Enslaved: Get this man a tshirt!

Monkey's lack of clothes has put me off from the beginning. He escapes the cell in which he's held captive and "gets his gear" and that gear has a holster and a bow and a hoverboard but not a shirt. Monkey and Trip are in NYC. So am i. You know what the temperature has been all week? 9 degrees. Put on a fucking shirt.

Wallaby, to some of your points:

The ship that crashed in the beginning was a prison transport, hence Monkey's cell. I actually thought that was a clever device by the writers to let us know that Monkey was a dangerous man. He's not just a beastly dude, he's a criminal.

Concept art for Monkey's cell in the prison ship

They're not amazed by fish. Trip is amazed by the contained and surviving ecosystem of the fish tank. Again, these finer points are subtle indicators of foreshadowing or devices that hint at details which round out the characters and plot. So many video games bash you over the head with their heavy-handedness, Enslaved approaches it differently and it works. Or, at least it does for me. I believe the shattered ecosystem is as thematic to the game overall as it is literal to that fish tank. But we shall see.

We were supposed to reach the end of Chapter 5 by January 17th so i'll say this; Monkey and Trip reach Trip's settlement by the end of Chapter 5 and find it ominously abandoned. That means the quest they initially set out on only took a third of the game. Obviously there's much further to go.

Going back to the subtlety, the Serkis flashbacks seem to be a huge part of the game but they're only ever shared between Monkey and you, the gamer. Monkey never makes mention of them to Trip. Instead, like Monkey, you're just supposed to sorta file them away. They're obviously important but they don't seem to relate to the task at hand. Regarding creative choices, i think we'd all agree they're waiting too long to begin the explanation why the flashbacks are important. Hopefully that happens sooner than later.

In my searching for images to use in this blog, i came across several pictures that don't just include Monkey and Trip. They also don't include Serkis' character at all. The only logical conclusion to draw from this is that we have yet to meet several other characters of the game. Other characters means dialogue and dialogue means explanations. Sure, this a less than ideal way to discover what's soon to come but the fact remains that it's coming soon.

Other things:

Toddlers and Tiaras would be a lot more interesting with this kind of tiara 

I didn't notice Monkey's red eyeband getting darker. When he has flashes, his whole head seems to glow red but i attributed that to the tiara that Trip is using to control him. Why he has that red band around his eyes makes as little sense to me as the fact that he's shirtless. I'm just gonna chalk that up to the producer's stylistic vision. It seems like a relatively inert creative choice.

the graphics of this game continue to impress me, especially the cut scenes. Wallaby's honing in on the eyes is something i noticed too and, damn, it's hard to believe a middle-of-the-road game in 2010 did it so well while a game like Bioshock Infinite that was so high profile and even pushed back for polish still falls short on this front. I'm trying to think back and i'd have to say the only other game that handles that specific graphic as well as Enslaved was Metal Gear Solid 4. And that's saying something because Kojima's cut scenes are epic.

Look at those eyes! 

Graphically, the NYC they present is also pretty impressive but the lack of freedom to explore it makes it feel like more of a shortcoming than it should.

Still, i'm continuing to chug along. The game is easy and quick and the mystery has me enraptured. I'll make it to the end of this or i'll die (of boredom) trying!
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Edit: A Day Later. Wrote this, saved the draft to publish later and then played more before i published. I'm approaching the end of Chapter 7 and holy shit the difficulty has turned a corner. The current sequence has me separated from Trip. I have 150K points and can't spend them. I have four health containers and can't use them. I am running solo and there are turret mechs with laser scanners and i don't have Trip to distract them. This shit just got real.

The sequence shocked me into taking the combat seriously. I'm talking about four drones at once, with shields, with guns and with beacons that immediately start calling for backup. It's a barrage that i haven't seen previously and button mashing through it got me spanked.

Moved on to a new strategy, very deliberate, more like Arkham and started tearing shit up. Monkey fights like a boss when you're forced to use all of his abilities. Lots of rolling and stunning, lots of blocking and countering and the occasional need to back out and use the bazooka thing. I considered complaining about the homogeneity of the mechs but i realized i've encountered six or seven different kinds in this level alone. Not bad.

a leap forward so big, it's great.

The game seems to have taken a big leap forward in the past two chapters (upon arriving at the abandoned outpost especially). About time. i'm reinvigorated. Bring on the second half.

-joker