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It is always difficult to take an old epic tale and convert it into something new and original while keeping the themes from the original story.  It becomes more of an issue when that tale has been retold in many different media formats, video games included, but Ninja Theory manages to take the Journey to the West parable into a post-apocalyptic future and succeeds with Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.  The characters bleed with emotion, and the narrative is quick to grab the player right from the start, but average fight mechanics and graphical hiccups hold this title back from being a great title.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West starts you off with a bang, as you find Monkey, your playable character in the game, attempting to escape from a ship that is slowly disintegrating in flight.   You have no real awareness of how you got on the ship, or why you are in a strange holding cell, but fate allows you the means to work your way out of this ship, while trying to chase down a female character that is also looking to escape from the ship.  This intro is quick to show you the controls and mechanics of the game, but also serves and an excellent action set piece.  The entire level is filled with tense moments and quick reactions that keep you on your toes.  You manage to escape by riding on top of the last escape pod, which has our soon to be female companion, Trip inside.  Once groundside, Monkey soon finds out that Trip has put a controlling band on his head, and if he attempts to take it off, or tries to kill her, he will die.  This bond becomes the glue to a fantastic journey for both characters as they look to get Trip back to her home.

It is with this bond that Ninja Theory puts on a clinic on how to create emotional interaction between characters.  Many times, I found myself sitting back and just focusing in on little details in the facial animations and movements that convey so much without the hint of dialog present.  When the characters do interact with one another, it just feels so natural.  Part of this comes from the recording the actors together as well as from capturing them in motion, but it just seems that there is a fantastic chemistry between both Lindsey Shaw and Andy Serkis that makes Trip and Monkey work so well together.  This chemistry is also helped due to a rich story that really does keep you hooked in to the plot, while sprinkling little details here and there as to why you were on the slave ship and who the captors might be, and it all ends with a stunning climax that leaves you with moral dilemma to answer on your own.

Story however, will not keep people engaged with a video game alone, and Enslaved mixes together two forms of gameplay, platforming and combat, very similar to games like the Tomb Raider or Uncharted formula.  Monkey is a very agile person that can leap, swing and climb his way around environments.  Finding these points is rather easy as anything that can be navigated will have a slight shimmer to them.  Sure, it kind of breaks the illusion of gameplay, but it is not a game breaker.  It also helps that the environments were very diverse and unique; giving you a fresh perspective each time you enter a new area.

The combat section of the game is where we start to run into issues with Enslaved.  In combat, Monkey has several ways in which he can do battle.  You have a weak and strong attack, as well as the ability to use your staff as a gun like weapon.  And you will find yourself in combat quite a bit as the enemy has decided that they should litter their robotic creations across the land, impeding your progress at every turn.  Monkey has a lot of different combinations and ways to approach an enemy, but for the most part, I found myself constantly spamming the weak and strong punch buttons.  Occasionally you will have a shielded unit that you might have to stun, but you never need to leave your bread and butter weak/strong combination.  It doesn’t help that you only fight a handful of enemy types.  There is a simple robot enemy, some three or four specialty robots and turrets but that is about it.  Don’t get me wrong, combat is not bad, but it becomes somewhat repetitive in nature and until the last level, you find yourself going through the motions with each battle.  There are upgrades to your powers that you can buy by picking up orbs around the levels.  These do help in making Monkey more powerful, but they make me want to spend beyond the attacks that you rely on.  I pursued health and melee attack upgrades because I never really needed the other attacks.

More troublesome for Enslaved is the fact that it seems a constant struggle to keep up the framerate on the Xbox 360.  In the beginning it was not a big factor, with a few drops in framerate during large areas with lots of combat and effects, but as you get half way into the game, I would routinely stumble upon a choppy framerate.   There was also one point where I ran into a weird jumping glitch where I would get caught on a piece of the environment and hang there before falling to my death.  It happened several times over, and I got frustrated and quit out for a few hours.  I came back later and the jump worked normally.

The framerate and glitches are disappointing because the game is stunning to look at.  Levels are beautifully crafted, and surprisingly colorful for a post-apocalyptic wasteland.  No longer does brown and drab have to be the norm for a desolate wasteland.  Here we have New York, moved 150 years into the future and ravaged by nature.  Plants and ivy wrap themselves around buildings while trees thrust their way through concrete sidewalks.  It is an amazing sight to behold and again goes hand in hand with the beautifully designed main characters.

I finished off Enslaved: Odyssey to the west completely satisfied by the main story.  It was a driving force to keep me playing till the end of the game.  The narrative is assisted by the excellent acting and character emotions that are played out on screen.  This alone makes the game worth the 10 hour experience.  It is a shame however that the combat and framerate issues drag it down from being a great game.  Enslaved: Odyssey to the West gets 3.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.

 Check out Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and other Xbox 360 reviews at Test Freaks.