Kameo: Elements of Power

Rare began the development of Kameo when it was intended to be a Gamecube title. That plan dissolved when MS paid Rare $375 million to make exclusive titles for both Xbox and the next generation Xbox, which we now know is Xbox 360. One of the first titles Rare revealed to the world at E3 2003 was Kameo. It was up and running on Xbox hardware, and did look much better than what the Gamecube version had looked like. But, it wasn’t a favorite of the show. It had fans doubting Rare’s ability to produce AAA games. E3 2004 wasn’t much different. Xbox fans got a chance to see an updated version of Kameo and actual gameplay elements, but it still didn’t look like the classic Rare games many of us have grown to love. A week before E3 2005, Kameo was announced for the Xbox 360 platform on an MTV special. From the low resolution video clips viewers were able to see, the game looked awesome. In comes E3 2005. Microsoft Game Studios had a Samsung LCD showcasing a few upcoming Xbox 360 titles all running at 720p, Kameo was on one of them. What I saw quite frankly blew me away!

The demo of Kameo started off with her jumping from a closing bridge while fighting a group of orcs behind her. Instantly, she changes into a character called Chilla, which is an ice yeti. Chilla pulled ice spikes out and knifed them into a wall while holding him up. Right away you take note of the lighting effects displayed on the ice. Torches are lit along the wall flickering a warm orange glow onto their surroundings. The fur effect on Chilla is as amazing as his animation. Chilla can use these ice spikes to climb with but can also use them in combat by throwing them at enemies. This part of the demo takes place at night on top of a huge castle. Lightning lights up the entire environment realistically which adds a very dramatic effect to the atmosphere. The backdrop isn’t stagnant either. Dragons, crows, lightning bolts and explosions were constantly moving around the scene. The texture work in this level was absolutely incredible. This part of the demo ends with Chilla morphing into a plantlike creature that uses a boxing style technique and punishes his enemies.

The next scene really hit me hard and made me realize the amount of graphic fedility the Xbox 360 is capable of producing. Once the scene faded in, on screen was an incredible looking forest. I know many of you have seen the screens with the individual blades of grass and the projected shadows onto the grass from the trees, but once you see it in motion, there is nothing to do but open your mouth and salivate. The grass and trees sway in the wind. Hundreds of butterflies and fireflies fly around with glowing light projecting from them. In the distance you see an absolutely amazingly realized water effect. The textures on the ground again, are like nothing I have seen before.

The second to last part of the demo displayed Kameo walking into a chapel like room. The first thing you notice are the, you guessed it, amazing graphical quality. The reflection mapping on the tiles below Kameo is beautiful. The glowing light behind the alter shines through with such intensity, revealing thousands of particles in the air, made the walls and floor around the room glisten. The final level that was shown was what many of you have already seen, but in much less detail. Kameo is mounted and is on a battlefield shared with literally thousands of orc warriors, each displaying their own level of artificial intelligence. Rare calls this rendering system the “Artificial War Engine”. Kameo then plows through much of the crowd with little to no frame drop. They then bring in a thousand elf warriors to combat the orc warriors and what you have is staggering. Thousands of characters on screen each battling each other, explosions going off, bodies flipping around was like nothing I’d seen before. Kameo then dismounts from her horse and transforms into a dragon character called Ash. Ash instantly starts to spray orcs with fire as most fire breathing dragons do. Ash then transforms himself into Rubble, a pile of pointy rocks. Rubble displayed the firing attack which animates him shooting the rocks that are made up of his body. The exploding attack was the most fun to watch as Rubble shot himself in all directions at once and one of the rocks got lodged into an orcs head leaving him wandering around aimlessly. With that was the end of our demo with Kameo.

I was expecting Kameo to look good, but I was shocked at what Rare did with this game in 6 months of having a Xenon Alpha Kit. The demo showed was running at 30% capacity of what the actual Xbox 360 hardware is capable of. Yes, astounding! Make sure and put this game at the top of your list come launch time. It only gets better from here.