Rare's first 360 game is short but sweet.
Despite a few flaws, Kameo lived up to Rare's high quality standard. The game had some great visuals that warranted the purchase of an HD-TV, proved that a somewhat dated gameplay formula was still right at home on the current generation and was simply a whole lot of fun.
Kameo: Elements of Power is the story of Kameo, princess of the Elven Kingdom. The kingdom is under attack by the troll army of Thorn. Thorn is aided by Kameo's sister, who is jealous because Kameo is heir to her father's throne instead of her. Kameo has the power to shapeshift into various elemental creatures to battle her foes, but she loses all of ther elemental warriors at the start of the game. Her goal is to find all the elemental warriors, rescue her family members and defeat Thorn and his troll army.
The story itself is kept quite simple to keep the tone of the game as light-hearted as possible. This works for the most part, but I wished that the story was a little more involving. Just because it's light-hearted doesn't mean it can be epic or tense.
The game starts rather abruptly. Kameo storms the castle of Thorn in a terrible attempt to rescue her family members. You don't really get to learn how things work in the game. Rather, you're thrown right into the action. Kameo has three elemental warriors to control at this time (a hulking ice-beast that can throw ice and climb frozen walls, a plant-beast that can bury underground and deal punches left and right and finally an armadillo of sorts that can roll up into a ball and fling itself forward at high speeds). You have to learn how each of these warriors works as you go along. Once you reach the end of the level however, you lose the three warriors and are thrown back to the Elven Kingdom. There you get to know all there is to learn about the game.
The goal of the game is to get all elemental warriors and rescue all family members. When the elemental warriors are not bound to a person, they turn into harmless little creatures called elemental sprites. These sprites have been captured by shadow trolls that Thorn had ordered to keep the sprites away from Kameo. The world is divided into the badlands (a region where no one rules and a continuous battle between trolls and elves rages) and three tribal kingdoms. Whenever Kameo is in the badlands she can ride on her horse to get to different destinations. The tribal kingdoms are small villages where peaceful creatures live. You have to use your elemental warriors to solve puzzles in these areas so you can find the shadow trolls. Then you have to battle a shadow troll to recover the sprite. Battling the shadow trolls is unfortunately a bit lame. Every battle is more or less the same and can be finished within less than 5 minutes, which is rather disappointing.
When you have defeated all shadow trolls in one of the tribal kingdoms the entrance to the temple of the kingdom is opened. These temples are large areas where you have to use all of your skills to solve a series of often amusing puzzles. At the end of the temple awaits a boss battle, and most of those are extremely fun. The bosses are often very imaginative, large and well animated. They'll certainly remind you of boss battles from any of the 3D Zelda games.
After you defeat a boss, a family member will be rescued and these will give you another elemental warrior.
Playing with the different elemental warriors is an absolute joy. You can play as Kameo herself, but she is quite defenceless and can only jump and do an air-kick. But when she transforms into an elemental warrior she'll become truly powerful. Every elemental warrior has his set of very original and fun combat abilities. Chilla, the ice-beast, can pick up trolls and impale them on his spiky back for example, only to use them later as clubs. Rubble (a living pile of rocks) can throw parts of his own body at the enemy and call them back to him. Apart from their basic moves, all elemental warriors can acquire new skills by using elemental fruit. Elemental fruit can be found throughout the land in shops or along the road. While there is a very large variety of abilities to be found, it's a bit of a shame that you don't need the extra abilities to finish the game.
All the warriors are controlled using a simple control scheme. Every single one of their powers is mapped to the left and right trigger. Sometimes you have to hold both triggers at one, and some abilities can only be used once characters are in a certain state. The B, X and Y buttons are used to quickly switch between the different warriors, and A is used for switching back to Kameo's original form or for interacting with the environment. All of the controls are very intuitive and they make sure that you have no problem switching back and forth between all the warriors.
The real meat of Kameo's gameplay consists out of fighting trolls and solving puzzles. The fighting in Kameo, despite it being relatively simple, is actually extremely fun because you can switch between the different fighting styles on the fly. One moment you're pummelling a troll with your plant-boxer, next moment you're all lighting them on fire with your huge dragon. All of the punches and attacks give good feedback, so you always know when you're dishing out good damage. It makes for some very satisfying combat. The only gripe I have is that there are simply to many situations where trolls will spawn endlessly. Sometimes it takes a while before you realize this and you'll have waster valuable time and health by then.
Solving puzzles in Kameo is a blast. Instead of using obtuse or obvious puzzles like block pushing or timed minigames, Kameo focuses almost entirely on using your different abilities in tandem. You might want to launch yourself from a ramp with your armadillo only to switch midair to your ice-beast so you latch onto an ice-wall. Or you may want to light a bomb on fire with your dragon and carry it around with another warrior. There are a lot of great puzzles in the game, and all of them make sense. You interact with the environment in ways that are very intuitive, which makes the puzzles so enjoyable. There is no filler content here, and puzzles are rarely repeated.
However, that's also one of the game's weakest aspects. It's very, very shorts. I completed my first playthrough of the game in little more than eight hours. That pretty bad for a game of this kind. And what's there is actually very, very easy. There just isn't a whole lot of value to be had here. The only reason to go through it again is because it's just much fun.
Kameo's visuals, while certainly good, are a mixed bag. On one hand you get the feeling that parts of this game were really tailor-made for the HD age, while other parts feel hopelessly stuck in the past. This is not all that surprising, because Kameo started out as an adventure game on the GameCube. Perhaps this also explains the lack of content in the game. There are some really impressive parts though. In the larger battles you'll often a huge amount of detailed dragons flying through the air. Battles in the badlands often have hundreds upon hundreds of trolls rendered onscreen at the same time, and all of this without the frame rate dropping.
The voices in the game are a bit weaker. Most of them do the job, but they all sound a bit cheesy. It really makes you realize that the game is just not as epic as Rare had originally planned. The music is absolutely fantastic though, as is to be expected in a Rare produced game. The orchestral tunes will stick in your head for days to come.
All in all, Kameo: Elements of Power is a really great game. The only negative part is that it's presentation is a little dated in spots and that it's too short and too easy. If you like these sort of adventure games, by all means, go out and get this game now. Just be advised that while every second of the game is very fun, you're not getting a whole lot of value out of the entire package.