Kameo: Elements of Power

Kameo: Elements of Power boxAs Ed noted earlier this evening after his post within a comment on my Perfect Dark Zero review, Mook is now in the Xbox 360 fold. Well, if there was a game made for him — besides Katamari Damacy of course — then this one is it.

Kameo: Elements of Power is actually the game I have enjoyed the most to date. So, the indictment of Mook may also be one of myself. D’oh! Well, at least this game is about a cute little elf girl instead of a King and his package.

Kameo is an adventure game where you must travel throughout your kingdom in the middle of an Elf (and other odds races) v. Troll war where the Trolls are trying to take over your kingdom after having served the man for so long. Really, what’s wrong with that anyway? The Elves and others live all high and mighty in their floating kingdom while the Trolls suffer as laborers and such. Well, Kameo’s sister sells her out and sides with the Trolls and that’s where the adventure begins.

The basic premise is as you travel throughout the kingdom you rescue different members of your family along with Elemental creatures you can transform into to help you succeed further in the quest. The game features a good mix of puzzles and action and I felt there were a lot of areas to explore. Collecting money to buy items and upgrades was never a problem, so there wasn’t much of a need to employ the enter-fight-exit-enter-fight-exit strategy in order to collect what you need. Sometimes it is fun to kick pointless ass, but sometimes its just a plain pain in the ass.

During the adventure, you have to find 10 Elemental warriors and predictably their individual skills are usually required shortly after you acquire them. I have three favorites: Chilla, Ash and Rubble. These aren’t necessarily my favorites for their skills. Okay, Chilla is, but Ash and Rubble were just so damned cute! Ash is a big red dragon, but the expression on his face as he wanders about is priceless (does not come thru from site without the game animation). Reminds me of a big, happy lab. Rubble is a rolling collection of rocks stacked upon each other with a head rock that bounces about. His expressions were also pretty cool, especially when you leave him still for a bit and his head flips about. Fun enough to make me smile for no apparent reason. Okay, maybe not a smile, but definitely that grin I get. If you know me, you know it. OMG, I am totally turning into Mookie with this cutesy-wootsy shite…

So, on to Chilla cuz he is the man! Chilla is a snow/ice Yeti looking dude. Looks a lot like the Abominable Snowman from Rudolph. He’s got some sweat moves, but my favorite is the SpikeBack. No doubt. Basically, you scoop up a troll and flip him onto your back, but the kicker is your back has some nice long spikes protruding from it, so green blood oozes out and they are stuck there. You can collect up to three trolls this way. Once you have one you can pull him back off and use him as a club to smack and swat other trolls around or go into the aim mode and fire him at another troll, obstacle or off a cliff. It’s just great fun.

Chilla is about to chuck a troll

The other characters were okay, but not as much fun. You end up using three most of the time: Chilla, Pummel Weed and Major Ruin. I already talked up Chilla, but Pummel Weed is a plant that boxes like a madman. Good for beating the crap out of someone. Major Ruin is a cross between an armadillo and elephant that is good for rolling around and jumping to different areas. Think of him like that ball Samus can change into in Metroid. He can also get spikes on him, so rolling thru some trolls with those suckers usually means a couple get stuck on you, so that’s pretty cool.

The character that sucked the most was Deep Blue. He’s a water character and I had my hate on for him because the swimming dynamics in this game sucked. I spent more time pissed off trying to just swim around or fight and swim at the same time. After him, Major Ruin could get real annoying if you found yourself stuck trying to move about with complex jumps and stuff. Oh, 40 Below and Snare could be fun to use on different occassions, but you get both closer to the end than the beginning. You can see and read about all the Elemental characters on the official Kameo site if you are interested.

Other things that were cool about the game were a good soundtrack — Microsoft titles tend to have good ones — and a lot of the voices used in the game sound familiar to anyone who has played Fable. I spent a good amount of time looking for everything that needed finding and I think I completed all the side quests. I came up a little short on the finding all the fruit. I think I ended up with 92 of a 100. I didn’t find one of the crystals either. I felt like I completed as much as I could without having to find stuff on-line, so I am satisfied with the time to play thru it.

Anyway, the game was fun to play and I recommend it highly. As I said, it is my favorite to date, but that may be shortlived as I am playing Lara Croft Tomb Raider Legend right now and it pretty much rocks. After that I’ll have to buy my HD set so I can play Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter.

Oh, and I swear it is not me… Mookie is still the one! His portable PSP loaded with porn Katamari isn’t fooling anyone…