In this weekly leaderboard, i94BOE is on place 2423!
artist, gamer
A tale of 2 unlikely lost lonely souls coming together to help each other find their family, friends and save the world. This game from Namco Bandai and Ninja Theory has many similarities to it's previous release of Heavenly Sword. Mainly the character of Trip and the casting of Andy Serkis as Monkey [1]. Trip looks identical to Nariko from Heavenly Sword, Enslaved is in no way a sequel. A predecessor? Either way as a fan of Heavenly Sword (it was one of my first Ps3 games) I wasn't fussed but you could be confused into thinking these were the same characters and I find it a little odd to use the same look and feel of a character for a different story and character name. Nevertheless this game revolves around 3 main characters. Trip, Monkey and Pigsy (maybe you can count the ever so cute robot Truffles as Pigsy and Truffles are the subject of the DLC) You meet Monkey and you learn to fight. You meet Trip and she enslaves you in a deathly headband. You can't wonder off too far with this on, complete the level without her or go where she doesn't want you to go. If you do, Boom! Your head kind of has a technical explosion. Your job is to control the character of Monkey. Monkey is enslaved by Trip so you have to help her and make sure she doesn't die in order to solve puzzles and fight off the bad robots that will try and attack her. There are some good puzzles to solve, climbing and working out the safest route to help Trip to certain points. Unfortunately the solving of these puzzles is limited. You can only go one way so it's pretty easy to work out which way to go by looking at your surroundings. Playing on Easy mode - the objects you have to scaffold even flash so these do not prove a challenge. The more challenging bit is collecting all the Orbs, you can collect these which are hidden up high, in containers and in the corners of a level, in order to level up Monkey. Beneficial for when you play on Hard mode as you can increase your life, shield, weaponry and combat. This adds a "Collect all..." element to the game which adds some longevity, the only draw back is you have to play the whole level to get the orbs recognised as collected. So if you have missed one orb in a level and it's at the beginning. Your gonna have to play it all the way to the end. This is a tad frustrating. The combat develops as you progress and if you choose to level up Monkey you do so through Trip. She is also on hand to help you if she needs to distract or encountering a close call she can EMP all the robots that are within inches of her. This gives you time to get to her and her abilities recharge in a short while. You are encouraged to use Trip to help you out and it proves a worthy and fun element to the game. In combat you can pull a few moves or use your shooting stick (unofficial name) to freeze or blow up the bad robots. Using the shooting stick is to easy to do. Freeze. Boom. Freeze. Boom. In fact too easy to use. Which you can exploit to eliminate enemies easily. You do gain moves as you level up but not many. It's certainly not going to be a huge list of combo buttons to remember. I enjoyed the simplicity of it and the addition of a few new moves but not too many. This is why I state that co-op would have worked so well to implement these elements. Work together to get to the checkpoints and use the game to it's full potential. The graphics are defined and beautiful, green and luscious backgrounds to rusted metal obstacle filled watery landscapes. You are not always on the ground, you can use your "cloud" to hover over water and get places that you couldn't get to on your feet. This adds some much needed variety to the game play. Overall the story is engaging. It's a game that offers only single player but if they have worked hard on the graphics (even if they reproduced a new version of Nariko in Trip) then why not. I don't see them trying to do an Assassins Creed Brotherhood with this game. It should be a one off game that you can say "I enjoyed playing that" without multi-player and it was a good game with fab graphics and maybe one day I will play it again or collect all those orbs. In reality you will probably never play it again but recommend it to a friend if you see it under £20. An overlooked game worth playing. 8 out of 10 1. http://youtu.be/FkQcJTkD9Ys - Andy Serkis acting and directing as Monkey
