You know what happens when you go to bed, while the 8 months-old kid screams in the background and the wife hates you, and you’re thinking „Shut the fuck up”? You’re Enslaved. You start by hating it, but you play the whole game in a few hours. It’s that amazing. It’s this love-hate relationship that’s spread throughout the game. Of course, you hate that bitch for what she did to you, but hey, at least she’s got a nice ass.
Over here, meaning Europe, I don’t feel we’re racist, sexist, or otherwise hateful. Yeah, we hate women walking around in burqas and blowing up in subway stations and yes, we don’t give a shit about being politically correct, so I’m going to say what I have to say about Enslaved. While I enjoyed being Enslaved for a while, imagine the outrage if it were the other way around. The Taliban slip from the latest Medal of Honor would have been a small PR glitch compared to this one. So, in the end, yeah, it’s ok. I don’t care if we, the mighty monkeys of this crazy species, are enslaved once again, virtually. I just wanted to play the game.
Let me start by, oh shit, it’s the third paragraph already, fuck it, I love third-person action/platform games and I’m not the one who thinks multiplayer is a must. So yeah, I was pretty hyped by Ninja’s Theory game when I first found out about it. I enjoyed Heavenly Short…Sword, short as it was. Don’t expect to be impressed by the length of Enslaved. A few hours on a Sunday was enough for me to complete the game. Expect some nice storytelling, beautiful graphic design and some pretty strong voice-acting.
The game starts pumping lots of action your way. You’ve probably played the demo. It doesn’t do the game any justice. Guess what? The real game starts right after the demo ends. I love the concept of „destroyed beauty”. Gears of War did a nice job employing it. This is „destroyed beauty” 2.0. It’s when the nature takes over what’s left of the world, which is plenty by the looks of it. A nearly destroyed bridge, a mech factory, a top of the mountain retreat, the post-apocalyptic way, and lots, lots of ruins. I won’t say more, as you’ll have to play it and see for yourself.
Enslaved is basically the trip of Trip and Monkey, the big bad one being Monkey and the cute-assed one being Trip. She enslaves Monkey with a slaver band, so she can compel him do whatever she wants, or else inflict pain. Their bond goes even beyond that. If Trip’s heart stops beating, Monkey dies too. And, oh boy, there are times in the game, when you just want to smack that bitch as hard as you can. She can be really helpful at times, but she’s just dumb when it comes to facing danger. What I hated during the game was that you’re not allowed to explore this „destroyed beauty”. One step the wrong way and your bond with Trip is revealed to its full extent. You can only reload…and behave. This sort of limitation gets annoying after a while and it’s not compatible with the kind of levels they’ve built for the game. There are beautiful, really big levels and just a little more freedom would have made the world open up to the player.
Trip and Monkey will head back to the top of the mountain retreat where she used to live, but there are quite a few surprises waiting for you over there. I won’t spoil anything, just that you’ll have to continue your journey further to the Pyramid in order to solve the mystery. Along the way, you’ll meet Pigsy and he’ll tag along for quite a while. He’ll also guide you through the mech factory, shoot some bad guys for you and in the end help you all the way, but on the other hand he thinks he has something to share with Monkey, so he can be quite sarcastic about it, while having you face danger a lot more than you’d wish.
One of the things I liked about Enslaved is that most of the time there are no frustrating moments when you either have to find a certain way, solve an illogical puzzle or fight some ugly boss over and over again. Everything is straightforward, you don’t have to worry about bosses as you’ll be given plenty of hints on how to fight them and unless you don’t upgrade Monkey, there’s nothing to worry about. The game features an experience gathering – points spending system, so gather any glowing orb you can find and upgrade Monkey’s health, staff and combat abilities. You won’t be able to upgrade everything. I maxed the health and shield, while upgrading a little bit of everything else. You’ll probably choose a different path, but in the end, when you’ll have to fight lots of enemies at once, improved health and shield can be a real life saver. There are quite a few timed events during the game, but it’s nothing complicated, so approach those with patience and you’ll be fine.
Last but not least, we’d really like Ninja Theory to brush up on their English language skills and drop the “correctness”. I mean what the fuck are we playing here? Sherlock Holmes meets CSI? Imagine Pigsy saying “penis” and you’ll get the point. Pigsy? There’s clearly a clash here. Either we’re dealing with an educated pig, or someone from Ninja Theory was to chickenshit to say dick, dong, rod, package, piece, tool, unit… or even weapon. Yep, I think “weapon”, given the context, could have been a better choice. Or what about “mech”? Hey, Monkey? Don’t you ever touch my mech again, ok? Just let Trip handle it.
Well, Pigsy’s some sort of a dreamer, but he’s fine and proves to be a real friend when time comes. That’s why I hope we’ll see more of Pigsy in the upcoming DLCs. One thing I should point out is that Enslaved feels like a complete game. There’s nothing you could add to the main plot, so any DLCs should explore side-plots, concentrating on these three characters. How did Monkey get caught? What was Pigsy doing before we reached him? There aren’t many things you can add, so we don’t expect that many DLCs for this game and frankly, that’s a good thing for us. We expect to get a complete experience from a game and we really like the developers who choose to do it these days.
Do we recommend Enslaved? YES. It’s a game that you can play even if you don’t have too many third-person platform/action games under your belt. For fans of the genre, it’s a real treat, without being innovative or ground-breaking. It’s just a very good game. Did you notice that, lately, we tend to minimize the importance of good, but not innovative games? These games are not pushing the industry further, they’re not cornerstones or pillars or whatever kiss-ass words reviewers use these days. They are just good games, meant to entertain you. And that’s exactly what Enslaved does. Get it and play it and if you don’t like it, you can come here and comment something like “You’re a fuckin’ loser, the game is garbage.” I promise I’ll approve it… and maybe comment back something like “Go back to Moron Warfare 2, retard!” It’s the Internet! We’re all pigs and monkeys here, aren’t we?
8/10
