Screenshots :.
Kameo: Elements of Power
360
Matt
26-07-2007
"Perty Elf in Perty Scenery"
"Well he doesn't look like he's bothered that much"
"Raaarrr...etc"
It’s time to take a small trip down memory lane, folks. Set the tape player in your mind to rewind. The destination: the winter of 1998. There we all are, sitting in front of our Nintendo 64s with our copies of Banjo Kazooie, Blast Corps and GoldenEye. Good times, yes? Now, hands up those of you who at that very moment could have imagined the path that Rare took next. Not many hands I would suspect. From being like two peas in a pod, the company and Nintendo parted ways and bought upon Rare a creative slump that they’ve only just started to crawl out of.
New bosses Microsoft may have been behind the Twycross funsters publicly, but you can be certain that behind closed doors a few eyebrows were well and truly furrowed by the complete failure of Grabbed By The Ghoulies, Rare’s Xbox debut released back in 2003. In the time since then nothing has come forth for a home console release, but the release of the 360 has seen Rare step up to the plate and offer up two brand new titles.
Kameo: Elements of Power is one of the offerings, having been in development since the early part of the decade and originally being intended as a GameCube release. The game sees you play a small elf named Kameo whose transformational powers has lead her jealous sister to release the evil Troll King Thorn upon the kingdom. Thorn not only makes a thorough nuisance of himself, he also captures all ten of Kameo’s transformational forms and three of her relatives to boot.
Hence, your quest is to guide Kameo throughout the land recapturing her different forms and rescuing her relatives. Playing itself out as a traditional third-person adventure, the game takes you across a wide variety of settings and dungeons, all of which have features which make use of the abilities which Kameo gains from each of her transitional forms.
These forms are divided into the four elements, earth, wind, fire and water. Early adventuring sees Kameo recover Pummel Weed, an elf-sized plant sporting boxing gloves that can be used to beat up enemies and burrow underground to avoid obstacles blocking pathways. A little later on you recover Major Ruin, an armadillo made of stone who can spin into a ball and be rolled around at great speed to leap bigger gaps. As you progress through the adventure you gain more varied abilities from the new forms you recover, whilst the terrain around you becomes more varied and requires the full use of all the skills in your armoury to allow you to progress.
On your travels you’ll also take in some of the most visually beautiful panoramas to be produced on a console to date. You can really see the extra oomph that the 360 packs in, the most obvious point of which is when you come across an entire mountain and field packed full of battling trolls and elves. Diving straight into the thick of the fight doesn’t even cause the framerate to break sweat, whilst elsewhere cascading waterfalls and vast, icy wastelands sprawl across the screen in beautiful detail, at no point causing the game to judder.
Which would all be great if Kameo didn’t quickly become rather tired. For all the different forms you can take and for all the great production values, at its core Kameo feels… well, rather plain. The characters themselves lack the attachment factor that drags you into all great video games, whilst the story follows a rather predictable, hackneyed route right through until the conclusion. Throughout the game you’ll spend time progressing through villages of different characters, but none actually play much part in the unfolding events, meaning that they’re all a little superfluous.
Added to that, the constant swapping between different forms often leaves you having to quickly retune yourself to various techniques, something that leads to a number of frustrating deaths. In some situations, for example, you’ll have to jump off a ramp as one form, then change mid-air into another, remember how to cling onto surfaces and hope for the best.
In a way, Kameo seems to find Rare at some kind of halfway house. On one hand, the game certainly sees plenty more flourishes than Grabbed By The Ghoulies ever showed. In terms of production values, Kameo really shines. Visuals mix colours and textures abundantly, all looking solid and clean. The soundtrack might not throw up anything that’ll make you sit up and scream ‘tune!’ but it sweeps epically along in time with the action and backs a capable voice cast.
On the other hand, though, the game itself seems slightly uninspired. Whilst offering a selection of different forms and related puzzles to match, the game quickly feels repetitive and as if it’s all been done before. It’s a shame, especially as the game doesn’t have one major fault that you can pick out. Unfortunately for Rare and their army of fans though, Kameo just feels like a tired old formula dressed in new, shiny clothes.
New bosses Microsoft may have been behind the Twycross funsters publicly, but you can be certain that behind closed doors a few eyebrows were well and truly furrowed by the complete failure of Grabbed By The Ghoulies, Rare’s Xbox debut released back in 2003. In the time since then nothing has come forth for a home console release, but the release of the 360 has seen Rare step up to the plate and offer up two brand new titles.
Kameo: Elements of Power is one of the offerings, having been in development since the early part of the decade and originally being intended as a GameCube release. The game sees you play a small elf named Kameo whose transformational powers has lead her jealous sister to release the evil Troll King Thorn upon the kingdom. Thorn not only makes a thorough nuisance of himself, he also captures all ten of Kameo’s transformational forms and three of her relatives to boot.
Hence, your quest is to guide Kameo throughout the land recapturing her different forms and rescuing her relatives. Playing itself out as a traditional third-person adventure, the game takes you across a wide variety of settings and dungeons, all of which have features which make use of the abilities which Kameo gains from each of her transitional forms.
These forms are divided into the four elements, earth, wind, fire and water. Early adventuring sees Kameo recover Pummel Weed, an elf-sized plant sporting boxing gloves that can be used to beat up enemies and burrow underground to avoid obstacles blocking pathways. A little later on you recover Major Ruin, an armadillo made of stone who can spin into a ball and be rolled around at great speed to leap bigger gaps. As you progress through the adventure you gain more varied abilities from the new forms you recover, whilst the terrain around you becomes more varied and requires the full use of all the skills in your armoury to allow you to progress.
On your travels you’ll also take in some of the most visually beautiful panoramas to be produced on a console to date. You can really see the extra oomph that the 360 packs in, the most obvious point of which is when you come across an entire mountain and field packed full of battling trolls and elves. Diving straight into the thick of the fight doesn’t even cause the framerate to break sweat, whilst elsewhere cascading waterfalls and vast, icy wastelands sprawl across the screen in beautiful detail, at no point causing the game to judder.
Which would all be great if Kameo didn’t quickly become rather tired. For all the different forms you can take and for all the great production values, at its core Kameo feels… well, rather plain. The characters themselves lack the attachment factor that drags you into all great video games, whilst the story follows a rather predictable, hackneyed route right through until the conclusion. Throughout the game you’ll spend time progressing through villages of different characters, but none actually play much part in the unfolding events, meaning that they’re all a little superfluous.
Added to that, the constant swapping between different forms often leaves you having to quickly retune yourself to various techniques, something that leads to a number of frustrating deaths. In some situations, for example, you’ll have to jump off a ramp as one form, then change mid-air into another, remember how to cling onto surfaces and hope for the best.
In a way, Kameo seems to find Rare at some kind of halfway house. On one hand, the game certainly sees plenty more flourishes than Grabbed By The Ghoulies ever showed. In terms of production values, Kameo really shines. Visuals mix colours and textures abundantly, all looking solid and clean. The soundtrack might not throw up anything that’ll make you sit up and scream ‘tune!’ but it sweeps epically along in time with the action and backs a capable voice cast.
On the other hand, though, the game itself seems slightly uninspired. Whilst offering a selection of different forms and related puzzles to match, the game quickly feels repetitive and as if it’s all been done before. It’s a shame, especially as the game doesn’t have one major fault that you can pick out. Unfortunately for Rare and their army of fans though, Kameo just feels like a tired old formula dressed in new, shiny clothes.
6/10