XB360 - Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Haiku Review: 

Ancient Chinese tale
of robots and a hot chick,
Gollum as good guy

Additional Comments:

So I guess it's high time I posted a new review, seeing as how Sir Iain has beaten about ten games by now. It's been a slow gaming season for me, personally, since I've been working on the finishing touches of all the minor details of releasing my first book (shameless plug), Christmas happened, and then on top of all that, there have been few games that have interested me more than reading the Harry Potter series (yeah, seriously). But a friend and I have been talking about playing this game for a while, and since he had it but couldn't play it right away, he let me borrow it.

I love this game. Straight up, I love it. This game was kind of a sleeper release, since it came out roughly the same time that all the blockbuster games came out this year, and it even got a few mediocre reviews--which we'll get to in a minute. As the haiku said, this is a retelling of the Chinese tale, "Journey to the West" about a monkey with a staff and a cloud. You don't really need to know that when playing the game, but knowing it adds a couple of "Aha" moments to the narrative. Like, why the protagonist is named "monkey"--that's actually his name, apparently--or why you fight against "dogs" or team up with a friend named "Pig". Kind of silly sometimes, but it never took away from the immersion. But what I think is the coolest part of this story is that it's a retelling in a post-apocalyptic world. And even that has been done before, but what's even better than that is that it's post-post-apocalyptic. So nothing is bleak with lots of browns and grays. It's been decades or centuries since the apocalypse, and everything has grown over with green. So the environments are absolutely stunning. This is kind of a button-masher, but I don't really mind that. I need button mashers sometimes, as I grow tired of having to plan out every strike for every weakness for every enemy. That gets more tedious than B-B-B-B-B-X-B-B-B-B-A. If you've played and liked Uncharted 2, then you are going to like this game. There is a climb mechanic in the game, and though it wasn't always perfect, it was very fun and it is a lot better than playing Assassins Creed (you can't have Assassin's Creed without a$$ a$$). The voiceover work and acting is impeccable! It's probably some of the best I've seen in a game. The main character Monkey is played by Andy Serkis who does the voice of Gollum in LoTR. The other girl is someone from Nickelodeon or something, and I've never heard of her, but they both do a great job. The animation for this game, especially in the facial expressions, is really great. It's hard to make videogame characters emote, but the developers really shined here. There is hardly any--really,  no--music to this game, which is a shame, because the main menu screen has GREAT music that I really wish made more appearances.

So apparently many online game sites only gave this game a mediocre score, but I think that they were probably a little unfair. Rating a game is a completely subjective process, and it seems to me that many have compared this game to other blockbusters that were released at the same time this year, e.g., Castlevania Lords of Shadow, Borderlands GOTY, NBA 2K11, Medal of Honor, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Fallout New Vegas, Super Meat Boy, Star Wars The Force Unleashed 2, Rock Band 3, and, of course, Hello Kitty Party. With a list like that, a new game could really get lost. And overshadowed by how great some of these games are. Now, I've heard some complain that the game is too easy...but why you complain about that? I mean, you are playing a simulated reality in which you are doing impossible things that appear easy. Why complain about easiness? Besides, they have a Hard mode, for cryin' out loud! And there's an achievement for playing it on hard! And, ya know what, Hard mode is freakin' TOUGH! My biggest gripe was that hard was almost too hard. The jump in difficulty was huge. Also, the game is fairly short--not too short, so this isn't an official gripe, but I do like longer games. And for a game like this, if it were a touch longer, it would've been that much better. There are collectibles in this game, but they are pretty hard to get all of them. I wanted to try to find them all, because there's an achievement for that, but there are just way too many and they're all spread out over such a broad area with many of them in REALLY hard to find or hard to get to locations. Overall, I'm glad I played this game, because it was awesome.

Rating: 5 New York accent-speaking monkeys out of 5

Nano-win:

I dare you to play this game and tell me that Trip isn't the hottest girl in gaming.