HIGH Comboing through a group of enemies like a tidal wave, leaving nothing but their shattered remains in Dante's wake.
LOW The penultimate boss fight is disappointingly pedestrian compared to the rest of the game.
WTF The battle against Bob Barbas is… is… it's…
During the "Females on Female Characters" panel at PAX East 2011, Susan Arendt argued briefly in support of Tripitaka (Trip), a character from Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. This appreciation seemed bizarre to me, so the moment stuck in my mind. Enslaved was a gorgeous game with phenomenal voice acting, decently expressive gameplay, and very bad writing, of which I thought Trip was a prime example.
HIGH The romantic art design.
LOW Fall-behind-and-die chase segments.
WTF Andy Serkis' face, in cut-scenes all over the place.
HIGH Everything screams quality.
LOW Using the Pigsy Prod on a second-to-last attacking robot.
WTF Why aren't more pieces of DLC done as well as this?
Aspiring game reviewer? Maybe we can help. Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, and Richard Naik share their best trade secrets. Plus, our take on the best DLC no one's talking about: Enslaved's "Pigsy's Perfect Ten." Your host is Tim "Yes, Thanksgiving Was Like Two Weeks Ago" Spaeth.
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The first thing I played after formally ending my hiatus from games was the Pigsy's Perfect 10 DLC for Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. I don't want to say too much about it since I'm considering doing a quick review for it, but what I will say is that it was excellent from start to finish.
Recently, I read an editorial written by Tae Kim over at GamePro. Basically Tae (and a few others) are saying the same thing that I've been saying for years—most games are too long without the content to support such length, and that story-driven games in particular would benefit from being tighter and more focused. I'm glad to see that this idea is starting to pop up more and more, because it's true. However, there's a bit of a spin to Tae's piece, and this little twist is something I have an issue with.
If you ask me, the situation with Enslaved: Odyssey to the West was exactly the sort of instance when the industry should have rolled out a lower price point to reflect the relatively small amount of content on the disc, in addition to enticing more people on a budget to take a risk on something that they may or may not like. As much as I hate to say it, $60 is just too much for a game of this sort and as a critic, I would've had a much easier time recommending Enslaved if it had launched at $30 or even $40.
HIGH Activating Monkey's "cloud" for the first time.
LOW The end of the game doesn't seem to match the beginning.
WTF Trip shows no remorse for killing innocents in the first level.
I can't say that I was a very big fan of Ninja Theory's first work, Heavenly Sword, but from what little was shown in the demo, Enslaved seems to have its head in the right place. I like the overall concept in general, and it's pretty clear that the developers are going for a big-budget slam-bang action sort of thing.
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