Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

The post-apocalyptic world, it turns out, isn't so bad after all. Taking its visual inspiration from fabled documentary Life After People, Ninja Theory's Enslaved vision of a ruined Earth is, in a word, colourful. It's almost violently so; this wasteland is lavish greens and blues, a destroyed New York having been overrun by an abundance of natural flora and fauna. It makes for some breathtaking scenes, whether that's a deer grazing in the concourse of Grand Central Station or the vines that clamber up the walls of a wilting Broadway theatre.

 

Enslaved has got more going for it than its vistas, though. A tale scripted by 28 Days Later scribe Alex Garland and heavily influenced by the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West and bought alive by Andy Serkis promises to be one of gaming's more engaging this year, and a playthrough of the opening chapters – and a peek at some of the later levels – bears this out. It opens aboard a slaver ship where pods line the rusted iron walls. Captured within one of these is Monkey, Enslaved's hero who's bought to life by Serkis's voice work and motion capture. Outside, Trip - a red-headed woman cast firmly in the mould of Heavenly Sword's lead - makes her escape. From the off it impresses; even in its most pedestrian settings Enslaved shows off a palette that, after years of identikit shooters, seems unusually vivid for Unreal Engine 3.

 

Soon the ship begins to eat itself, freeing Monkey and kick-starting a spectacular platforming section. It starts off simple enough as Monkey leaps from surface to surface with a simian spring in his step, but there's soon a catastrophic twist as the destruction amplifies, the walls of the ship tearing off like cheap tin foil as it plummets towards the crumbling New York skyline.

 

Horizontal surfaces soon become vertical, and the perspective shift isn't dissimilar to Uncharted 2's more spectacular moments. Also familiar is the platforming itself; like Naughty Dog's game there's a forgiving nature to it, but when it takes place on a wing-tip that's on a collision course with a skyscraper that does little to dampen the heart-in-mouth moments.

 

Once the ship has embedded itself into the wasteland of New York, the story starts proper. Monkey wakes groggy with a band around his head; a band, he soon discovers, that has been put there by Trip, and which allows her to exert control over the lumbering lead. Stray too far from her, or let her perish, and it's curtains. Trip's purpose is to get you, her captor, to help her return home in a journey through a decimated America that's riddled with hostile mech forces.

 

There are other similarities to Uncharted too, though they're very welcome ones. When the action dies down, the dramatic side of Enslaved looks just as impressive; the performances of Serkis and co. are brilliantly rendered, and while this game doesn't have the outrageous sparkle of Uncharted 2 it share that title's capability for delivering believable and absorbing dialogue. There's a fantastic subtlety in the behaviors and interactions between Trip and Monkey, with facial tics and dramatic pauses bringing the characters to life.

 

It means that throughout Enslaved's running time (which, at around 12 hours, is significantly longer than Heavenly Sword) the central relationship between Trip and Monkey could have the potential to blossom into something tangible and, dare we say it, actually quite touching. The dynamics between the two go beyond the cutscenes, and they make for some interesting game play mechanics. There's a dependency between the two that is worked upon in some increasingly smart ways. A radial command menu allows Monkey to direct Trip, with new orders unlocked throughout the course of play. The fundamentals such as follow and wait are there, but they're complemented by some more complex instructions - under heavy fire, for example, it's possible to get Trip to cause a distraction, allowing Monkey to slip around the flanks unnoticed and get up close and personal with the enemy.

 

Here, Enslaved reveals it's an adept brawler. Monkey's main tool is a staff that's upgradable – and even capable, later on, of ranged attacks. It's a wonderful melee weapon, reeling off a series of acrobatic flurries that are unlocked as the game progresses, and it's well presented too; there's an immensely satisfying clank each time the staff comes thundering down on a mech, and it's all told with some dynamic camera work.

 

A glimpse at a later level shows there's more to Enslaved than cracking mech skulls and leaping from platform to platform. Monkey's got his own hoverboard – here called the cloud – that allows him to glide around the environments, reaching otherwise hard to find areas. One section, seemingly played at the foot of a crumbling Brooklyn Bridge, bears this out, as Monkey rides the ruins and constructs a path for Trip to travel across.

 

It lends Enslaved a degree of variety, and all of its components are looking fine in isolation. Strung together with an engaging story told in a breathtaking environment, there's no reason that this singular vision of the apocalypse can't rub shoulders with the likes of Uncharted when it launches this October.