E3: Kameo: Elements of Power Hands-On

Countless years and three platforms later, does Rare's Xbox 360-bound Kameo deliver the goods? Or is it plain old tosh? You may be surprised.

Last year we were totally won over by Kameo: Elements of Power. Personally I'm a long time fan of Rare's games, but this one took me a little by surprise with its clever, well designed and hugely enjoyable gameplay. Now it's been moved over to the Xbox 360 - the third console it's been on development for - and it looks absolutely beautiful.

Last year's E3 confirmed that Kameo is very enjoyable and has solid gameplay. As Kameo you can morth into various monsters each with unique abilities and fighting moves. Using your abilities, you will solve clever platforming puzzles and fight in addictive battles against hoards of enemies.

The difference in appearance from the cancelled Xbox version of Kameo is significant; the environments are massive, the detail is incredible. I'll be honest and say that we found the initial screenshots a little underwhelming, but as with Perfect Dark Zero, it looks very impressive in motion.

It seems there's not a single flat surface in the game; Rare uses a technique called parallax mapping to create the illusion of 3D on a flat texture, this puts a very high level of detail on every rock, tree and building. Grass is no longer a texture, every single blade of grass is right there in front of you blowing in the wind. The lighting also is a whole world above anything on Xbox - Kameo now has a realtime day and night system, the light is reflected onto every surface, in an incredible visual display.

By far the most impressive scene we saw was the battle scene, in which the camera pans around to reveal a huge valley in the shadow of a giant volcano. Kameo is on top of a large hill on horseback, and below her around the hill are 3000 trolls. That's right - three thousand, all grunting and swinging their weapons in the air. It was the first thing I'd see at E3 that looked truly next gen; Kameo rode her horse right through the middle of the trolls knocking hundreds of them into the air with no loss of framerate at all.

Then, almost to taunt us with 360's capabilities, another 1000 orks showed up and started battling with the trolls. There were now more than 4000 characters on screen independently fighting each other. Grass still swaying in the wind, fire balls flying through the sky and water flowing through a stream, and this is running on an alpha kit with 30% the power of the final hardware. Absolutely incredible.

The familiar scene from last year's E3 on the side of a large tower was also showed off to us and it still looks like great fun. Chilla, the giant ice gorilla, has no problem tearing through trolls. He picks up one troll and uses him to batter the rest of them, he can even chuck trolls onto the spikes on his back, so that he has some ammunition to throw at things. We also saw Major Ruin the armadillo, back again from last year's demo speeding around in a Metroid Prime-style ball of death.

One of the things that interests me most about Kameo is how you can use the various transformations in unison to solve puzzles, you can use Major Ruin to shoot across a large chasm and quickly change to Chilla to grab on to the side of the tower. I also noticed a small graphical effect that pleased me a lot, in the Gamecube version of Kameo you were able to see Kameo inside the monster's bodies, controlling them. Last year this was absent from the Xbox version but now has returned on the Xbox 360, this small touch alone makes the game look a lot more unique.

Again, we find ourselves big fans of Kameo: Elements of Power. I'm completely won over by its unique, imaginative gameplay, beautiful enviroments and charming characters. Keep this one on your radar, because it's shaping up to be one of the best games to come from Rare in years.

Andy Robinson
Staff Writer, Kikizo Games