12/19/05 >> Kameo: Elements of Power (Xbox 360)
Genre: RPG
Chances are you may have heard of Kameo: Elements of Power before. Maybe because it's been getting a lot of attention since it's unveiling on the Xbox 360; maybe because it was a game shown on the back of your Gamecube's packaging. Yes Kameo originally started out on the Gamecube (rumor has it that Kameo may have even been planned for an N64 release at some point) back before Rare was purchased by Microsoft and after that purchase was made, development of the game continued for the Xbox instead. But in October 2004, one final delay led the way for Rare to turn their focus towards Microsoft's next-gen console that was due out at the end of next year. And that Kameo is the Kameo we have today.
With development time stretching out to nearly 6 years, Kameo has certainly gone through some changes as well. Rare originally planned the game to feature well over a hundred monsters for you to capture, but apparently this idea was far too ambitious and instead Rare focused on polishing up and perfecting less warriors. They kept cutting down the amount of monsters (or warriors as Rare calls them) in the game all the way down to ten. Rare unfortunately even had to cut out an entire warrior element from the game to make the game's release. Some character and level art was changed over the years, and to be blunt, Kameo has been through development hell. Luckily, in the end Kameo turned out really well. It's one of the most compelling reasons to pick up a 360, and just one of the best action/adventure games in general.
The story of Kameo is simple, yet both interesting and unpredictable which should keep your attention throughout the course of the game. Kameo's mother, Queen Theena, has to make a choice of which of her two daughters she must pass her elemental powers down to, Kameo or her sister Kalus. Theena chooses Kameo and in an uproar of jealousy, Kalus chooses to release the Dark King Thorn from his stone inprisonment and makes chaos reigns over the once peaceful kingdom and captures Kameo's family and ancestors. So it is up to Kameo to release find her family and prevent Kalus and Thorn from wreaking havoc upon the land. To do this Kameo gets help from 10 elemental warriors she can transform into and thus begins Kameo: Elements of Power.
There are some interesting plot twists here and there, and just in general, the story is great. Very memorable and entertaining characters, each one brimming with a ton of personality and a ton of interesting traits. It's just a shame the story ends a bit quickly. Luckily, the end leaves plenty of room for a sequel. We'll probably be dead before that game finally surfaces.
Shortly after being shown a, roughly, 30 second cut scene, you are immediately thrown into an action level with no tutorial or without any time to familiarize yourself with the mechanics of the game. You may see this as good or bad depending on the type of person you are. I like this idea, yet I don't at the same time. I love how Rare made the game start with a bang and didn't force a two hour long tutorial upon you like in a lot of games. But at the same time, even though I was already aware of the story and events in Kameo before the game released, I would have rather seen a bit of a longer intro cinematic to get a bit more info and back-story on the characters and world before immediately delving into the game. But to be honest, new players to Kameo will have little difficulty familiarizing themselves with the game. The game explains how to play all throughout the first level, and enemies are little challenge, so the learning curve isn't nearly as steep as it may first appear to be.
The rest of the game is much more approachable. What I found to be very unique was the talking wotnot book called Ortho, Kameo's guide. He's part of an adaptive hint system that, depending on how good or bad you are doing, will give you hints and help you if you are stuck in a part of the game. If you are a really good player and seem to be doing well in the game, you will seldom hear from Ortho. But on the other hand, if you...well, suck at the game, he won't ever pipe down. He'll, in some cases, literally give you the answers to the problems you're having. And if you don't like this "adaptive hint system" you can simply go into the game's options and turn it off.
When playing Kameo the first thing you may notice, especially once you arrive in the Enchanted Kingdom after the first level, are the outstanding graphics. This is the Carmen Electra of video games when talking about looks. Kameo is one of the best looking 360 games you will lay eyes on for a long time. Every object in the game is parallax mapped and normal mapped creating insanely detailed textures that make the world come alive. Character models sport these same tricks and animate near flawlessly with only a couple jerky animations here and there. Gorgeous lighting, full time depth of field effects, and all that other technical mumbo jumbo most don't care to hear about. Basically, the game looks awesome. For me, the best part about the graphics is the water. You'll probably need a fork lift to get your jaw up off the ground when you see this. Not only is the water just downright good looking with great reflections and refractions, but Kameo is the first game to have mathematically correct water. What that means is that every last object in the water will create realistic ripples that bounce, again realistically, off other objects and ripples in the water. The amount of computations this takes to create is just insane, something not even fathomable on current generation systems. Play this in 720p on an HD tv and you will be in heaven.
That's not to say there aren't some bumps in the road. There are some graphical imperfections throughout Kameo. A lot of the particle effects in the game seem to have been taken directly from the Xbox version. And there are tons of reused objects like certain plants or textures all throughout the game world. This is most apparent in the Badlands section of the game, which is essentially the main overworld. From what I have seen there seem to be maybe four or five textures used MAX to cover the entire landscape. They seem to be just copied and pasted all over the game world and not only are these textures repetitious, but don't even have near the amount of detail as any other part of the game. In addition to that, no objects in the badlands have self-shadowing aside from characters within a few feet of you. Shadows from characters will just appear and disappear, no trees, bushes, or any other object cast shadows, and the Badlands in general is just a graphical wasteland. The only saving grace is the insane amount of characters displayed during some of the fights throughout the Badlands. There will be fights with quite literally thousand upon thousands of characters fighting each with their own individual A.I.
Speaking of which, one of the big new features Rare has implemented in the Xbox 360 version of Kameo are the fights in the Badlands. But to be honest, I found these battles to be not as exhilarating as they have been made out to be and they really have no effect on your progress in the game. They just seemed unpolished. I know this may sound a bit crazy, but I really do think Rare needed more time. They created the badlands and these huge fight scenes just for the Xbox 360 version and didn't exactly have a large amount of time to do so. These portions of the game feel rushed and just whipped together, but trust me, the rest of the game far exceeds the sloppiness of the Badlands.
The big selling point, or gimmick depending on how much you like the game, for Kameo: Elements of Power is the fact that Kameo can shape-shift and transform into 10 different elemental warriors and must use their abilities to fight enemies and solve puzzles. To do this, she must hunt down these "shadow trolls" that inhabit Kameo's world and chase them to the Shadow Realm where she must then defeat and rescue the corresponding elemental sprite. Each elemental warrior starts out in a sprite, or baby form, then upon rescuing it, you are shown a brief cut-scene of the sprite transforming into its true form. These were actually the times I was most impressed with Kameo, and found myself enjoying the game most when I acquired a new warrior. It just really blew me away to see the amount of character, personality, and humor Rare can put in their games. Unfortunately Rare could not maintain this vibe all throughout the entire game, but still, they really did an amazing job with these sequences.
Each warrior, looks, feels, controls, and acts completely different from every other warrior in the game. The Kameo team at Rare really let their imaginations run wild when designing each of these things. Calling the game unique would be a major understatement and just downright insulting. Rare has put that much effort into making all of these creatures play, look, and act great. Although a lot of the warriors are used and needed quite frequently others are used scarcely and become unneeded. And it never quite feels like the abilities of each of these creatures is exploited to their fullest which makes the transforming element of Kameo start to feel almost like a gimmick at times. A ludicrously fun gimmick, but a gimmick no less.
Kameo is an action/adventure game. It's around 60% action and 40% adventure. Kameo, unlike a lot of games in this genre, is mainly combat-oriented. But even the puzzles are combat oriented and take use of the warriors' combat abilities. Luckily with a good variety of enemies, stunning boss fights (although the final boss is a bit underwhelming), upgradeable moves, and new warriors to acquire, the combat never once feels repetitive. Your enjoyment of the game's combat really comes from how much effort you put into trying to enjoy it. If you upgrade your warriors, try to figure out some really unique combos with the different moves of the warriors, etc. then I guarantee you that you'll never get bored with Kameo's combat. Another interesting element Rare adds in is Warrior Focus which is essentially bullet time. This can really allow your imagination to roam wild and come up with some crazy combo moves with the monsters and defeating enemies in this mode and coming up with creative ways to defeat enemies heavily affects your score, which prevents this Warrior Focus mode from becoming a gimmick, like in so many other games that use some form of "bullet-time." The scoring system is no gimmick either. There are a bevy of unlockables too, which comes back to the scoring system. Just trying to get a good score in the score attack mode and unlocking things will increase the longevity of the game substantially.
The other part of Kameo, the puzzles, are a lot less frequent than the combat and like I said earlier, are still more or less combat-oriented since they all take use of the combat abilities of the warriors. Most are quite inventive and make you think, but they are nothing too hard or too easy either. A lot of these puzzles actually encourage the use of multiple warriors. For instance, early on in the game you will see an icy wall that only the ice creature, Chilla, can climb, but there is a huge gap in between where you are and where the wall is. So how do you reach that wall? Propel yourself over the game with Major Ruin and in midair switch to chilla so you can continue to climb the wall. Its creative things like this that really brings out the best in Kameo. But there is a downside. The temples and dungeons in Kameo are far too short and small to really make use of all of the characters' abilities. But in this case it's quality over quantity so I don't mind all that much.
While I'm on the subject of the length of the game, there is a huge misconception going around that Kameo is an insanely short game. Some saying less than ten hours. Yes, the main quest is around ten hours, but that's only if you avoid everything in the game. There's just so much to do that it's like you would almost have to try to avoid all of the things there are to do in Kameo. Numerous unlockables, score attack, side quests, elemental fruit to find, upgrading your warriors, etc. There's just an insane amount of things. One of the things that will probably extend the length of the game for most is the co-op mode. Two people can play cooperatively through the action stages of Kameo. This mode is neither spectacular, but nor is it bad. It's fun, but playing split-screen takes away a lot of the fun. Online and system link co-op is coming in the future, but until then we'll just have to settle for split-screen.
I saved the best part of the game to talk about last and that's the sound. Kameo in my opinion is just one of the greatest games of all time as far as sound goes. Rare went far beyond the call of duty and everything is done perfectly or more so. Whether its voice acting, sound effects, or music, it's really hard to fault the sound. Rare for the first time actually went and got some professional talent to do voice work for Kameo instead of using people from in house. Surprisingly these voice actors did a commendable job, although I do miss a lot of the trademark British accents from Rare's games. Then there's the game's music. Just, just, just do yourself a favor and go out and pick up the soundtrack to Kameo. Yes, I'm recommending a game's soundtrack. I never buy video game soundtracks or listen to them, but Kameo is the only exception. It has some of the most brilliant music I have ever had the pleasure of hearing. Steve Burke is the composer at Rare and has done and absolutely mind blowing job on the music in the game. I have literally just put down my controller, sat down, and just took a moment to enjoy the music of the game. That's a sign of a good soundtrack if I were to ever see one.
Kameo: Elements of Power is a great entry into what could be one of Rare's best franchises yet. This series has a ton of potential just waiting to be put to good use. The only complaints I have about Kameo are that the badlands is makes the game worse rather than making it more fun, it's a fairly short game for one of this genre, and not all of the abilities of the warriors are used to their fullest potential. But nonetheless, Kameo is one of the best looking and playing Xbox 360 games available right now, and as far as action adventure games go, I think it has set the standard for this next generation so far.
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Game Score: 9.0
Reviewed By: Contributed
