Almost zero player involvement, a 3 year old could 'play' through this.
Ahh, gameplay, the reason we play games instead of watching linear movies or reading books. Be warned you will not find much in the way of entertaining gameplay here. What passes for gameplay is an extremely generic formula (with a million cliches borrowed from past games like Uncharted, Ninja Gaiden to name just 2 that do it way better) played out on an extremely linear path.
Linear games are fine, if you enjoy them, some enjoy them for the story. The problem here is you rarely feel in control of ANYTHING. Every little detail is placed perfectly for you to follow, pipes, grab handles, ladders, almost every action you perform leads to opening up or triggering of yet more obvious route making devices. In other words the gameplay, for me, is dull. There's simply not enough thinking required. Almost every 'revelation' of gameplay is telegraphed via the obvious devices litering the environment. It basically feels like you are being led by the hand through a mostly jerkily animated and screen tearingly over the top action adventure game by the numbers. What happened to games with a sense of discovery? Games where you were immersed through having to use your brain to work things out? Games where game design was so well done we didn't need a thousand flashing grab handles and pipes and 'hit x to...' prompts to make us progress. This is no game, this is another one of those terrible wannabe interactive movies, looks great to see others playing, looks cool in trailers but to actually play it's a very unexciting experience.
There are far far better games out there where you feel empowered by the choices you can make, no overwhelmed by linearity, by boring 'drones' of repeat me/destroy me area gameplay punctuated with the age old 'boss' stage (with difficulty spikes out of line with the drab main gameplay). I tried to like this game, I feel the developers have taken a look at something really good like the Uncharted games and 'assumed' they knew what made it good and tried to repeat the formula with a different theme.
Now, fair play for trying a different story, and as I said some of the cinematics look great, the motion capture and voice acting appears top notch. That unfortunately doesn't make it exciting to play and I'd much rather play games these days that are gameplay first, and wannabe hollywood epics second (or never if they can't be done right). Nice try but not enough, you know there's a game design problem when almost EVERY step of the way new devices are introduced and trialed/trained on you only for you to feel like you don't care if you ever use them again because there's no sense of freedom.
This game is actually very shallow concerning player involvement, access new area, see end goal, move to end goal while doing the same boring tasks over and over again. All the leaping and jumping is overly showy and a lot of the techniques in game seem to be there more as a congratulatory self pat on the back amongst the developers.
I'm hoping someday soon developers can learn to take a step back from being impressed with their technology or psuedo-hollywood stories and actually think 'is this fun to play?' in many many cases, Enslaved included, they are simply no fun at all - maybe for ADD Teens or kids who don't know better but not for adults. Not in 2010. Not after 10 years of samey boring stuff. We need games like this like we need more hollywood horror film remakes (not at all).
The camera is also annoying, it works but it's clunky and kills immersion. Main character animation is great in cut scenes but while playing it's jittery and 'light weight', feels like controlling a sprite with preset canned animations rather than a fully fledged 3D character with physics and a sense of reality. Yes this game sadly lacks in the physics dept, another reason it feels so floaty and boring. Unreal engine 3 has rarely produced actual stunning games other than those Epic themselves made. It's time for this engine to be put to pasture. Look at Uncharted engine (stunning for what it is) or CryEngine, or anything that isn't this scruffy looking outdated mess.
There are some positives to the game, and it's hardly the worst game ever but frankly it's mediocre in execution wrapped in some pretty graphics but nothing to write home about. It's no uncharted (not even 1 and how many years old is that now?).
RENT this game do not BUY, no matter how nice the cinematics look in trailers the gameplay will leave you cold. I'm not even one for big story led games, I always feel they gloss over the lack of gameplay, this game seems as if it could have an OK story but I dont play games for that alone sorry.