In Kameo, you play a young princess who shares her name with the game itself. She has been betrayed by her sister who has joined up with then nasty troll-king Thorn, and imprisoned along with the rest of the family. Of course it’s up to you to save the day. The opening scene of the game sees the princess’s rescue attempt thwarted with ease by Thorn. Defeated, Kameo decides to come back stronger than ever by gaining the services of 10 elemental warriors. To do this she much seek out each of the elemental sprites which are held by evil shadow demons, thus setting the tone for what lies ahead.
Given the fact that the game has been in the works for three separate consoles, it’s somewhat surprising how amazing it looks on the Xbox 360. Visually it's one of the most impressive games of the launch line-up and is certainly the most colourful. The rich, vibrant colours literally leap off the screen at times while the pin sharp textures are the cleanest seen outside of PC gaming. Admittedly the character art is generally on the ugly side, but that can be forgiven due to the beauty of the environments. It’s got everything in there as well, from dense jungles and mountain caves, to deep water lagoons and snow covered peaks. The way night turns to day and back again adds an extra layer of splendour to the whole thing. Kameo is an aural delight too. If the Lord of the Rings-inspired soundtrack wasn’t fantastic enough, the voice acting is of surprisingly great quality, especially coming from Rare, who made a mess with Perfect Dark Zero’s vocal work.
Kameo is frequently beautiful.
It’s quite uncommon for a review to start off with the whole ‘what the graphics and sound are like’ spiel. But with Kameo, the presentation is unfortunately the only real standout aspect of the game, with flaws evident pretty much everywhere else. Let us start with the controls, which are unorthodox to say the least. With the four face buttons used for switching between characters, we're left with our combat moves and options relegated to the shoulder triggers/buttons. Instantly, the game has an awkward feel to it and the combat itself takes a fair while to get the hang off as a result. The camera never quite feels right either, especially during battles and when rolling around in ball form with Major Ruin. It needs constant attention, something that’s hard to give when you’re trying to spin up a wall or punch an enemy in the face.
But putting control issues aside for one second, the main problem with Kameo is the painful lack of ambition the game has. You’ve got this vast world to explore, ten different characters under your control and a wealth of different abilities at your fingertips. But all of that is wasted. The way the game makes you play means your adventure is basically one linear path from start to finish. As soon as you finish up in one area you’re given your next waypoint to travel to so the need, or want, to explore is minimal. There are moments where you’re called to help fight in the overworld against thousands of trolls but, while visually impressive, it’s nowhere near as exciting as it sounds.
Although the blueprint for the game is very Zelda inspired in that you travel to various ‘dungeon’ areas across the world using your current abilities to solve a myriad of puzzles and fight a boss to gain a new one, none of this is done with any real conviction. The ‘dungeons’ contain little more than a few mind numbingly easy puzzles and are simply designed with very little scope for exploration or clever back tracking later on. The abilities of most of Kameo’s elemental warriors are hardly used at all either. You can count on one hand the amount of times you want/need to use Rubble, Flex, Snare or 40 Below outside of a handful of puzzles. Then there are the boss fights at the end of each area which consist of basically the same yawn-inducing battle half a dozen times over.
The huge scale troll battles look impressive.
Interestingly enough, the game actually finishes much like the rest of it maybe should have been. As you’re stuck on this large airship, the main deck acts like a hub of a dungeon with several doors leading from it. By clearing each room of enemies or solving a set of puzzles with a multitude of elemental warriors, further doors unlock allowing progress. It’s just a shame that the game is nearly finished by the time it gets into full stride because there is so much untapped potential in Kameo just begging to be unleashed and when it finally does, you’re literally minutes from the end. The length is another sore spot too, clocking in at around the 8-10hr mark when really it should be at least nearly double that for a game of this type. With almost no hidden items or side quests of note, adventure game lovers will feel short changed with what Kameo offers. There is a 2 player split screen co-op mode (which will be made playable over Live eventually) that’s unexpectedly good fun, but that’s a short lived experience too.
Despite all that, Kameo is actually a rather enjoyable game. Much of Kameo’s warriors are fun to use, especially in combat when you’ve upgraded a few of their abilities. Covering a mob of enemies with Deep Blue’s oil attack only to burn them to death via Ash’s fire breath is just one example of how you can mix and match their attacks to create your own playful destruction. Although this may sound silly given the amount of years it had in development, Kameo is something that maybe needed more time to realize its potential fully. It does contain some good ideas and is at its best when you’re combining the use of the elemental warriors in either combat or problem solving, it just doesn’t explore those possibilities enough. On the plus side, at least it’s not a collect-a-thon like Star Fox Adventures was.
In a similar situation to Rare’s other 360 launch game, things are different now to what they were before Christmas. While Kameo was the lone adventure game back then, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is now here making recommendation even harder. If you’re looking for something a bit different on the Xbox 360 amongst all the racing and shooting games then Kameo may well be worth your time, but given its faults and its short length it’s hard to justify buying it at full price, especially when other similar games offer bigger and better experiences.
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