Bleh Reviews Things: Enslaved

A few weeks ago I downloaded a demo onto my Xbox 360 from my television a demo of a game that I had heard about, seen, and had no interest in previously, entitled Enslaved. I played through it, enjoyed it enough to have my video game weenie get excited about it, and ended up getting it and playing through it last week. Here, in this paragraph, I will introduce to you a review of said Enslaved game, and why maybe you should buy it right now or maybe you should leave it on the shelf until it comes way down in price and then pick it up for the super cheap because of reasons. Hit the jump to find out.

So, Enslaved, eh? The story starts off with you, a very large guy named Monkey (because he climbs things and has a tail [sash]) being forcibly transported for no particular reason by a very large ship where you really don’t want to be. After tutorials, you escape the ship and meet a pretty decent looking video game chick named I Don’t Remember But I Do Remember She Has A Rip In The Back Of Her Pants, who puts a slave headband on your wacky guido hair and inconveniently kills you with it when you’re trying to get collectibles for achievements or just exploring for the hell of it. Oh, and she won’t take it off until you get her safely home, where you will kill her. Kind of defeats the purpose, huh? Eventually you meet up with a very fat person named (wait for it) Pigsy, who really, really wants to fuck something, and you go west, because this is a very American Tale. The story is really kind of just there to move the dialog and character interaction along, both of which are pretty fantastic, and I found myself actually growing to like the main characters in the game despite the massive attempts to make me hate them.

Enslaved controls like most other third person action games, you have a heavy attack button, a light attack button, you can dodge, you can have the camera swing wildly around you while trying to fight anything, you can push enemies away to give you more time, and you can slowly meander away if you get bored. The camera bit, though, it can really get tough trying to get used to fighting because the camera will swing around in front of you randomly making you lose sight of whatever you happened to be fighting at the time. Luckily most of the robots attack you from behind while you’re stuck in an animation, so you can see the cheap sons of bitches attacking you while the camera is swinging away like Jaoquin Phoenix and the mech you were fighting is moving out of the way of your attack. The mechs look great though, and while it is pretty annoying that you can’t really make the camera do what you want I got used to it pretty quickly and it only really hampered me two or three times after the first five missions.

The missions start out pretty fun and very colorful, as you’re climbing around the remains of New York City (apparently) hundreds of years after most humans died, however they eventually digress back into NextGen Brown and Grey after a while and place you in very monotonous situations(“Jump over there and hit that switch”) and fetch quests(“Jump over there and get that switch and bring it back”). This, along with an abrupt ending that felt very rushed and very not the rest of the game, are really the only complaints that I have, as I felt like it was fun enough to keep pushing through it and varied enough to keep my attention for a few levels at a time. Until the end that is, but I’ll get into that in a different spoiler heavy post.

Enslaved really nails the “life after humans” thing, even if it stumbles and falls off of a cliff at the end, and the atmosphere for 90% of the game is fantastic. That, along with the previously mentioned character interactions and personalities, are really worth checking out for at least a play through. And, if you stick with it, you can see what an abortion looks like if it was programmed as a video game ending. I recommend it as a rental or pick it up on the cheap several months from now, as it’s not exactly sixty dollar material due to being pretty short.

I rate Enslaved six estranged Guns and Roses band members out of ten eighties bands.