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Let’s get right down to business. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is not a great game. Roughly put, Enslaved is a mediocre game with a decent story that is told magnifcently. Baby smooth animations, sincere voice work, tangible character growth, colorful environments, and a stellar musical score go a long way but those same advantages raise incredible expectations for the game.
Unfortunately, repetitive enemy types, a “try and die” gameplay philosophy, and a story that starts out great but eventually breaks some crucial continuity are only a few elements that allow this game to shoot itself in the foot.
Oddly enough, where Enslaved starts to fall apart, the game’s downloadable add-on, Pigsy’s Perfect 10, really starts to pick up the slack.
One example is the way Enslaved has you running around bashing apart ravenous mechs with Monkey’s intense physical strength. However, there are frequently situations where you must hide behind short cover to avoid being mowed down by a turret while also avoiding mechs that will attack you on immediate sight.
The idea is that you have to circumvent the mechs and sneak up on the turret to either disable it or use it. This is a fine way to break up gameplay which would otherwise be stagnant – but not at the sacrifice of Monkey’s “go to” fighting skills. These sneaking scenarios are often frustrating. Mistakes that render Monkey detectable are easy to make and once that happens there is no way to defend yourself. Inevitable death is not fun.
Pigsy’s Perfect 10 comes to the rescue in a way that plays to the strengths of the game's hero instead of taking them away. Although Perfect 10 incorporates the same type of story telling and thematic music that brought characters to life in Enslaved, the gameplay is what really allows Perfect 10 to be a more cohesive and satisfying experience.
The game's story is simple. Pigsy is lonely, so he decides to build a new female companion with the likenesses of one…or all of his pin up posters. Pigsy is in need of three parts to complete his new friend so he scours a post apocalyptic mech-junkyard to find them.
While playing as Pigsy, there is no confusion between the times when you should be hiding or the times when you should be fighting. The name of the game is; sneak, create diversions, set traps, and thoughtfully dispatch your foes one or two at a time.
Defeating different mech-types (resistant, shielded, ranged) while playing Enslaved proper isn’t entirely innovative. Get close enough to a group of mechs and hit them repeatedly with Monkey’s staff or shoot them with the staff’s beam from far away.
Due to short supply of ammo and the failings of the targeting system, it is generally faster and more fun to alert all the enemies and then break them apart with brute strength.
Tragically, this makes the few different types of mechs in the game irrelevant. Playing as Pigsy in Perfect 10 makes areas with different mech combinations more exciting.
For example, some mechs are impervious to the stunning effects of electricity rendering your stun grenades useless. Now let's imagine a situation with only three mechs: One “electro mech” and two standard mechs. This wouldn’t mean a thing to Monkey as you could still just run in take some damage and pummel all those robots to death.
However, with Pigsy you'd have to be more articulate. Two hits from a mech and Pigsy goes down for the big sleep. In this case, with the three mechs, it would be ideal to set a trap for the electric proof mech. This way when you throw a stun grenade into the group, “electro mech” charges you but but he triggers a “Sty Stirrer” land mine which brain washes “electro mech” to fight the other two robots.
Although the gameplay philosophy in Perfect 10 is still “try and die,” Pigsy’s tool set of special grenades and land mines make it a lot more fun to sneak around and in some ways a lot less risky to be detected. However, if you're not prepared, any type of mech can hack you down in an instant. Pigsy does have a close range stunning prod but it only works on one mech at a time.
Another improvement is Pigys’s rifle Lola. Unlike Monkey’s staff which has a very limited amount of ammo, Lola never runs out of fire power. On top of that, Lola has a scope allowing you to use the weapon as a bolt action sniper rifle. Fortunately, the feel of the shooting is slightly better than in Enslaved which is important because a lot of situations revolve around stunning enemies and then shooting them in the head.
Platforming is a big feature in Enslaved that got a lot of complaints from reviewers. The biggest point of contention is that the horizontal and vertical traversal in the game is too linear eliminating any expanded sense of exploration. Furthermore, since there is only one path and by design it is impossible to miss a jump and fall to your death – the climbing segments may look cool but they are “boring to play.”
One of Pigsy’s most notable and coolest features is his grappling-hook hand…er hoof. Platforming sections become a breeze as you fly up or repel down large pieces of junk land real estate. The animations for each action are fun and equally gratifying.
That brings me to my last observation. Pigsy’s animations are incredible! Running around, crawling, carrying heavy mines, and hook shot-ing your way around the the mech-yard are all stylized in a way that makes playing the game more enjoyable.
All these things aside, Pigsy’s Perfect 10 still has a bit more to grapple before I would consider it a great game. For example, the “try and die” mentality still applies, as it's easy to make mistakes for which you are punished with death. For example, pushing R2 (which pops Pigsy out of cover) instead of R1 (which throws grenades).
Weapon cool-downs are a tad slow, and there isn’t an effective way to defend yourself after your one stun gun is used up. Even though Pigsy is fast on his feet, trying to run away in any form is completely ineffective. Death is frequent and it is a serious drag, especially because load times between deaths is fairly long.
Collectibles (in the form of food or pin up posters) don’t save in between check points, so if you pick one up, then die and forget to go back to get it you are out of luck. If you wanted to go back and get the collectibles you missed, there isn’t a way to see which chapters your missing collectibles from. There is only a total count of canned food and a total count of posters collected. Throw in some sparse yet noticeable frame rate issues and Perfect 10 leaves plenty of room for improvement.
On the up side, I think Pigsy’s Perfect 10 does a great job at recovering and building upon elements and mechanics initially implemented poorly by Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. Where I was disheartened before, I now look forward to seeing what comes next for Enslaved and its creators Ninja Theory.
Multiplayer games have always tried to bring new modes to players, but how often do we see a piece of DLC that really changes things up for a single player campaign?
Have you ever played DLC that was actually more enjoyable than the original content?
