Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.Did you miss your activation email?
May 12, 2005 - While at Microsoft last week, we witnessed the only playable Xbox 360 game, a revamped revamped version of Rare\'s one-time GameCube project, Kameo: Elements of Power. Rare\'s multi-character action-platformer was very good looking on Xbox, and it\'s now even more gorgeous on Xbox 360. It\'s as if the game\'s graphics alone were pumped up ten-fold.Kameo\'s glittering faerie land is now incredibly detailed and genuinely gorgeous, as if it weren\'t already before. The range of detail is seen in the environment, first and foremost. You\'ll see individual blades of bending grass, ferns with distinct stems and unfurling fronds, mathematically correct moving water that accurately reflects and refracts sunlight and the riverbed beneath it, and hundreds of pollen particles shown through beams of shining sunlight.The other impressive aspect of Kameo displayed during the eight-minute demo was the enormous amount of characters that can be pushed simultaneously onscreen. Much like the last scene in Peter Jackson\'s theatrical adaptation of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, when Aragorn and Denathor mount their horses and ride out into the order clamoring orcs with swords swinging, we watched Kameo in a similar scenario. The camera focused on Kameo on horseback and another NPC character riding alongside her. The camera was zoomed in close, showing the pair on the top of a large hill. As it slowly moved down the hill, we began to realize there weren\'t just a dozen of so orc-like creatures charging up the mound -- there were hundreds. The camera panned down the hill closely at first, and then slowly zoomed out, pulling back to reveal literally hundreds of armored, sword-swinging enemies all moving independently and pushing up the hill at Kameo and her buddy.Once the in-game cutscene ended, Microsoft VP Peter Moore took the controls and charged Kameo down the hill, parting the sea of creatures with sheer force. The faster she went, the easier it was to cut through the masses. When Kameo slowed down, the orcs had a better chance to connect, and she fell off her horse a few times. Once off the horse, Kameo took a beating, but with some quick jabs and attacks, she was able to clear a space to re-mount her horse and start the fight with a more equestrian advantage.In short, Kameo looks very much like it did before, and we\'re now ready to play it. Moore insisted the game is scheduled to ship at launch, although technically, "launch" to Microsoft is open for a three-month window -- essentially anything before Christmas. So, we\'ll go once again to E3 this year and play it. Cross your fingers for launch!
May 18, 2005 - Up until today, I had close to little or no interest in Kameo. In fact, I can recall going out of my way to actually skip over the featured build at that time in favor of Conker: Live & Reloaded. (Is that ever coming out guys? But in all seriousness, this year I decided to be a bit less restrictive with my tastes and embrace a broader palette of games featured on the floor. In case you haven\'t been following our coverage over the past few months, Kameo took up vacancy on the GameCube and Xbox platform. Unfortunately for Nintendo adventurers, the game never saw the light of day and the Xbox edition was put on hold indefinitely. As you can probably see where this story is going - Kameo ended up popping up on Microsoft\'s upcoming, sexy multimedia gaming console, the Xbox 360. Kameo has been touted as one of Rare\'s most ambitious titles, promising to offer gamers a healthy mix of exploration and puzzle-solving challenges. The concept is definitely one of the more unique premises I\'ve come across - as players take control of the title\'s female star and morphs into a variety of monsters. I am not sure why she gets a kick out of taking so many forms, but that didn\'t dilute my newfound enthusiasm. According to the demo rep, Kameo will be able to transform into 10 different creatures including a fire-breathing dragon, an armadillo, tumbleweed and a rock beast. Very creative stuff. Chilla is particularly interesting since he has the ability to fire ice-based projectiles and also use his artic skills to scale up walls and other objects. We also got a peek at Puppaweed, who\'s equipped with boxing attacks, can burrow underground to explore for hidden items or attack unsuspecting enemies from below. Each character offers a unique skill that will help players to advance through each level. The trick is finding out which character you require in order to complete your objectives. Kameo encourages players to explore the various possibilities, which in turn will reward them with new skills that are acquired in an RPG-like fashion. Taking advantage of the Xbox 360 hardware, Kameo definitely doesn\'t disappoint in the visual department. Every object is rendered beautifully and boasts an exquisite amount of detail and color. Kameo also incorporates a real-time day and night cycle, showing off the game\'s marvelous display of lighting and shadow effects. High-definition gaming makes it hard to look back on inferior picture standards. And while it\'s best that you enjoy the game with a HDTV, players can be rest assured that Kameo will look awesome on any television set. Really. And like those infomercials, that\'s not all…I also got a chance to check one more remarkable feature showcasing the 360\'s hardware performance. In the past, you may recall how difficult it was for a game console to feature multiple objects on screen at once. But thanks to Rare\'s proprietary Artificial War Engine, Kameo can pull this feat off without breaking a sweat. With this powerful graphics tool, it\'s actually possible for a bevy of active characters to be on screen during any given time. Just how many you ask? Try a thousand. Poor Kameo, being outnumbered decided to call upon her friends to aid her - a thousand elves, to be exact. To illustrate a proper reference, think of the hordes of orcs that Aragon and company went against in The Return of the King.And this is just an alpha running at 30% folks. So just imagine how much more impressive the game will be when it\'s completed? Based on what I glimpsed today, Kameo: Elements of Power is shaping up to be one of 360\'s solid titles.
He showed us the Xbox version of Kameo on one screen, and side-by-side, showed us the Xbox 360 version. The difference was remarkable. Remarkable. And he made sure to clarify to us that this version is only running on a Mac dev kit that\'s only harnessing 30-35% of the Xbox 360\'s power. Sounds like a familiar theme, doesn\'t it?It is. What I saw behind closed doors, however, looks absolutely amazing. Kameo is one of those games designed with a fantasy style art design. It\'s pretty, idyllic, and faerie-like. It\'s not really for the Gears of War crowd, but the broad appeal of this game to people of all ages is strong. The elements that looked so good were the combined volume of things moving in the background simultaneously, the high level of detail on every single object, character, structure, and enemy creature. The use of parallax texturing is incredibly impressive, giving the roads, walls and structures amazing depth, volume and depth, and reflective surfaces without costing the developers an iota of RAM.The levels are massive. Massive, I tell you. And what\'s more, every single thing you can see in them you can reach. Again, like Perfect Dark Zero, there are no flat backgrounds and artistic renderings of mountains in the back. Everything you can see you can reach. Another visual asset that\'s been added in includes the realtime change of day to night and back again. Because the lighting is so good and is reflected on everything, and because of the special quality of Normal Mapping, which refracts light from every angle, the overall sense of lighting is light years ahead of anything you\'ve seen on Xbox.
Then, in a scripted scene, we watched several ships swiftly making their way toward the battle scene. Another 1,000 ors show up, making the scene larger. Finally, to top the whole thing off, a huge army of 1,000 elves appears to fight them off. According to Rare, there were literally 4,000 creatures on screen at one time. Andreas said that they could potentially push 4,000 to 9,000 creatures on-screen if the final kit is as powerful as Microsoft says it is. That\'s in addition to the full movement of grass, swaying trees, moving water, flying creatures, and giant fiery balls of fire shooting across the sky from the volcano.
