The Wachowskis’ Enslaved: Odyssey to the West Premium Edition Review

Three years after Enslaved: Odyssey to the West was originally released on the PS3 and 360, Namco Bandai have now seen fit to port the game to PC by way of Steam. Which seems like a strange thing to do—though well received, Enslaved was not exactly a system seller. The sceptic might think that with the rise and dominance of Steam, if Namco Bandai were to rush out a quick port, then they’d probably make their money back soon enough. After all, who wouldn’t want to play Enslaved for the lowly price of a Steam sale? I certainly would!

And, unfortunately, the sceptic might just be right. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a bad, bad port. Beyond the lack of any graphical options apart from what resolution to render the game at (which doesn’t always work without editing the config file anyway), there are significant, almost game breaking freezes. The game does not crash (though it does crash now and then as well) but simply freezes for anything from three to thirty seconds before play resumes. Some have been lucky enough to remedy this problem through config file fiddling. Some have not. I was able to treat the symptoms, but not cure the disease. Though disorienting, and thoroughly annoying, these freezes mostly occur after cutscenes, not during combat.

But they can be so frequent that they do occur during combat. When the game does freeze during combat, it doesn’t mean automatic death—combat does not resume before the game does. No frames are skipped. But given the hectic, intense nature of some of the battles, waiting for the game to resume requires nerves of steel and, as the adrenalin begins to wane, one might find oneself dying; their concentration broken and their nerves frayed.

Yet in spite of these most egregious of technical difficulties, I couldn’t help but become enthralled by Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. Loosely (to the point where one might consider the linking knot to be untied) based on Journey to the West, Enslaved follows Monkey and Tripitaka (Trip here) as they journey Westward (I presume that was the direction they were heading) across a post-apocalyptic America, starting in New York, and ending in…my American geography is not so good.

Along the way they eventually run into Pigsy who has lost none of his hedonistic traits from Journey to the West, though sadly Trip is quite clearly a woman and thus there is no amusingly awkward gender confusion to pollute his lust. At least he doesn’t bat an eyelid at the fact that Trip is his friend’s daughter and he has known her since she was just a girl.

Although borrowing the names from the most famous English adaption of Journey to the West, Enslaved owes much of its themes and most of its plot to popular American science fiction—which was not the sort of cross cultural dissection that I was hoping for, but was one that allowed the relationship between the three protagonists to evolve organically and for the ending to be far more emotionally affecting than it had any right to be based only on the plot. Andy Serkis even managed to take what was little short of a moral exposition at the end of the finale (which was produced in the most amusingly minimal way possible—and in complete contrast to the entire aesthetic of the game; though awkwardly foreshadowed through flashes of still photography) and turn it into something simultaneously amusing and spectacular and absurdly post-modern—or, at least, post-Andy Serkis. But that the finale was still emotionally affecting is testament to the game that lead up to it. Otherwise it would have made for a still amusing final cameo, but one that was amusing for all the wrong reasons.

Andy Serkis also plays Monkey, putting in a performance that is commanding and powerful—full of presence and pomp. Even as Andy Serkis tickled the gruffest, manliest depths of his vocal chords he was able to tinge his words with emotion and nuance. And when the writing became too stilted and the sentences too short, he turned his lines into a jumbled, monkey muttering. While Lindsey Shaw’s face contorted all too melodramatically in some of the more awkward emotional peaks of Enslaved, Andy Serkis always kept his facial movements more contained so that the emotion could be more easily conveyed through his voice and his eyes. It’s an exceptional performance that unfortunately shows up the greatest flaw in motion capture animation: it requires genuine acting ability, and a certain type at that.

Which is not to say that Lindsey Shaw puts in a bad performance as Trip. Whenever the writing and plot did not tangle with melodrama, she acted as an excellent foil to Andy Serkis. And Richard Ridings as Pigsy is a great, perverted third wheel. Without their polished performances, then the simplicity in the writing would have been shallow and uninteresting, rather than rich and engaging, for—apart from through the environment—it is the characters that manifest the themes most clearly.

The writing is technically accomplished, but perfunctory and film-like in its small sentences—perhaps a little too succinct and condensed in its wordage to sustain a ten hour videogame.

The environments are no less spectacular than the performances. A post-apocalyptic America means an America being overtaken once more by nature. Vines and creepers climb the walls of skyscrapers, and grass pokes through the cracks in concrete. Trees grow in the strangest of places, and rust colours the metal sticking out as jagged splinters from the decaying concrete—Central Park is slowly devouring the entire city. And through this most alive wasteland, dangerous mechs wander. Remnants from the war that all but wiped out humanity (what is it with robot wars and the destruction of humanity? There is an obvious correlation between the improvement in robot technology and a decrease in the deadliness of war), and are setting about wiping out what little remains of it.

The robots are brown and grey metallic bipeds that are no less rusted than the other metal around them, with just enough organic wiring to give them a certain degree of personality. They move fluidly and attack with vicious grace; they are torn to shreds by monkey in beautifully animated, visually arresting brutality as he cuts them in half with his staff or tears off their heads with his hands. It’s incredibly satisfying to bring a long, arduous fight to an end with just such an animation, and highly amusing to perform a takedown which triggers a similarly satisfying animation, but has the added bonus of the other mechs wandering up to Monkey and his victim and watching the act of brutality being performed against their mechanical comrade in the background—a good thing too given that after these takedowns the surrounding mechs are either destroyed or stunned depending on what sort of mech it was that Monkey took down.

There are only two melee attacks: heavy and light, but light can be charged into a stun attack, and the two can be pressed together to perform a wide attack which damages all surrounding mechs. Monkey can also block and evade, and make strategic use of his ranged attacks (stun and damage), but combat is a simple affair with mech attacks easy to predict, and slow to be performed. Though there are a range of mechs that each behave in their own way and have their own unique attacks, once one is used to them, then combat becomes a routine affair. Throwing in a variety of different mech types in varying quantities does little to change the nature of the battles due to the slow speed with which the mechs attack, and the fact that they even take it in turns to attack! Often several mechs will wander around Monkey; watching while one of their comrades attacks him on their own.

It doesn’t help that block is so effective—only two attacks from normal mechs cannot be blocked, and one of these was blockable once I had upgraded block duration all the way. With the take-it-in-turns AI and the powerful blocking, combat soon dissolves into a repetition of block, charged stun attack, then button mashing of light and heavy attacks. If one is savvy enough with their upgrades, then one can also unlock a focused attack—a powerful mech killing massacre that can be unleashed after a slew of successful normal attacks—but one scarcely needs it once blocking is properly mastered. Not even the poor mechs’ shields can help them, for the charged stun attack not only breaks their shields, but still stuns them too.

Even so, combat can still be a sometimes frustrating affair thanks to two factors: The first is that upgrades rely on Trip. If she’s not around, then one can’t upgrade one’s abilities. Thus, if one has been lazy in their upgrading, it’s all too easy to end up in a tough fight without Trip in sight, and several hundred thousand upgrade points in the bank. The second is much more egregious: The camera. The camera in Enslaved moves between cinematic viewpoints within the levels during most of the platforming sections, and to a traditional third person perspective during most of the combat sections. It is the latter where the issues arise.

Though controllable with the right thumb stick (don’t try playing with a keyboard and a mouse), the camera has a habit of spinning around, or orienting itself so that one cannot see the several mechs hovering off screen and about to attack. It even gets in the way in the many stealth sections, spinning around as Monkey runs out of cover after some tech orbs (currency for upgrades) so that his orientation changes under the watchful eye of turrets. As the camera spins, it’s a little hard to deal with the slippery running and all too easy to end up running in the wrong direction—such as into the turret’s line of fire. Despite the thumb stick control, never does the camera ever truly feel under one’s control.

During these stealth sections one can make use of Trip, commanding her to project a hologram to distract the turrets. She also makes herself useful by healing Monkey with vials of green health that are scattered throughout the levels (every bit of health helps, for health packs are scarce) and her switch pressing prowess. In this way she adds a small layer of strategy to the combat and the stealth; just enough to flavour it, if not enough to significantly affect either of them.

Unfortunately she is also an important part of some platforming sections, manipulating the environment as one platforms one’s way through it. But the environmental commands are often unresponsive and finicky. They are not only frustrating to deal with, but also slow down the pace which is particularly painful because Enslaved makes excellent use of pacing and tempo.

Despite the script not quite sustaining a whole videogame, the construction of Enslaved’s structure is exceptional. Although melee combat makes up the bulk of the game (if only because one dies so much because of the camera!), the simple stealth sections compliment the combat along with contemporary platforming (swift climbing only now and then tempered by careful timing of jumps or puzzle solving), mech shooting galleries (hide behind cover and time movement and shots through a linear corridor of mechs; the shooting mechanics might be loose, but Enslaved lives and dies on its variety, not its mechanics), traditional on-rails shooter vignettes, chases and boss battles.

It’s a smorgasbord approach to structure where no individual part needs to be inherently good but, when each part is placed together in a complimentary fashion, the structure becomes more than the sum of its parts. And even within each individual gameplay style there is room for variety and change: The effortlessly flowing contemporary platforming can turn into a fast paced, ridiculous orb collectathon on a floating, glowing blue circle that Monkey rides called the Cloud. The dynamics of the boss battles change in scope and range; sometimes focusing on timed melee combat, sometimes on clever Cloud usage or dealing with waves of normal mechs while slowly whittling away the boss with Monkey’s ranged staff attacks and platforming through the surrounding environment.

This wonderful sense of diversity is also applied to the emotional tone of the settings. Post-New York the game moves through dirty, rusted junkyards and the innards of fiery mechs to an idyllic, Utopian vista—not necessarily in that order. All making excellent use of colour to accentuate the detailed, beautiful construction of the game world: Monkey climbs up chunky, metallic junkyard walls that have a strong sense of three dimensionality and depth to them—the camera panning to reveal far off details and give Enslaved a genuine sense of visual composition.

The music also moves from theme to theme, mixing acoustic instruments, ethnic singing and electronic music to accompany whatever the rest of the aesthetic is attempting to achieve. The audio mixing also supports the tangibility of the environments, mixing vocals to the scenes in which they take place—the vocals may have a tinny echo to them in an enclosed environment, or be clear but diluted by the sound of the wind out in the open. All these extra complimentary details are not only symbolic of the whole design philosophy behind Enslaved, but also allow for all the flaws to become anything but: how can one be bothered by some spritely foliage when it is so well placed within the environment? How can one be bothered by a low resolution texture when that texture is depicting grime and degradation?

It might seem like style over substance, but within style much substance can be found—just as Journey to the West might be considered by some to be a comical collection of vignettes and poetry, it is within the seemingly shallow humour and populist pandering fanfare that the meaning is to be found.