Enslaved: Odyssey to the West for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

Cheesy title, I know. But true.

I played the demo of this game on Xbox Live, and I have to say, I immediately fell in love.

Sure, the game is fairly short. I clocked in at around 13 hours after taking the time to find as many of the orbs and masks I could find. The combat may not be the most intuitive, but it's never overly simplified either.

The graphics in Enslaved are easily some of the best seen to date on the Xbox. Andy Serkis did an amazing job with the mo-cap and performance capture, as well as directing the cinematics, AND voicing the main character Monkey. The levels are absolutely gorgeous from beginning to end. Some games brag about their graphics, claiming they have to best when it comes to displaying facial expressions, but no other game can compare to Enslaved. Even though there isn't much of a back story to the characters, you can't help but feel an emotional attachment to them as they deal with their hardships. All because of the depth of their expressions. Even scenes with no voice work have a rich emotional feel.

The game does suffer from occasional graphical glitches, and the frame rate does drop a bit when there's too much action on the screen, but these happen too infrequently to really impact the game play.

Despite these minor issues, I gave Enslaved: Odyssey to the West a 10 because it was easily one of the best single player experiences I've had from a game in a long time. I truly was enslaved by this game. Absorbed from beginning to end. I honestly couldn't put it down from the moment I started playing, and easily see myself replaying this game multiple times simply because of engrossing it was for me.

Lovely game, haven't played the real game, just the demo and I will rent this. The real reason I'm reviewing this is to point out what is said in the overview. "There are plenty of games where your character is accompanied by a sidekick. But never quite like this! If your partner dies, you die too in this.." Usually if your partner dies in any game on single player, it's game over so what the heck? And I'm saying heck because Gamefly won't let me say what I was originally gonna say.