Kao the Kangaroo - Review

When Tate Multimedia announced that they were rebooting their Kao the Kangaroo series, I was equally excited and worried. Now that the full game has released, and I have spent the last few weeks playing it, I was right to be in both states of mind on it. The game is good, but there are some things to be concerned about with it, so let’s hop on it to the review.

Kao the Kangaroo tells the story of Kao, the name is pronounced K-O as in knockout punch, who wakes up from a terrible dream, one that shows his sister is in grave danger. Determined to help her and more importantly, his father, he decides to leave town and locate them both, however in order to ensure that he has the skills to survive, his mother requests that he be trained. As he heads out to get some training, he discovers a pair of boxing gloves that were his fathers, half buried in the ground and upon putting them on, he discovers a voice from within, telling him about the power he now has access to. The story is pretty basic, but it does have a few interesting moments and while there is nothing ground-breaking in terms of spoilers, I won’t say anything further, just in case you would prefer to find out on your own.

In terms of the gameplay, there is no way to avoid saying it, but it is straight out of 1996, for both the good and bad that it brings, but let us start with the good. Each of the hub locations and levels that Kao visits are teaming with life, the hubs more so than the rest, from the denizens of each location to the entry ways into the various levels. Once inside a level, things are a little sparser in character detail, but is made up for in world detail. Most of the levels will take you a good 10 minutes to complete, especially if you hunt down all the collectables that are scattered throughout them. If you opt to just run through each level though, the time to complete one is only a few minutes, at least assuming you know where you are going.

When you are in control of Kao, you have the basic moves available to you from the outset, but you do pick up a few more as you play through. In typical platformer moves, Kao can jump and double jump, punch, ground pound unleash a big attack and really that is it. There are times when you can grab items like a boomerang or rocks and throw them, but you don’t carry them with you at all times. The challenge can be coming up with the right solution for some of the puzzles using the abilities that Kao can do, for example, double jumping up and then attacking in the air, to hit a button high up on a wall. This simplistic move set could be seen as a bit of a letdown, more so when you compare it to a more modern game, but for younger gamers, it is plenty and when you start mixing in the elemental attacks, it can feel a little much at times. Those elemental attacks are not something that you can bust out whenever you want, instead you have to obtain them from their various locations in the levels. Once you use it, in either a fight or solving a puzzle, it is gone and until you collect another one, you are unable to make use of that elemental ability, thankfully the game supplies them pretty frequently, so no need to worry there.

Where you will need to worry, or at least pay more attention to, is the design of the levels and their reliance on the same basic methods to make your way through them. There are countless pits of liquid, sometimes water and sometimes not, that you can’t survive in, should you touch it, resulting in your being sent back to the safety of land. With the hearts that you have, you can take a few hits before losing a life and while not plentiful, you can keep replenishing your hearts without too much hassle. The problem with the combat and this the most common way of losing hearts, is that it just isn’t fun, there are some combos that you can attempt to make use of, but you are likely just going to spam the attack button, until the special bar fills up. That bar can be quite devastating, taking out all the enemies that surround you and if you have an elemental ability equipped, then you can do even more damage.

Given the game itself is inspired by its early games, you can see why they stuck with the gameplay that they did, but there are other games released in the past few years, like Yooka-Laylee that are clearly inspired by games of the past, but still found a way to make them feel modern. Kao the Kangaroo does not achieve that, it isn’t a bad game, but rather one that just feels like it would have done amazing things, had it released 20 years earlier.

One area that does shine is the games presentation, at least the visuals, because across the board the game looks amazing. I mentioned earlier that the levels have lots going on and they look a treat, even the one that has you running towards the camera looks great, not that you can stop and see. The hub locations are filled with things going on, they are not dynamic, things will play out in the same way each time you enter, but they are charming enough, that it doesn’t matter. The visual design of Kao and the rest of the crew are great, they are so well done, that they could honestly slot into the Ratchet and Clank worlds and not feel out of place.

Perhaps that is a good time to bring up the bad side of the presentation and that is the voice work, there is no nice way to say it, it sucks. Kao’s voice alone would be enough to turn people away and it the quality of the recording itself was the problem, you could argue for it, but the audio is clean, they just cast the wrong voice. Kao isn’t alone though, all the other characters suffer from the same issue, none of the voice work matches what it should be, Walt alone is proof of that. As a wise and older master of martial arts, he should sound like that, instead he speaks with a broken cadence and when paired with the voice, just makes it hard to take him seriously. The games music is quite good, each of the levels contains a catchy tune and while they won’t set the charts on fire, they fit the theme that the game is going for.

Kao the Kangaroo is a good game, there is nothing broken here, it just feels like it has released a few decades too late. The gameplay matches up perfectly with what the series brought forth when it first released and while for some, the nostalgia trip will be worth it, gameplay has evolved since then and it is a shame that this has caught up with it. The games presentation is a mix of great and not so, the visuals from the overall design to the detail in the locations are wonderful and worth exploring, the only problem is that the voice acting is so bad, it makes any cutscene you watch, well hard to watch. If you are someone who grew up on the mascot platformers of the late 90’s/early 00’s then Kao will have some appeal, but if you are a more recent gamer, it may not be as welcoming.

The Score

7.5

Review code provided by Tate Multimedia

The Pros

+The levels and hub locations are full of charm and things to find hidden about

+The gameplay is solid, if dated…

The Cons

-… however, the combat is a little underwhelming at times

-The voice work is bad and just hard to listen to, no matter the scenario