Kao the Kangaroo Review – Up for the Count

The 3D platformer sequence Kao the Kangaroo returns in an all-new experience that sends you leaping and punching your way by a selection of colourful stages.

Kao the Kangaroo
Developer: Tate Multimedia
Cost: $30
System: Computer, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox A person, Xbox Sequence X|S, Switch (reviewed)
MonsterVine was presented with a Change code for evaluation.

Kao the Kangaroo is a revival of the aged 3D platformer series of the exact same identify. This new entry in the series follows Kao as he sets out on a journey to discover his sister and father, who have absent missing. Together the way, he picks up the Eternal Gloves, boxing gloves with a mysterious power and a link to the Eternal Entire world that threatens to consume every thing.

The tale is fine, but nothing at all distinctive. Some plot points could have been fleshed out much better, and I would have favored to see more interactions involving Kao and the gloves, because traveling with vaguely-malevolent talking boxing gloves feels like the ideal possibility for banter. I also wasn’t outrageous about the occasional references to well-known lifestyle or social media. As it is, the tale serves as an excuse to vacation from area to place.

The platforming feels quite superior, if a small uncomfortable when it comes to grabbing ledges. You have a double soar, a floor pound, and a few moves only relevant in specified scenarios, this kind of as swinging across gaps at grappling points. Battle, in the meantime, is made up of a 3-hit punching combo and a number of other moves, and it feels really sleek. You also can select up elemental fees for your gloves, which are employed to activate switches and get previous road blocks. The aspect you want is normally nearby, while, and it’s not attainable to waste charges, so it definitely will become a make any difference of figuring out how to access the elemental cost when you need to have 1.

Stages have rather linear constructions. There are side paths alongside the way, which you can examine to discover a lot more of the game’s numerous collectibles, but in the end you are trying to reach the conclusion of each and every stage. However, every single team of degrees is accessed from a hub environment. These hub regions are more open up and encourage exploration to discover all of their collectibles.

The most important collectibles you will have to have to acquire are runes, which unlock new areas. Runes are placed through the major path of each individual phase, so accumulating them is quite simple. In the hubs, you’ll want to research a little bit more cautiously, although some runes only spawn in the hub right after you’ve concluded specified levels. In addition to runes, you are going to also obtain coins, jewels, and scrolls, as very well as the letters K-A-O in every single stage.

Cash can be utilized at the hub areas’ store to buy more life, coronary heart pieces to boost your complete overall health, and optional costumes for Kao. These costumes come to be out there for acquire as you entire levels and discover sets of K-A-O. In the meantime, scrolls provide lore snippets about locations, figures, and enemies. I’m not essentially absolutely sure what jewels do. There are a great deal of them, but I never noticed a use for them further than being collectibles.

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All round, Kao the Kangaroo is a reasonably effortless activity. There are optional side concentrations that will take a look at your platforming or combat skills a little bit far more, although fulfilling you with cash and jewels, but excess life are so considerable that I never ever felt in hazard of working out. Boss levels also boost the problem by including a little bit of a puzzle ingredient, but they by no means get way too rough.

I appreciate 3D platformers. I delight in exploring amounts and grabbing every collectible I can see. Despite its quick size, Kao the Kangaroo known as out to my 3D platformer loving coronary heart. I was pretty pleased with it until finally I ran into complex issues. Performance on the Change can be tough at situations. The frame amount will get choppy when way too substantially is happening on-display at as soon as, which didn’t hassle me also substantially until eventually the last place, in which it got specifically negative. The audio also glitched out in the closing phases.

Even so, I ran into a significantly worse trouble than that. Kao the Kangaroo solely utilizes automobile-will save, yet the auto-help you save method has a bug where by it stops functioning. When I was midway through the match, I took a crack, only to locate that when I reloaded, my progress had reverted back to the initially phase. I didn’t dare give up the match through my 2nd attempt, but just after the conclude credits sent me back to the title screen, I reloaded out of curiosity and noticed that I was as soon as once again in an early space. This bug soured what was in any other case a excellent practical experience, so I hope this concern will be patched quickly. (As of the time of writing this, the bugs have been mounted in the Steam, Xbox, PS5, and PS4 versions.)

Apart from the help save bug, Kao the Kangaroo is a fun 3D platformer. Despite the fact that the story is a minimal bland, it would make up for it with entertaining phases and a good deal of collectibles to search for out.

The Last Phrase
If you like 3D acquire-a-thon platformers, Kao the Kangaroo is value taking a appear at as soon as its bugs are patched. It might not carry just about anything new to the genre, but it is a short slice of what will make 3D platforming pleasurable.

-MonsterVine Score: 4 out of 5 – Good