Kameo

In the third-person action-adventure game Kameo (pronounced "cameo"), the player controls the titular character, an elf who inadvertently sabotaged her older sister Kalus' reputation before her coronation, causing Kameo to be given the crown and the Elemental Powers that come with it instead. Feeling slighted by this, Kalus frees the troll King Thorn and forms an alliance to take back her crown and the remaining elemental sprites. Kameo uses elemental powers to transform into creatures with different abilities, which she switches between to solve puzzles and advance through the in-game world. The player controls the player-character with the left analog stick, the game's camera view with the right thumbstick, and the character attacks and abilities with the controller's triggers. The Xbox 360 controller's face buttons swap between three active, elemental powers. typifies the bright color palette for which it was known. These ten "elemental warriors" include a fire-breathing creature who lights torches, a gorilla who climbs walls and throws foes, and a plant who punches opponents. There are two each of five element types (fire, ice, plant, rock, water). Some enemies have specific weaknesses and can only be affected by specific elemental powers or hazards in the environment. The game is structured such that new character abilities unlock just as their benefits are needed to solve a puzzle. Thus the game's puzzles depend on combat more than logic. Each of the elemental forms has several ability upgrades, which the player can redeem by collecting and delivering fruit to a sacred tome called the Wotnot book. The Kameo character, herself, can move faster than the elemental warriors but has no special ability apart from breaking crates. The game begins as Kameo advances through a castle—with the help of three elemental powers—to rescue her family. As the tutorial prologue ends, Kameo loses her elemental powers and is ejected from the castle into the Enchanted Kingdom to grow stronger and try again. Kameo travels through four themed worlds (water, ice, fire, and swamp) at the outskirts of the Badlands, the overworld that connects the areas. Each of the worlds are interspersed with townsfolk and combat-oriented puzzles. Kameo can either travel to the worlds through the Badlands, where the elves and trolls skirmish, or warp from the Enchanted Kingdom. A help system built into the game provides hints or direct solutions for struggling players. Throughout the kingdom, Kameo finds and defeats the seven shadow creatures each guarding one of her elemental powers, while saving her family earning the other 3. The player can slow time by landing successive hits and kills on enemies to fill an on-screen meter. The player can return to levels to attempt a higher score. The game's action sequences, more than half of the game, require the player to defeat groups of enemies before proceeding to the next room, and ultimately leading to a boss battle. Kameo has a two-player, split-screen cooperative gameplay mode in which players can fight alongside each other during the action scenes. Rare added support for online cooperative play (via Xbox Live or System Link) as a downloadable patch following the game's release. == Development ==

Rare's protracted development of Kameo spanned four consoles: Nintendo's Nintendo 64 Andreas felt that the effort to conceal the fairy Kameo as an elf was unsuccessful and that the character did not match the Xbox's first-person shooter demographic. Rare and Microsoft Studios released Kameo alongside the Xbox 360 console as a launch title: The game was available for purchase in retail stores ahead of the console's launch date. At release, it was sold at a lower price than other Xbox 360 games. Audio Steve Burke served as the audio lead on the Kameo project, his first at Rare, for which he composed its soundtrack and contributed to its sound effects and voiceovers. As the game was originally planned for the GameCube, the first few months of development appeared to have no support for audio above the MIDI sample-style compositions characteristic of Nintendo's previous console, the Nintendo 64. The game's first demo at the 2001 Electronic Entertainment Expo used this type of audio. Of the first pieces he wrote for this project in the early months of 2001, some were scrapped. Others were re-recorded as streaming audio, which plays pre-recorded audio files, when the developers added support. It became Rare's first orchestral soundtrack. Other Rare staff members contributed their talents to the recording process, such as trumpet and voice recordings. == Reception ==

A year prior to Kameo release, GamesRadar wrote that while they highly anticipated the title and expected it to be of high quality, they thought the game's continual delays would likely hurt the final product. Closer to release, Tom Bramwell (Eurogamer) added that he had expected the game to be the best among the Xbox 360 launch titles. Kameo core gameplay concept brought his anticipation to par with that customary for The Legend of Zelda titles, and he thought the game would reap the benefits of its long development through refined audiovisuals. awkward controls, Kasavin (GameSpot) wrote that added choral tracks during intense in-game moments gave the game epic overtones, == Downloadable content ==

The game was released without online support for co-operative play, but Rare promised to add the feature as a free patch and did so in April 2006. It also added new achievements. Expert Mode remasters six of the game's levels with added difficulty. Time Attack Mode lets two co-op players (local or online) attempt to finish levels as fast as possible. Rune Battle Mode pits two co-op players against each other to collect the most rune items. Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica wrote that Rare "did a good job" of supporting Kameo with post-release content. He liked the idea of the time-based mode and thought that the Expert mode would allay criticism of the game's easiness. == Legacy ==

In retrospect, Kotaku wrote that Kameo would be remembered as "that pretty Xbox 360 launch game", which IGN confirmed a year after its release. While some games journalists reported unfavorable views towards Kameo, they also reported its fanbase to be dedicated. Other games journalists described the game as underrated. Kameo was among the first batch of games to be sold digitally with the Xbox 360's Games on Demand service in August 2009. Kameo was later included in Rare Replay, a compilation of 30 Rare titles, released for the Xbox One in August 2015. The Rare Replay emulated release includes all original downloadable content for free and lets players migrate their Xbox 360 cloud saves to their Xbox One. Stephen Totilo (Kotaku) was surprised at his positive response to replaying Kameo on Rare Replay, having found the introductory stage off-putting when he sampled it at the Xbox 360's launch. He planned to return to the title. In June 2019, the game was enhanced to run at native 4K resolution on Xbox One X. The original's lackluster sales also contributed to the cancelation. The public had heard reports of its cancelation during the 2009 restructure and had seen an artwork leak in 2011, but the cancellation was not confirmed until Microsoft Studios vice president Phil Spencer did so in 2013. 1UP.com questioned whether Kameo needed a sequel at all. apart from a brief video clip. Rare later released a follow-up making-of Kameo video in March 2016. The sequel's video did not elaborate on why Microsoft canceled the project. == References ==