Enslaved odyssey to the west review năm 2024

It's set in an in a bold, vivid dystopia, where a dwindling and repressed human population is constantly hunted by a malevolent robotic race that is apparently the detritus of a bygone war. Mystery abounds. The game's designers have conceived some of the most striking environments yet seen – where nature and technology have grown free of man's shackles and ravaged the once thriving metropolises of 21st-century Earth.

Exploring this tangled playground of exotic fauna and twisted steel is the job of two strangers brought together in an uncomfortable alliance; player-protagonist Monkey and his computer-controlled accomplice Trip, who must work as a team.

While the core elements of melee combat, exploration and puzzle-solving are hardly revolutionary in concept, the gameplay is constantly engaging and, as a means of familiarising the player with Enslaved's depth of atmosphere and detail, it's superbly implemented. While occasionally repetitive with regard to the challenges presented, in its entirety Enslaved is an engrossing, captivating and visually stunning vision of the future.

It seems easy to dismiss Enslaved. Another big budget outing that didn't sell all that well. A shiny thing with a bunch of major names attached – Alex Garland wrote the script, Andy Serkis acted the lead – and not really all that much going for it in the game department. And it is a simplistic, linear light show. Leap your way down prescribed routes, to execute the single solution to the puzzle. Button mash to bash stuff into a rainbow of particle effects. There's not much more to it than that.

But I like it anyway.

What little Enslaved does in game terms is suitably underwritten by an exquisitely beautiful world, clean and smart dialogue, a superb high-speed hoverboard mini-game sequence, and combat that is meaty and responsive. Sometimes you just want a meathead to bash robots with an energy stick, and hear the metal crunch. It doesn't drool stupid in its story, either, despite the many cliché waypoints it visits along the way, Enslaved is great at what little it does, and it's almost enough.

In the realm of third-person action it doesn't offer any kind of challenge to Rocksteady's Batman games, and in consoleland it has been ground into post-apocalyptic dust by Naughty Dog's buddy movie wannamasterpiece, The Last Of Us. Nevertheless, Enslaved shouldn't be forgotten, and it has a few things really going for it, chief among those that it never frustrates, and that it is smart and lithe enough to dodge the boredom that its repetitious mechanics are in danger of stumbling into. Also, it's a colourful broad science-fiction epic that doesn't spend too long noodling over any of its particular story issues. It rollicks, and it does it with fireworks.

The story, then, because it sort of matters to this sort of game, is that a pair of escaped slaves crash to Earth in New York, one hundred and fifty years in the future. The city has been overrun by jungle and killer robots, and the odd couple must co-operate to escape and get home. The title comes from the conceit that brings sexy redhead lady and muscle-ape future-biker (literally called 'Monkey') together, which is that she enslaves him with a hacked headband, forcing him to get her back across the US to her post-apocalypse survivor town, far off in the mountains.

This means a journey through some completely fantastic environments. It's one of those games where the powerful influence of a super concept art tingles through every section of the game. Jungle New York is impressive enough, but the vertiginous wind farm is one of my favourite locations in any game. The palette for the entire world is bright and rich, underlining just how far this game's post-apocalyptic motif falls from the usual washed-out zone of the dead.

The "odyssey" through each of these bright environments is told with a bunch of arena type areas, which link puzzles with combat locations where you get to use meat-man's laser stick (and some other toys) to knock sparking crap out of the robots which stalk the landscape. Mostly it requires leaping, a bit of combat timing, and some observation of the glinting clue signposts. A few of these arenas actually stand out, particularly where the giant cat robot comes in, which is a minor highlight in quite a playful set of ideas. Very little skill is involved in overcoming any of this, but it's still an indulgent sort of pleasure to wade through.

The best single idea is probably the hoverboard section, which sees you zooming about through huge areas of the game, and could well have been developed further, rather than being a sort of mid-game treat that last just a few moments. As it is, these sequences are just a delightful contrast to your general leaping, lift, press, and whacking.

As for the PC port, well, it's okay. I ended up playing it on 360 pad, because that's how the game was designed, and it made the most sense. I can't really imagine tackling a game like this with mouse and keyboard, although it seems to work. As for the conversion to PC, it offers nothing of the Unreal engine's vast array of possible options, with the display offering just resolution and gamma correction. It must have been trivial to convert this game to PC, but it's a bit of a shame that a little bit more effort wasn't made. Hell, why on Earth Namco though not to bring this game out on PC in the first place is beyond me. Did some suit really not want to pay for a bunch of menus and some QA?

Anyway. Should you buy Enslaved? Sure, why not. It's an entertaining few hours, light and pretty with some ideas that aren't particularly original, but are well executed. I suspect when it's in a Steam sale you'll pick it up and not regret that fistful of dollars for even a moment. Just don't go in expecting anything other than a glittering 3D action game, and we're golden.

What is enslaved Odyssey to the West based on?

Loosely based on the classic Chinese novel 'Journey to the West', players are cast as Monkey; a strong, brutish loner who is forced to partner with the tech-savvy yet physically weak Trip on a journey to freedom.

How long is the enslaved Odyssey to the West?

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Who is the voice of the monkey in Enslaved Odyssey to the West?

Andy Serkis portrayed Monkey in Enslaved: Odyssey of the West.

What are the system requirements for enslaved Odyssey to the West?

Minimum: OS *: Windows XP SP2, Vista or higher. Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.20GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Memory: 2 GB RAM.