Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Date Acquired: Rented on 10.9.2010

Date completed: 10.12.2010

Thoughts: A relatively recent addition to my gaming radar, my interest in Enslaved was boosted with the release of the fantastic demo last week.

Enslaved is the second game from Ninja Theory, the developers behind cult hit Heavenly Sword, and the studio that has been tapped to make Devil May Cry 5 it's next project.

In a lot of ways Enslaved reminds me of Prince of Persia 2008, thanks to it's unique graphical style, and the manner of platforming. The combat is not a lot deeper than Prince of Persia and this is a pretty easy game, as PoP was. It's also at least partially an escort game, which Pop really wasn't, despite having a female character follow you around, she got around on her own and only entered the game to help you. Such is not the case with Trip. You are often forced to not only figure out how to get yourself from point A to point B, but you also have to figure out how to get Trip there, and of course, it's usually two different paths.

Trip comes across as kind of a bitch in the beginning of the game. The game opens with both your character, the inanely, though accurately-named Monkey, trying to escape a crashing space ship. It's here that he encounters Trip, who is also trying to escape. Instead of helping each other, Trip keeps slamming doors in Monkey's face, and refusing to do anything to help him escape, instead trying to save herself and leaving Monkey to die. When the two of you finally do escape, Trip puts a slave collar on Monkey, forcing him to help her get home. Throwing Trip across chasms is the earliest form of revenge/satisfaction the game provides, but it's still and escort effect.

Pros: The acting, the characters and the story are all mesmerizing. Ninja Theory did a great job creating a world that was interesting and making characters that I care about. The game injects a lot of creativity and humor. At one point Trip dismisses a bunch of boxes as 'obsolete technology'. If you choose to examine the boxes further, you'll see they read '3D Televisions'. Later in the game, Trip, Monkey and the enormous Pigsy are crammed into an escape pod together, prompting Monkey to wryly comment 'at least I get to be inside this time', which made me laugh in itself, but the next part of that scene is hysterical. Boss battles were enjoyable and creative and varied. Games like this tend to give you the same boss fight over and over, but Enslaved does a good job of delivering enjoyable variety.

Cons: The game is very short, and doesn't seem to have a lot to offer as incentive to replay it. I finished the game 2 days before it was due back to Blockbuster, and I don't really see myself playing through it much more before I return it. The ending is interesting and unique, but a little disappointing from the perspective of resolving the story. It seems likely that the game will deliver the true ending via downloadable content in the future. It didn't end on a cliffhanger, but it didn't end with the sweeping resolution I hoped for. The game has it's glitches, and combat can be made much more frustrating because of these. Many times I would have to deal with slow response times where I would aim at one enemy, it would swing at another, so I would aim at that enemy, and then it would bounce me back to the last enemy, finally registering my command from the previous sequence. There's also not a lot of varietey to the combat. There's an upgrade system, you can use the orbs you collect to unlock things, but there's not a lot of things you can unlock that affect the combat.

Conclusion: I hemmed and hawed about what to do about this game. I knew I wanted to play it as soon as possible, but I also knew it would be short, and it seems like the kind of game to follow in Brutal Legend's steps, and will be in the bargain bin very quickly. I decided to rent it, betting that I could finish the game before I had to return it. I feel a bit guilty not giving the developers money for the game, I know this isn't going to sell well, but this was the best decision for me. I will buy the game eventually, when it is miring in the bargain bin and probably the PS3 edition, to double dip and get the trophies, again exactly as I did with Prince of Persia 2008 which I also rented initially. I liked the game a lot, and definitely think it's worth playing, but maybe just not spending $60 on. I would love a sequal, but strongly doubt that happens. The best we can likely hope for is Monkey appearing in Soul Caliber one day.

Resistance 2

Date Acquired: April 2010

Date Completed: 10.06.2010

Thoughts: I don't think you always have to start at the begining of a franchise. And if you think about it, most people don't. The best selling game of the modern era is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. That's not the most critically acclaimed Call of Duty, and it's not the first Call of Duty, it's the 6th (not counting spinoffs like 'Big Red One') So clearly people bought MW2 who didn't buy Call of Duty 4. The original Resistance got good review scores, but if you read the reviews, most of them weren't real enthusiastic about it. Also if you read the reviews of the sequal, they all say the game got a lot better, but the average scores are almost identical. 1up for instance wrote: "This sense of scale goes a long way toward making Resistance 2 a more cinematic, grandiose and vastly improved sequal" But it actually got a lower score from 1up than the original did. This is due largely to new-console bias (and a different reviewer). Launch games almost always get better scores than they deserve. The only exceptions I can think of are Halo and Super Mario 64. Perfect Dark 0 got good reviews and it's REVILED today. That's not to say Chris, that I let the reviews decide it for me. I downloaded the demo from PSN. It's one of the first things I did when I got my PS3. I HATED the demo. I thought it was generic and boring. Throw in no trophy support, and I decided to skip it. But I didn't want to give up on the franchise altogether. I like Insomniac, I've always liked the Ratchet and Clank games. And the reviews do all seem to indicte the sequal is vastly improved. There is no R2 demo on PSN (or at least there wasn't when I last checked 6 months ago or so) and R2 does have trophies. So when the game went Greatest Hits earlier this year, I bought it. I decided I shouldn't force myself to play a game I didn't want to play to play one I do. And I knew that I might never play R2 if I make myself play R1 first. So I skipped it.

Pros: Resistance 2 is a great game. It immediately reminds me of Gears of War. FPS, fighting aliens trying to take over the world, there's even a variation of the chainsaw-esque Lancer. Also it's fully playable via online co-op like Gears. Comparisons to Gears are always a good thing in my mind, so it's not surprising that I enjoyed the game. As they are in the Ratchet and Clank series, the guns are a highlight for me. Insomniac did a great job crafting weapons that are both fun to use, and creative, different than what you've seen in other games. Every gun is augmented via a secondary function accessed by pushing the R2 bumper. My favorite by far is the magnum. Not only does it unleash punishing pistol rounds, but R2 and the round then explodes. A great way to deal with a horde of enemies charging in a tight group, put one down with the magnum then detonate it and take down the surrounding aliens. The bullseye, probably the most common weapon in the game is cool too, if you push the R2 bumper it fires a tracking beam so all of your shots home in on that alien until it's dead. The game feels epic too, it continuously throws huge enemies at you and many times I would groan and say 'they aren't giving me the ammo I need to deal with these'. And then I'd deal with them. One enemy that I had a love/hate relationship were these large predator ripoffs that ran through the jungle invisbly. You typically wouldn't know one was there until right before it reached you and it deals a one hit kill. This was frustrating at times and did result in some trial and error gameplay ('oh, I can't run here, I have to stay and wait for these monsters') but other times it was cool, particularily in the water when you would hear and see the water start moving towards you. That was enough notice and a cool effect. I found the story interesting and loved the ending. I can't wait to see what happens in R3.

Cons: At times I couldn't figure out what the point of having squadmates was. You have teammates at your side for basically the entire game, and sometimes they would be helpful, but more often I would watch enemies run right past them while they stand there and do nothing, and the enemy goes after me. Also the ammo situation was strange. Every gun you pick up is completely full, even though it's often dropped by an enemy who was you know, just using it. But the weird thing is that if you were equipped with the gun and then walked over the same gun, you would only pick up a small amount of ammo, maybe 30 rounds. I found myself running out of ammo, then dropping the gun for a different gun I didn't want, then walking over to one of the original guns I was just holding laying on the ground, and then I'd get a full clip. It didn't make a lot of sense the way it was handeled.

Conclusion: After finishing R2 I decided I had probably misjudged the original R1, I couldn't believe I was so off in my assessment of R1 but loved R2. So I played the R1 demo again (still loaded on my harddrive). Now I would expect after just finishing the sequal that I would tear through the demo like a god, experienced as I am with the control scheme. But no, R2 received a complete control-setting overhaul. Other than shoot, none of the other buttons did the same thing. Scope, melee, reload, they were all different, and I kept messing up. Also the health system was completely overhauled, in the original game you don't regenerate all of your health back. Your health bar is broken up into quarters and you only regenerate your health up to the nearest quarter, but never above that. It's just a demo, but the characters didn't seem to have any personality from what I played, and I stand by my initial assesment that the game is generic. I thought about getting R1 and plaything through it with a friend via online co-op, but no, that too is a feature new to the 2nd game. I may still buy Resistance given how cheap it is and try it, but I'm in no hurry to do so, and I stand by my decision to skip to the superior sequal.