which I know is an odd mix for a game but it works and makes me want a sequel so I can continue climbing and shooting mech’s..!