Enslaved: Odyssey to the West PS3 Demo Impressions

Enslaved has received a fair few of positive previews in the last couple of weeks, so I decided to check it out for myself when they released a demo onto the PSN the other week. The download is a bit over 1GB.

The demo is pretty short, but I believe it does provides an overall representation of what te full game will be like when it releases next week. First up, I didn't enjoy it.

The demo is, I believe, the first level in the game. You're not set up with any back story, and have no idea who the hell you are, it just jumps right in there. The game has received a lot of praise for its use of colour. I strongly disagree with every one of those people. Sure, everything is bright, but when it's all tinted green, it may as well be brown.

You are introduced to the basic enemies, some simple mech warriors of some sort. These provide absolutely no challenge whatsoever, which is, I have to admit what let me down about the demo. Sure, it's the first level, but they should still be able to land a few hits on me. The game teaches you how to pull of some cool moves, but let’s be honest; button mashing is just as effective, which is a bit frustrating.

Enslaved is seemingly as much about platforming as it is about combat though. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a letdown as well. In the demo you really need to get to an escape pod, or you're dead. So it's not surprising the sort of risks you have to take to get to one, such as climbing on the wings of the plane you are on.
The developer has tried to make everything feel very cinematic; the comparisons to Uncharted have already begun en masse. But they just haven't nailed it. In the demo I felt completely detached from the action. Now, I didn't like Uncharted 2 that much, but one thing that Naughty Dog did really well was making the player feel like it was them pulling of the on-screen moves. However, Ninja Theory have failed big time at this, perhaps the reason for this is that everything lacks polish.

The character models for example are quite blocky, the red headed chick who they cloned from Heavenly Sword looks pretty good, but her locks do tend to go through her back on occasion. Apart from the overly green environment and blocky character models, the graphics are fairly sharp everywhere else. However, every time something explosive happened on screen, the frame rate would drop noticeably, and frame tearing came into play far more often than is acceptable this late in a consoles life cycle.

Other complaints would be that the camera is set too close to your character during combat. When I played GOW 3 early this year, I generally felt that the camera was positioned too far back. However, after playing enslaved, I see that I was wrong, it was perfect.

One last thing, there was an interview with one of the Ninja Theory developers the other day in which they claimed that Uncharted 2 had over the top animation. One of the things they mentioned in particular was facial animation. I have to say this, and I feel I am not exaggerating; I have not played a game with worse facial animation than Enslaved on PS3. At the start of the demo it's OK, but the very last thing you see before it cuts to a promo video is simply appalling.

All in all, the demo does not do a good job of convincing me to purchase the game. Its received some good previews/reviews so far from people who have played more than just the demo, so maybe it gets better. But from what I've played, I honestly wouldn't give it more than a 6/10.

Graphics: 7/10 - Overly green, frame drops, frame tearing, poor facial animation
Sound: ?/10 - Can't really comment on sound from the Demo, voice acting is decent, will reserve judgement for now
Gameplay: 6/10 - Feels unrefined and incomplete
Fun Factor: 5/10 - Combat is too easy, platforming is not engaging