No super saiyans in this retelling.
As it could be surmised from the above, this game is a very loose retelling of Journey to the West, but set in a world without gods in which robots are enslaving humanity. The game starts with Monkey, now a human with gorilla-like posturing, and Trip, a techwizard-woman, escaping a slaver ship. Here's my first issue, as far as we know Monkey is a decent fellow, and not a trouble maker like Wukong, and Trip just enslaves him, by outfitting him while unconscious, with a slave crown because she wants to get home. Basically, Trip makes a horrible first impression because she is a jerk. There's a bit of ludonarrative dissonance too, y'see, the crown will kill Monkey if he doesn't obey, which in gameplay terms means that if you get too far away from trip you'll die. So, chapter 4 starts right after Monkey and Trip start getting chummy with each other... and you are introduced to Cloud, a hooverboard of sorts. You try out, it's fast, so you accidentally get too far and get killed because Trip, who is a total prick, tells you to return, but it's too late since Cloud was too fast. Basically, the game makes it hard not to hate Trip, even though it seems we should be sympathetic to her plight? Yeah, enforcing the distance thing does the plot no favors. It's also annoying if you think you might have missed something, but now you can't reach it because Trip will murder you.
As for the game itself, it's an adventure game that mixes beat'em up with light parkour segments, ala Uncharted but less exciting. Combat is fairly simple, you have a basic attack you can string into a combo, a strong attack, you can dodge and you have a limited block. You can also collect ammo and use your staff to shoot plasma energy, which is quite overpowered. Collecting orbs, by finding them laying on the various stages of by defeating enemies, lets you upgrade various different abilities, as well as unlock new abilities, such as a power attack, or enhance your basic attacks, such as wider range on your wide swipe. Heavenly Sword had more than a few performance hiccups, but Enslaved runs much better, it's not super smooth, but nothing worth complaining about. Overall, the combat might be simple, but it was quite enjoyable nontheless.
When you aren't pounding machines you'll be exploring the game's linear levels. The puzzles are easy to figure out and the parkour, while not super exciting, does add some variety to the gameplay. Sometimes, Parkour will be a means to reach shooting enemies, in which case you'll have to try to reach cover before your energy shield goes away and you can call on Trip to call a decoy for a few seconds.
One highlight for me was the game's opening section, in which you must escape the Slaver's flying machine as Trip slowly causes it to explode. It's exciting, and it does a good job of introducing you to the core basics of the combat and parkour. That said.... it also shows you just how buggy the game can be. In one of the earliest cutscenes, in which Monkey finds his bike... Monkey completely disappeared from the cutscene. At one time, Monkey's staff just wasn't appearing when I was attacking! Sound effects will sometimes sound garbled or subdued mid-combat.
Other gameplay buts were just as wonky. Parkour can sometimes be a bit finicky, you might be mashing X but Monkey just won't jump or throw Trip as fast as you'd like. There are some hit animations that look very sloppy, for instance, the robot dog's reaction animation to getting shot, it lacks any kind of oomph and just looks buggy.
Despite the game's shortcomings I felt like the overall package was pretty good. Despite my gripes with how some story elements are presented, the narrative kept me invested the whole time through. The gameplay as a whole was unremarkable, nothing you haven't seen done before and which has certainly been done better, but, it was more than acceptable, and bashing robots was quite entertaining. This game certainly showed just how much potential Ninja Theory had.
7.5
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