I'm blown away by how excruciating this game is.

Everything about it is laborious, like a relic of the worst elements of 3D platformers made years prior, with none of the charm. The controls feel like you're swimming through molasses and had me double checking to make sure I didn't accidentally turn off game mode on my TV.

Lead designer George Andreas later stated they should have scrapped Kameo and started over, and I have to agree. Its troubled development really shows and it's hard to believe Rare could make a game this bad.

Released in 2005 as Rare's second launch title for the Xbox 360, alongside Perfect Dark Zero. Kameo: Elements of Power is a Rare game through and through, a 3D platformer, full of bright colours, interesting characters and fun gameplay. It started life as a Gamecube game, then moved to original Xbox and finally Xbox 360. It very much feels like a Nintendo game, it dose feel strange playing it on a Microsoft console. However, it stands out among the launch titles as being very different, further expanding what was a very busy launch lineup for the system.

The story of Kameo revolves around the battle of Elves and Goblins, Kameo is a princess of the land whose father has bestowed the power of the elements onto her. Her sister gets jealous, and teams up with the goblin king to take the powers back. It’s not Oscar worthy, but its good enough to move the game forward. Kameo starts the game with all her powers, looses them all, and you must get them all back to defeat your sister.

To start with, Kameo looks fantastic, for a game that was due to release on the original Xbox and was 80% complete when the decision was made to transfer it to 360, the game looks very impressive. This really would be the game to show off your new console to your friends. Lighting, texture work, is beautiful, and it all runs at a decent framerate.

The gameplay revolves around Kameo an elf who can glide, and use the elemental powers to transform into different elemental forms and use their powers to fight through environments. All of them are well designed and fun to use, unlocking them allows to access parts of the game that you could not before, and you will often need to combine them to achieve your goals, which is great fun. The game is semi open world, with a large battle going on in the middle and various “lands” off of this that you go to, to unlock the various elemental powers. Its impressive stuff, there are hundreds of npcs on screen at one time, we have seen nothing like this on console before. The world reminds me of Ocarina of time, with one large open area, and the various dungeons, surrounding it. Each dungeon is well designed with a final boss fine, they all follow the same routine, and much like Zelda the bosses are never too difficult once you know how to defeat them. It’s a rather linier game, there’s not many hidden or secret areas to discover with your new powers.

There is also a co-op mode available for the game where you can invite friends into the game to play co-op states, both of you able to use the powers at the same time, mixing and matching as you go. Its really quite good fun and the DLC stages are still available. Kameo has a score meter, you gain points for combos and not getting hit, and they are all uploaded to the XBL scoreboards, its makes for some good replay ability, despite the linier focus of the main game.

Kameo’s biggest issue is that it lacks a bit of character. Despite being well designed, none of the elemental powers say anything or show any real personality. Kameo herself has few lines of dialog and what is here is nothing great, the case of side characters are nothing to write home about either. Which for my money is a big issue for a 3D platformer.
Despite this I had good fun with Kameo, I enjoyed my playthrough and looked forward to coming back to it, but once it was done I never felt the need to go back to it. The co-op is really good fun and the game is certainly eye-candy for 2005. Overall a solid experience, lacking a bit of character and replay ability.

7.5/10