Review: Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

When Enslaved: Odyssey to the West was announced I was pretty excited. First of all, it's a game developed by Team Ninja, the developers behind one of my favorite - yet underrated - PS3 titles, Heavenly Sword, that alone guaranteed my release-day purchase. Enslaved is a gorgeous platforming action-adventure game inspired by the Chinese novel "Journey to the West," and the History Channel apocalyptic documentary "Life After People."

The game stars Monkey and Trip, two humans that are being taken by enslavers aboard a ship. Trip, being a tech genious, manages to escape her containment cell and heads to an escape pod. Monkey, using brute strength breaks the containment cell and follows her. After managing to escape and while Monkey is unconscious, Trip puts a headband on Monkey which will allow her to "enslave" him and if he disobeyes a command will be in pain, if he hurts her or she dies - he dies!

Enslaved doesn't revolutionize the platforming-adventure game. If you have climbed walls, shimmied along ledges and jumped from one place to the other on games like Prince of Persia, you will be at home on Enslaved. The combat can feel a little slow, because Monkey, that sexy beast, plays like a tank character and those can be a bit hard to maneuver when fighting, yet he's extremely flexible when platforming. So yeah, that describes Monkey, hard and flexible.

As I mentioned before, the graphics are beautiful. This is one of the prettiest games on the market. It's just amazing and refreshing to travel through an apocalyptic wasteland that is colorful and welcoming. The character's animations are superb, I dare you not to feel the emotions they are feeling as they go through their journey to Trip's home and on top of that they also have some amazing voice acting to bolster the experience.

The replay value is a bit low, sure you may want to max out some stats for trophies sake, but Enslaved doesn't offer much to go a second time around, except you love the story and the characters that much and feel like joining them on their odyssey once again.

Enslaved is a game that does not wears out it's welcome, by the time the game is over you will still want to play a bit more, but I guess this is a good thing. Moreover, the games ending leaves you wondering "what happens next?" and wishing for a sequel.

The Gaymers Verdict: Boyfriend Material