Kameo: Elements of Power

It's been in development longer than Kikizo has been sexually active. Now that Rare's elvin princess has made it to Xbox 360, does it still turn us on in this comprehensive review?

	Version Xbox 360	Developer Rare	Publisher Microsoft	Genre Adventure

By Andy Robinson

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Padding the obligatory dungeons and boss fights are the epic field battles in the Badlands, a sort of over-world area, which links all of the game's locations together. These battles are obviously some proverbial willing waving on behalf of the move to Xbox 360, the thousands of enemies on screen and infinite draw-distance simply couldn't have been done on any of the last-gen consoles. This is the one of the first truly next-gen moments; riding on a horse through nine thousand battling trolls and elves has to be seen to be believed - and the framerate never budges. These battles become ever more complex as the game approaches conclusion, and hulking catapults and wooden tanks are added to the chaos. The big battles are easily one of Kameo's hallmark features.

Initially we thought that the game would suffer from an over-saturation of Elemental Warriors, but fortunately the development team has taken great care in making sure that each Warrior is distinct and unique from another. Out of the ten available, there isn't one Warrior that feels inept or useless. Some of our favourites, not including the aforementioned three, include Deep Blue, the water spraying, underwater diving squid-thing, Rubble, the moving pile of rocks who can throw himself at enemies, and the absolutely fantastic Thermite, a tiny bug carrying a massive ball on his back, who can blast the living hell out of hoards of enemies.

As we've mentioned before in our various previews, Kameo's greatest strength is easily the fantastic combat system. Third-person combat can often become tired and repetitive in a lot of games, but the different play-styles of the Elemental Warriors helps keep things fresh. Battles in Kameo are often a real visual spectacle, whether Pummel Weed is taking on trolls hand to hand, Rubble is throwing rocks in every direction or Deep Blue is dragging enemies screaming with his tentacles. Fans of comic violence will surely find a new love in Kameo.

The excellent combo system in place presents a bundle of old-fashioned fun to the player and further differentiates Kameo from other adventure games. The player's score is displayed at the top of the screen at all times, which is something you don't see often in games these days. Players are encouraged to combine Warriors for faster combos, such as knocking enemies into the air with Pummel Weed and then keeping them air-borne with Chilla's ice spears. A focus metre is displayed during combat that when filled by use of successive combos will send the game into 'Warrior Focus' slow motion, making it a bit easier to switch Warriors for clever combinations. The combat is a whole game in itself; an Xbox Live leader board is even included so that you can check out the world's top scores.

A lot of the game's core gameplay lies in this method of combining Elemental Warriors to create insane combos and solve puzzles. Changing between one Warrior to another takes a split-second, so there's no trouble in hitting enemies with a few rocks from Rubble before going in for some quick jabs with Pummel Weed. This sort of combination gameplay gets a lot more literal in the later game when Warriors can use advanced moves like Deep Blue's Slick Jet technique, which douses the enemies in oil, and can then be set alight by Ash for a devastating explosion - awesome stuff.

The Warriors can be made even more devastating by teaching them new moves with Elemental Fruit, which is hidden around the game world on plants, in shops and as rewards from the game's various sub-quests and mini-games. As well as making some current moves more powerful, the more advanced moves add further twists to the Elemental Warrior's play style. When upgraded Deep Blue for example can dissolve into water with only his tentacles rising from the puddle, with which he can snatch enemies from the ground using the left and right triggers and either use them to hit other enemies with or smash them together in the air.

Thermite becomes particularly devastating when fed some of the sweet fruit. In some of the later epic field-battles, Thermite is fantastic for tearing through entire armies of trolls with his awesome bomb attacks. The ball on the little guy's back packs some serious fire-power, and sends enemies flying through the air, with the resulting chaos of the burning flames usually finishing off the left-over bad guys.

Another of Kameo's great achievements is the simply stunning production value that has gone into the game's soundtrack. With the move to Xbox 360, Rare wisely chose to have the game's musical score rerecorded in Prague with an orchestra and choir, and it is certainly up to the high calibre we've come to expect from both Rare's sound department and that good old, uh, next generation fantasy.

This is just another sweet filling atop of the finely layered cake that is Kameo: Elements of Power. The possible game breakers that could spoil all that we've gushed about stand firm - Kameo is of a reasonable length and full of side-quests, mini-games and the hidden secrets you'd expect from the famous British developer. The game comes to a satisfying conclusion and in a rare feature actually presents the player with a world after the credits have rolled. Once the day has been saved you can roam the land and bask in the glory of your fellow characters - with none of the ugly plot holes we're used to from traditional adventure games.

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