Kao the Kangaroo is one of the hundreds of Sonic rip-off characters that were a big thing basically from the Genesis to the PS2. It’s one I didn’t end up playing, and some of his games had weird releases. The second game in the series came out in Poland 2-3 years earlier than other regions, and the third one only saw a very limited Europe/Australia release, but again only some time after its Polish release. The games look fine though, I just never ended up playing any of them.

But because I’m looking for stuff to play (and Epic Game Store has 25% off almost everything right now so that reduced the price of an already cheap game), I figured I’d pick it up. So let’s see if this is good!

Developer and Publisher: Tate Multimedia
Release date: May 27th, 2022
Platforms: Switch, PC, PS4, Xbone, PS5, Xbox X/S  (PC version reviewed)
Genre: 3D Platformer

Review

So you play as Kao (pronounced K.O.), a young kangaroo who decides to go on an adventure because he had a dream of his sister being in trouble. In spirit form, his sister leads him to a pair of cursed boxing gloves that talk to him, which used to belong to his dad who is ALSO missing BTW, and he wears them to wield their power. Seems some crystals are controlling some of the peoples’ minds, so you use the gloves to purify them, as he goes to different places in hopes of finding his father and sister. There’s not too much to the story but it’s fine. Graphically the game looks pretty good, it’s nice and colorful for the most part, though some of the character models are a bit weird, like Kao’s eyebrows just being rectangles just pulled/stretched out of his head’s model. Most of the areas look pretty good, with most levels looking pretty unique compared to others. On the audio side though, this game is kinda ass. The music is largely unexciting, even during boss battles, and there’s this weird lack of transition to other music. So you’ll have meh music during a cutscene, which continues through the final boss battle, which continues through in the post-final-boss battle victory cutscene… It’s really weird. I’ve had moments where audio wouldn’t load at all for some sounds, or the sounds used end up being… not exactly appropriate to the action on screen (a lot of the sounds not being as intense as the action). I’ve had boss battles with no music at all, or a giant screaming gorilla with no sound when he’s screaming… There’s definitely something off with the audio in this game.

PC performance is great in this game, though a bit questionable at parts. With a mild overclocking, my 3700X/3060Ti PC ran this at 1440p 220fps average. FPS does go down in bigger more open areas, but never lower than ~170fps, which is fine by me. That said though, things that are far enough from the camera do run at lower framerate than what’s closer and it’s very noticeable. This is a fairly normal trick to keep overall FPS up, but this tends to be something you’ll see on Playstations and Nintendo Switches to be able to run games at a semi-stable 30-60fps since they have weak hardware, not something you see as frequently on PC. Not a big problem, just something to note. I will also note the game crashed once, but I think it’s a problem with my PC rather than the game itself.

I will note some technical issues. First is that there seems to be issues with saves, and I have actually experienced that. Thankfully I was already done with the game, but once I finished the game and reloaded my save, I was back to the second area of the game (the hungry forest) with all of my progress past that gone. The devs are looking into this, but it should’ve been fixed pre-release. I also hear people have issues getting trophies/achievements which… whatever, it’s a pointless feature that should be making its way out of gaming anyways. Before loading cutscenes, the game does load the area you’ll be playing in afterwards, but you’ll see that for a second or two before the cutscene finally loads in. There’s one part where I jumped off a ledge that you hang off of, but when I got on the ground I could no longer move. There’s a level where there were straight up not enough fire elements around to do what was needed to both progress and also get all the “secret” stuff (OR maybe I died and lost my elements, but those didn’t respawn? Not entirely sure what happened). Thankfully you keep the pickups you grabbed already if you reset a level, so I was able to reset and finish the level. Jumping off hooks is weird because sometimes the game will just send you flying in the wrong direction. I talked about the audio design being kinda meh already, but another thing regarding audio is that sometimes some sounds go super loud and crazy and nonsensical. Namely the one time that was a bit more noticeable was the game going super-loud and playing a specific incorrect sound when dodging in shallow water (the splashing tracking effect was also not properly following Kao at that time). There’s also some more general normal shit going on, like weird texture pop-in here and there (nothing too bad) or level geometry not having accurate hitboxes so you can totally walk on nothing, but that’s not worth complaining about.

So gameplay-wise, this is pretty much a Crash-style 3D platformer with linear levels. The levels ARE less linear than Crash, but they’re still pretty much straight lines, with some rooms/areas that are a bit more open to hide secrets. You basically go from one side of the level to the end in a fairly-linear fashion, but there’s sometimes some hidden (or not so hidden) paths to get collectibles. Some levels have multiple paths, usually you have to do all of them to open the main path to the end or something. Outside of the levels is a few small, lame hub worlds. You need to find Rune Crystals in levels and in these hubs, and when you have enough you can unlock the next level.

Kao has a few abilities. He can double jump, ground pound, tail whip in the air, a punch combo on the ground and a dodge roll. That’s about it! The punch combo is always the same, though if you press in the direction of an enemy while punching another enemy, you get a quick dash attack towards that enemy if it’s close enough. Jumping feels good and give you decent air control, and you do have the ability to hang on to ledges so if you miss a jump by just a bit you can save yourself. Oh and the tail attack in the air can reflect projectiles. Not something you do much, it’s possible you won’t ever do it until there’s a boss battle where you have to.

Kao doesn’t learn any new abilities as you progress. The boxing gloves do have the power to absorb elements, which appear in the form of floating balls. Each gives you one “ammo”, which you can get 3 of max. Each element has a different use. Fire burns wood (either used to destroy boards that are locking doors, or to start fires that power moving platforms), ice freezes water, and wind lets you move some things that are far away… wind is dumb. The whole element thing is used for very contextual puzzles that kinda solve themselves. “Oh there’s a fire, let’s look for something to burn”. Oh, and there’s boomerangs. Much like the elements, you use them to hit faraway targets that are right next to where you find the boomerang (and you can combine the boomerang with elements, for even more self-solving puzzles).

Each level has a few things to find. The main thing is the rune thingies, since you need them to progress. There’s heart pieces, 4 gives you an extra heart so the game becomes easy mode. There’s 3 letters that spell out KAO, which I think unlocks costumes at the store I think. There’s coins all over the place, to buy stuff at the store (the only thing that matters is 2 heart pieces in each hub area). There’s scrolls… they give you lore for some reason. Most of the collectibles are pretty useless, but if you like finding stuff, there you go.

The boss battles are actually pretty decent. Tougher than anything else in the game, but fun to fight.. nothing to add about them.

Overall

This game was pretty fun. A bit short and easy, which is fine by me. I’d pretty much put it at roughly the same level as any Crash game (with less pointless “completionist” garbage), though less polished.

If I’d change anything, being able to gain new abilities would be nice, as the elemental “powers” are very contextual and a bit too “baby’s first puzzle game” in complexity. Also, of course, is the gaggle of technical issues which weren’t TOO bothersome except the one time I had to reset a level because there were no fire elements for me to absorb, but are still worth mentioning (especially the save issue which is a bit of a game-breaker right now).

This one does get a recommendation from me if you want a nice quick weekend game. Not a high priority, but it is 30$ US so it’s not a big spending (and you can pay less if you get it on EGS during the coupon sale). Once the game has a patch out to deal with the save issues, it’s pretty much worth getting.