Review by: Nick Gasse

While movie-based games are often bemoaned, perhaps even worse are the titles that draw inspiration from literary classics.

Take, for example, Dante’s Inferno. The publisher managed to turn the spiritual epic into a mindless hack-n-slash, recasting the timid, middle-aged poet Dante as a testosterone-emanating barbarian, who spends his free time slaying innocents and knitting Biblical imagery – into his bare, muscle-bound chest, that is. Dante’s cross shoots lasers, the eighth circle of Hell is a combat mini-game challenge and at one point, you fight demons that spawn spiders from their nipples. Tasteful reimagining indeed.

With that in mind, I greeted Namco Bandai’s latest outing, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, with a slightly aroused apathy. At first glance, the game has all the makings of a product that critics love to hate. Highly regarded tale turned new-age actioner? Yup (Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West, in this case). Unproven developer? Check. Barrel-chested, all-that-is-man protagonist? Ninja Theory does you one better – our hero’s name is Monkey and he’s armed with a shaft that grows longer in the thick of battle.

Those preconceptions are quickly pierced from your head by a blaring siren. Your ship is crashing. A crimson light flashes. You’re trapped in a cell. Again, the siren. You feel a rumble. Panic consumes your captors. Your prison topples over. A loud crack - you’re free. The term “free” betrays the gravity of the dire situation, though – you’re going to die.

So begins Enslaved, with Monkey teasing death at every moment as he tries to evacuate an airborne slave ship. It’s an exhilarating opening, matched by few. Monkey will narrowly escape collapsing walkways, make harrowing leaps between the vessel’s wings and survive a crash landing in the middle of New York. This isn’t the New York you’re accustomed to, though - dizzying skyscrapers are replaced by sky-scrapping trees, with the concrete jungle giving way to a vibrant flora and fauna.

Here, we are formally introduced to Enslaved’s central protagonists: a brutish warrior who goes by the name of Monkey and the tech-savvy damsel Trip, who is responsible for bringing down the slave carrier. With Trip’s stunt nearly costing Monkey his life, the two don’t start off on the friendliest of terms. However, that animosity is quickly put to the side – Trip has enslaved Monkey with a device that enables her to control his every move, and she plans on using the steroid-infused brawler to help her return home. If she dies, he dies.