Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a game about a man called Monkey, and a woman called Trip. They meet on a prisoner transport ship, which goes down over a barely recognisable New York. You only really know it's New York, because as their slaver ship crashes to the ground, you take a chunk out of the Statue of Liberty.
There's a grand irony in a prison ship crashing into a part of the Statue of Liberty before coming to rest somewhere in New York. Especially so that when you land you find out that your playable character (Monkey) has been given a slave crown, so that Trip can control him. As a result, you're... enslaved, as the title of the game suggests.
You'll need to do a bit to get the game running perfectly on PC, and enhance it further. Once you have, it is stable, and beautiful. This guide on the Steam community covers all the fixes for everything that is initially wrong with the game (like banded shadows on character models). You can change the resolution by tweaking a few ini files. There's also a SweetFX custom shader that enhances the visuals further.
Once you get this up and running, the environment and character models polish up well. There's some excellent pedigree in the development of this game, with Ninja Theory being the studio responsible for this title. Facial animations are convincing, and accompanied by good voice acting. This is very much a story driven game, and one of exploration and progression.
Yet, there's a lot of enigma in the game world if you load up the game and get going. You've got no idea why you're fighitng what you're fighting (except being on the run from slavers) and the world that was before is just referenced casually as a pre-war world.
I can't help but think that the game world would be better fleshed out with collectable notes, or snippets of lore that referenced the past world and established the chain of events. This is an early stage Horizon Zero Dawn, with similar monster design, no crafting, and no open world.
It plays a little bit like a cross between The Last of Us (without the survival horror bits) - and combat is more Devil May Cry. Controls are fluid, and controller support in this game is native. This is to be expected, as the original game was released on the PS3 and Xbox 360 prior to its port to PC, which only took three years.
The game is a fantastic way to kill time, and the relationship between Trip and Monkey keeps you going throughout the game. The ending is a little bit anti-climatic, but the game has boss fights, tension, and some more arcade sections. There's a diverse skill tree which you probably won't crack into completely on the first play through, but there's plenty there.
You feel powerful in combat, but not overpowered. This is a game that is an extended escort quest - but it is a game that I feel will stay with me longer than the ~8 hours I took to complete it.
I highly recommend checking out this game - it is crafted with care, and it is competent at everything it does - but with a bit more polish and development time, it would be a game that everyone would still talk about to this day.
I was already humming the old Monkey Magic theme song when I got through the main characters' names and even before I got to "slave crown" XP
Monkey's character design really didn't help there XD
If you weren't aware, they're directly based off of Sun Wu Kong (The Monkey King) and Tripitaka, the monk, from Journey to the West - hence, Monkey and Trip. Played this game a while back on PS3, enjoyed it at the time.
Now I know! :)