Lack of creativity is a problem that has been plaguing the video game industry for a while now. Endless rehashes and sequels that change nothing except for where you shoot terrorists populate the market. The other boil on the ass of creativity is the "re-imagining" of established stories. Now, I can abide by stories that have similar plots and characters to other works written into a unique tale, but when the characters and their names are identical, it screams "We're bereft of writing talent".
If you've never been in a special education class, you'll probably know that story is important in entertainment. The problem with re-imaginings is that the story has been told already and most likely in a better way... that's why it's being copied.
This particular game is inspired by the Chinese novel "Journey to the West", a story telling of a man's pilgrimage to India from China to find Buddhist texts. The story in Enslaved consists of a woman's return home after escaping imprisonment by robots. Yeah... robots. What I don't understand is, if you are going to change that much about an established story, why not go the extra mile and pen your own unique tale? Yes, you could draw parallels between them, but it would be separate from the inspiration material.
Anyway, the game opens to show the player character, Monkey, escaping from a slave plane. For some reason, one girl escaping has caused it to explode and crash. She causes this mess and doesn't even have the common decency to let you through a door to the escape pods. She then has the audacity to put a slave headband on you later. What a bitch.
As this game is a puzzle action platformer, repetition is going to feature at some point throughout the game. The problem is the people who made this must have regarded that as a good thing. It has to be one of the most perpetually boring games I've ever played. An incredibly high percentage of areas start out with the path ahead being scanned for robots whom you then go and destroy. There's some climbing in there, but that is it. I'd say 70-80% of the game is right there in that sentence.
It doesn't really help either that the game mechanics are awful either. The climbing gameplay is so easy due to everything climbable glowing bright white, the combat is tedious as you only have about 4 different moves and the camera... oh God, the camera. It swings around so wildly, even the controls have a hard time keeping up.
I don't want to be too down on the game, because there were some fun parts. Most of the boss battles were interesting and they actually had a size and difficulty progression, unlike a lot of other games. There is also a part where Trip nearly drives off he side of a bridge in a hilarious commentary on women's driving ability.
We then come across the character called Pigsy. Truly, one of the least likeable characters in a video game. In the Chinese tale, he shamed himself and was banished by the Gods to be reborn as a mortal human. They screwed up and he was born from a wild boar, hence why he's half-man half-pig. In the game, he is simply a fat bloke who likes pigs, judging by what he wears and what his home looks like.
If you've never been in a special education class, you'll probably know that story is important in entertainment. The problem with re-imaginings is that the story has been told already and most likely in a better way... that's why it's being copied.
This particular game is inspired by the Chinese novel "Journey to the West", a story telling of a man's pilgrimage to India from China to find Buddhist texts. The story in Enslaved consists of a woman's return home after escaping imprisonment by robots. Yeah... robots. What I don't understand is, if you are going to change that much about an established story, why not go the extra mile and pen your own unique tale? Yes, you could draw parallels between them, but it would be separate from the inspiration material.
Anyway, the game opens to show the player character, Monkey, escaping from a slave plane. For some reason, one girl escaping has caused it to explode and crash. She causes this mess and doesn't even have the common decency to let you through a door to the escape pods. She then has the audacity to put a slave headband on you later. What a bitch.
As this game is a puzzle action platformer, repetition is going to feature at some point throughout the game. The problem is the people who made this must have regarded that as a good thing. It has to be one of the most perpetually boring games I've ever played. An incredibly high percentage of areas start out with the path ahead being scanned for robots whom you then go and destroy. There's some climbing in there, but that is it. I'd say 70-80% of the game is right there in that sentence.
It doesn't really help either that the game mechanics are awful either. The climbing gameplay is so easy due to everything climbable glowing bright white, the combat is tedious as you only have about 4 different moves and the camera... oh God, the camera. It swings around so wildly, even the controls have a hard time keeping up.
I don't want to be too down on the game, because there were some fun parts. Most of the boss battles were interesting and they actually had a size and difficulty progression, unlike a lot of other games. There is also a part where Trip nearly drives off he side of a bridge in a hilarious commentary on women's driving ability.
We then come across the character called Pigsy. Truly, one of the least likeable characters in a video game. In the Chinese tale, he shamed himself and was banished by the Gods to be reborn as a mortal human. They screwed up and he was born from a wild boar, hence why he's half-man half-pig. In the game, he is simply a fat bloke who likes pigs, judging by what he wears and what his home looks like.
Half-man, half-annoying fat idiotThe real problem with this game isn't the borrowed-then-robotified plot, the repetitive gameplay or the outrageous frame rate, but the fact I just really didn't care about anything. They're slaves, don't care. Trip's father is dead, snore. Pigsy is in love with Trip, yawn. Pigsy dies, huzzah.
Speaking of Pigsy's death, it's a strange and unnecessary sacrifice. Nearing the end of the game, you are on a massive machine called the Leviathan. The only way to destroy all the robots attacking you is to blow that mother up. Pigsy sets that in motion... then just sits there waiting for it to blow up. He had a whole minute to escape, which was evidently long enough for Monkey and Trip to get away. An utterly pointless escapade intended to make Pigsy seem like a noble and caring person.
There was only one scene that I cared enough to not mash the X button in a vain hope that it would skip, and that was the end. Everything up until that point was about Trip. Now, finally, we get something that relates to the player character. Playing for 8 hours to see it, however, was definitely not worth it. Turns out the slaves have been living in a Matrix-esque dream world from memories of a single person.
Trip and Monkey then free the slaves in an allegory for the Buddhist tradition of enlightenment. It's a pretty haphazard way of tying the two stories together after they got wildly frayed once the robots showed up, which happened to be right at the beginning.
While it's not a terrible game; the monotonous gameplay, unengaging story and one particularly bad character make it pretty bad. Time to take the blue pill.
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