Namco Bandai

This Room Looks Familiar

HIGH Ripping through Rapunzel with Maar's Lance.

LOW Finding out I lose auto-save data when I turn off my console.

WTF Climbing a ladder and climbing vines is the same animation.

The Sixty Dollar Indie Game

HIGH The eureka moment, not in discovering the solution to a puzzle, but in discovering the solution to approaching the game itself.

LOW The early hours with the game, where each uneventful hour felt like an eternity.

WTF I still can't figure out how to say "this game feels like a 10 dollar downloadable" without it coming off like an insult.

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

HIGH Ping-ponging a room full of enemies with a combination of spell and scythe, and watching them all meet their grisly fate simultaneously, tangled in the vines of Mag Mell's Rose.

LOW Getting knocked down a hole after failing a boss QTE 20 times.

WTF For being upset at having to execute all of her sisters, Gretchen sure seems to love making a graphic display of their demise.

Bloody as Hell

HIGH Revving the chainsaw and delivering a long string of one-hit-kills.

LOW The 2D segments desperately need tuning.

WTF Penetrating an enemy's neck hole with its own head, over and over again.

Monkey Don't Trip

HIGH The romantic art design.

LOW Fall-behind-and-die chase segments.

WTF Andy Serkis' face, in cut-scenes all over the place.

Ordered a Tapestry, Got a Quilt

HIGH The slurping giggle the Majin does when you're bringing him fruit.

LOW The tedious final dungeon, featuring repeated appearances by an irritating mid-boss.

WTF Quit telling me you're going to use the lightning and just use the freaking lightning, big guy!

Not Quite, but it Comes Damned Close

HIGH Everything screams quality.

LOW Using the Pigsy Prod on a second-to-last attacking robot.

WTF Why aren't more pieces of DLC done as well as this?

Monkeying Around in a New Genre

HIGH Activating Monkey's "cloud" for the first time.

LOW The end of the game doesn't seem to match the beginning.

WTF Trip shows no remorse for killing innocents in the first level.

Game Description: Enslaved is a post-apocalyptic retelling of the classic 400-year old novel "Journey to the West". Set 150 years from now, the world has been ruined by war and ecological disaster with only a handful of survivors remaining. In Enslaved, players take on the role of Monkey, a strong and athletic, yet solitary figure, who been captured by one of the mysterious slave ships, which harvest the remaining population and take them out west never to return. Trip, a technologically savvy young woman who has also been imprisoned by the same ship, manages to escape. She quickly realizes that Monkey, with his raw strength and power, is her only hope to survive the perilous journey back to her home. She hacks into a slave headband and fits it on Monkey, linking them together – if she dies, he dies… Her journey has now become his and Monkey must now travel west alongside Trip as they traverse a demolished world, under constant threat of capture and mortal peril.

Blood for Blood

HIGH Pulling a gun out of a thug's hands and using it to blow his brains out a moment later.

LOW Getting shot at point-blank range because the game doesn't understand I want to be punching now.

WTF Sam Fisher no longer hides bodies. Shadow the dog does.