This game almost single handedly killed the platformer. A complete s#1t storm from start to finish.
Legend of Kay is a third person platformer for the PS2 and Nintendo DS. I just picked up the DS version, and honestly it's rare to find a game so blisteringly appaling in every way. It looks like ass. The graphics are a bit of a mess, and it's not the colorful adventure I expected. Most of the environments in the game are gun-metal gray, dog s#1t brown, puke green, and burning anus red. The colors are sickening, and Kay looks like he'd been using botox to cure tumors. The cut scenes aren't much better, being told like a comic book, and having to read every panel as it flashes by isn't a good idea, because there isn't enough time to read what they're saying, and look at the facial expressions closely, but then agian that might have been deliberate. The pixels in the comic book cut scenes are so big, I felt like I was playing Super NES. Also, don't blame the DS for the bad graphics, because I've seen great graphics on the DS. Hell, I've seen better graphics than this on the SNES. This is almost NES graphics, and if it wasn't for the 3D aspect, it would be. Also, not since Atari do I remember spiders being represented by a rock covered in green dots that have 8 lines making out to be legs.
I'm not typically much of a graphics hound, because I don't think they can hold up a game, and the only thing they can really do is hinder a game, but here, it does hinder the game, so I might as well mention it. However, why keep harping on the graphics when there are plenty of other of fat, juicy targets on this game to hit? The gameplay is looking particularly fat, so I'll save that for later. Let's talk about the music, yeah, another thing that can't really hold up a game, and can only hinder and does here. There are 5 worlds, and the game is about 7 hours long. This game, I swear, had 4 to 5 songs to split between 7 hours, and going on about 1 minute loops, which adds up to the songs in my personal hell. Kay also doesn't help, because he has one of the most grating voices I've ever heard, and the game has no voice acting! It's just "Ahhh!" or "Oof!", which should tell you how bad it was.
That's 2 targets down, and 2 to go.
The story aspect is probably the best part, with it just being merely stale, bland, and forgetable, rather than s#1t. It has to do with 5 nations of animals, after anthromorphs evolved from surviving the apocalypse. There's a war breaking out between the gorilla nation and everyone else, and Kay, part of the tiger nation, must go to the frog, rabbit, and panda kingdoms to learn techniques to defeat the gorillas and rats terrorizing the kingdom. There's a love interest, too, and she's actually an ok character, BUT, and this is a big, stinky but, Kay is one of the worst characters in video gaming history. He's brash, arrogant, stupid, impatient, ineffectual, and rather a bit of a chicken. He spends alot of the game hiding from everything bigger than a spider, and Mario style jumping on everything else. He also doesn't improve much by the end, just enough to get some head from his female friend. So, we can add pervert to that list, too.
Ok, I've stalled enough, what about the gameplay? The gameplay is based around platforming, and shows no improvements at all to the formula. Take a look at the games box art. Doesn't it look like you might be able to fight in this game some? Well, you don't. You hide from everyone, and it's not even good stealth. It's the kind of stealth where they make you retry the section if a guard catches a wiff of your terrified fart, and they take away a heart, and if you run out of hearts, they game over your ass, and make you start the whole f@%king world agian. Not just the section, the world, starting from the hub, which has annoying tight platforming that can kill you. That's right, the hub can kill you... You aren't safe anywhere from this game's s#1t.
Anyway, the so called "techniques" you learn are pretty much only useful once, then never are needed agian. The double jump is the last move you learn, and you'd think that you'd start with that, but no. They had such little imagination, that they were saving the double jump... HELP! The only enemies you can kill are spiders, and it gets really boring, because there's only one way to kill them, and that's to jump on them. Mario would be so pissed. Anyway, if they hit you, that takes a heart too. So, that makes the manditory stealth that much more frustrating.
The platforming is ass. If it's not being just boring, it's being tight platforming on glitch filled ledges that doesn't like to detect when you jump on it if it doesn't feel like it. The frustration that this game causes is mind boggling. I remember distinctly jumping into lava pits intentionally just to get that window of Kay drowning in lava, which is the only real entertainment anyone can get from this.
This is one of the worst, people. ONE OF THE WORST I've ever had the displeasure of purchasing. Do yourselves a favor, and f@%king BURN this game before it corrupts your DS with a case of the s#1t. Don't play it, don't put it in the system, don't buy or rent it, and, for god's sake, don't look at it. The mere image of the box art burns a permanent image of s#1t in your head. It's that bad. Avoid like the plague, for heaven's sake, or you'll be as crazy as I am...