The story sees Kameo, an elf princess in an enchanted kingdom granted a power which allows her to transform into elemental creatures. Her evil sister, being the vindictive bitch she is, gets pissed off that she was overlooked and decides to kidnap their family and ally herself with Thorn, a dark Troll Lord who has set his sights on ruling over the land by going to war with the elves. It is now up to Kameo to put a stop to Thorn and rescue her family, with the aid of 10 elemental warriors that she will obtain during her adventure.
It doesn't get much more enchanted than this.
Rare has shown a knack for putting out some solid 3D platformers in the past and Kameo appears to be following suit quite nicely. This game is firstly a 3D brawler with some adventure elements thrown in. Whether you're bashing trolls in the face with Pummel Weed, a boxing inspired plant elemental, or setting them alight with Ash, a dragon like beast, the game sports a deep and well thought out combat system which encourages cool multi warrior combos by giving the player a point score depending on how effectively you dish out the pain. You could send a troll flying into the air with an uppercut from Pummel Weed then switch to Chilla the Ice Yeti and fling a barrage of ice spears his way to keep him airborne. Fighting with style not only give you piles of points but also adds to your focus bar that is displayed at the top of the screen. When filled up, you enter 'Warrior Focus', a slow motion effect which makes it easy to switch between your warriors and deal out more devastating combos. The points you earn are doubled during warrior focus and the time remaining in focus mode can be lengthened by continually damaging your enemies. So if you are really good, you could stay in Warrior Focus throughout the entire fight and end up with a massive score, which can be compared with other players across Xbox Live.
The adventure elements can come into play when Kameo visits her home, the Enchanted Kingdom or the various elementally themed tribes in the game world. You can walk around these areas talking to the dozens of fully voiced and lip-synched NPC's in the game and even receive side quests from certain characters, which if completed can reward you with Elemental Fruit. These fruit can be fed to your Elemental Warriors in order to unlock advanced moves that will enable them to rain more potent damage upon the game world's many evil denizens. There are a total of 100 of these fruits hidden throughout the game world so Rare's tradition of 'games with obligatory scavenger hunts' seems to have carried over into Kameo wonderfully.
Do you like grass? Then you'll love this game!
So far everything seems to be a pretty standard fare that we've seen before in some form or another, where's all this 'next generation' stuff we've been hearing about? One look at the visuals and you'll be able to figure that out for yourself. Parallax mapping, full scene depth of field, heat haze, all great words that sound real impressive. Techno babble aside, this game looks incredible regardless. Every character model and environment setting is crammed full of polygons especially each warrior, which helps bring out each of their quirky personalities. In a neat touch, each warrior sports a nifty looking transparency effect which shows Kameo inside of them, further reinforcing the fact that she is the one controlling the warrior. That Pixar promise made all those years ago by another company that shall remain nameless has taken one step away from subjective hype and towards reality. It's not quite there yet, but check back in a few years time.
One of the most infamous scenes that has come from this game shows 'The Badlands' (the central hub for the game world that links all of the game's areas together) literally covered with fully rendered and animated models that count in the numerous thousands. Kameo will have to traverse this field over a number of occasions during her adventure and the amount of enemies will increase as the storyline progresses. By the time the finale of the game rolls around, expect to see thousands of trolls, ogres and elves dukeing it out, dragons flying overhead, huge siege vehicles raining death from afar and remarkably with all of this carnage filling the screen, the game still manages to run without any noticeable drop in the framerate.
As amazing as this is, you can't help but think that these epic additions to the game won't really add much to the game apart from a superficial wow factor. Only enemies who are in your immediate vicinity will react to your presence, and any who are out side outside of it simply stand in place shaking their fists in the air. So essentially, you've got 5 enemies who attack you at one time and another 2995 that will have sore arms by the time you step within their range. So will all these selling point encounters really end up amounting to an impressive looking technical demonstration without much gameplay merit? Unfortunately, these early impressions are pointing to yes. At least it looks pretty damn cool.
"Um, guys! I'm over here! Sheesh, you'd think with a skirt this short, they wouldn't be able to keep their eyes off me."
Kameo's visuals may be gorgeous but the game's soundtrack does enough to impress, regardless of its more instantly noticeable presentation buddy. This is the first time Rare used an orchestra and choir to bring music to one its games and it really pays off. The 80 piece orchestra and 40 piece choir allowed Steve Burke, Rare's long standing composer/sound designer, to shine creating a soundtrack that would be befitting of an epic movie experience a la Lord of the Rings. The end result runs the gamut from sweeping and epic to hauntingly sombre and is quite an achievement. Another first for Rare is the use of professional voice talent, who had up until now done all of their voice work in house. This move appears to have paid off as every character we've heard so far speaks with an air of believability. It still remains to be seen whether this carries over to all characters in the game.
A game 4 years in the making and jumping from the Gamecube to the Xbox and finally to the Xbox 360, Kameo's development history is almost as epic as the games premise. From what we've seen and heard so far, all of that hard work and dedication appears to be paying off. This is one launch title to be keeping an eye on.
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