My first impression of Kameo from screenshots in magazines was that it was merely an attempt to use 360 graphical technology to see how many things they could get on the screen at once. My first impression was not totally wrong, but on the otherhand doesn't give enough credit.
First off, I could be negatively biased because Rare was bought by Microsoft. This was not a good thing, in my opinion. (I recently heard 2 out of the 3 founders of Rare have left to start their own company. Yay!) Rare gave us games like, 007 Goldeneye and Conker. Now they give us Kameo and Perfect Dark: Zero. Okay, onward.
Kameo's sister gets a bug up her butt, sides with Thorn, King of the Trolls, and starts kidnapping family members. Kameo takes it upon herself to set them free by gathering
Pummel Weed in
the Forgotten Forest.
Kameo uses her wings
to hover around more quickly.
the transformation magic of the 10 elemental warriors.
Each of the warriors
has unique elemental abilities for combat and puzzle solving. The warriors
are based in one of five elements: fire, ice, water, earth or plant. Certain
trolls and all bosses require combinations of attacks from different warriors
to defeat. You can have three creatures assigned to the buttons at once,
but holding down a button brings up the menu for quick reassignment.
There are essentially three worlds in Kameo connected by a central hub area called The Badlands where a massive battle between trolls and elves is taking place. Cinematic battles will occur here and Kameo even gets a horse to move quickly from place to place while trampling trolls.
There are shops in each world to buy Elixirs of Life, which increase maximum HP, Elemental Fruit which can be used
to unlock warriors' abilities, alternate costumes and a few other items. Elixirs, fruit and alternate costumes can also be found throughout the world in abandoned huts, side quests and mini-games.
The co-op stages of Kameo must be unlocked by finishing parts of the Solo Quest. Once unlocked you can go via split screen or Xbox Live to replay one of the game's dungeons and boss battles for a ranking based on time and score.
I do like the diversity among the elemental warriors and some of the puzzles were enjoyable. Graphically, the textures of things like rock and ice were amazing and the animation was very smooth.
One big problem with the game is that it was too easy. I never got stuck. It took about 10 hours to complete and that's including a good amount of exploration and hidden item recovery. I never re-attempted stages for better ranking.
Thermite has a protective shield with which he can roll through enemies.
Kameo plays a lot like a 3-D platformer but it focuses more on the adventure side by obtaining new abilities to access new areas, and less on collecting and platforming in general. My main beef is that the game should have had a little more depth. It seemed pretty elementary in many aspects. No pun intended.