Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West loosely retells the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West in a post-apocalyptic world where civilization has fallen and machines with no human operators patrol the ruins of cities. You play as a strongman nicknamed Monkey, on whose head a girl named Trip places a slave collar. If she dies, so does he, leaving him no choice but to escort her across the entire land back home. It's this forced pairing that grows into the game's best asset. The relationship between the two characters slowly evolves over the journey and is told with unusual delicacy, using quality performance-capture acting.

Gameplay alternates between three modes. Combat is handled with a telescopic staff that doubles as a club and a ranged weapon with stunning and explosive ammunition, backed by blocking and dodging. Climbing through the ruins is guided, functioning more as a cinematic link between scenes than as a real challenge. The third element is cooperation with Trip, who can distract enemies with a holographic decoy, scout the area with a dragonfly drone, or open doors while you cover her. Several times you also ride a hover board, which changes up the pace.

The game is strongest visually. Instead of grey devastation, it offers overgrown cities full of greenery, flowers, and rust, bathed in sunlight, making it one of the most visually vivid post-apocalyptic games out there. The PS3 version handled the sweeping vistas well, though at the cost of occasional frame-rate dips. The music is intimate and melodic, and together with the voice acting it holds the story together. Reviews praised the characters and visuals but criticized the simpler combat and linearity. Commercially, the game flopped, and a sequel never materialized. Today, it's worth trying as an example of how even a mid-sized action title can tell a mature story. At around eight hours, its length is exactly right for the journey to never grow stale, and the ending ranks among the most discussed of its era, since it leaves the player with a question rather than a clear answer.