Mixing the action-adventure gameplay of Uncharted with the Saturday-morning sci-fi of Ratchet & Clank, Ninja Theory's Enslaved: Odyssey of the West manages to be gritty while also being cartoony enough to be lighthearted.
Keeping a nice tone for a story goes a long way in sustaining interest, but the game hits some imbalancing bumps with its awkward ideas of gameplay: there's a limited variety in its combat features (five kinds of melee hits and two sorts of shooter ammunition) and since climbable materials indicate themselves with an obvious shine, getting to places feels more passive than the climbing in Uncharted, where you at least had to look for the climbable spots. (Although I can understand ditching Uncharted's system as it resulted in multiple suicides -- players jumping off-camera into pits of death in faith of a platform.)
Those instances where you race around on the "static plate" (you know, the one almost impossible to navigate) were pretty questionable, too. I thought the levels incorporating that were pointless until I realized that they served as the ever-obligatory vehicle sections in action games these days. In fact, a lot of Enslaved is pretty much a checklist of obligatory things in action games: redundant combat, mindnumbing exploration, sexy protagonists, indulgent graphics that aren't really that visually interesting, etc... More similarities to Uncharted and Ratchet & Clank.
The story and characters were alright, if not meekly-developed and a little tinged with predictable drama and this uncomfortable mix of juvenile and family-friendly humor. The ending forces in some unnecessary philosophy, too -- probably to distract the player from its abruptness.
But I shouldn't let these quibbles sour the whole game; Enslaved is a pretty pleasant experience on the whole, it's just that for me personally "pleasant" things often translate to "boring" -- hence why a lot of my favorite art either outrages or scares the piss out of most other people. I guess what I'm saying is that while I wasn't crazy about Enslaved, keep in mind that I am a person who genuinely loved Spec Ops: The Line, so if the flowery things I said about Enslaved attract you, check it out, if not, I don't care; nobody reads what I write on here anyway.
Other notes:
While the title was derived from the ancient text Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en, the game's story offers little to no allusions or affiliations to the original story.
And sorry if this sounds like a retarded neo-feminist's remark, but I do appreciate seeing a game with a male and female lead equally sexualized: the girl, Trip, is skimpy, young, and innocent; and Magic-Mike Monkey is muscular, strong, and "mysterious" in that way some women call "charming". I know my sexuality demands that Trip should be getting my eye, but I mean, damn... I'd fuck him.