Pretty average platformer.
There are issues in this game, camera is sometimes not working too well, pretty often you need to try and error on which element of the world you can jump or can't (because there is an invisible wall there).

Story is also not complicated, without story game would feel the same.

It was nice to go back to this series, but i think Kao deserves better.

If you made an average 3D platformer and then went back to take all the fun out, you'd be left with something resembling this game.

There is a weird perception in the dev community that what people liked about Mario 64 or Banjo Kazooie (games from the golden era of 3D platformer "collectathons") was that there were a lot of things to collect.

Collecting things is just a means to an end. A goal to give the player that allows for the real gameplay to take place, the platforming.

Good 3D platformers have fun movement that makes the simple act of running around collecting random stuff engaging. The classic scenario for someone booting up SM64 for the first time was that they spent the first 10 minutes just running and jumping around outside the castle before ever stepping foot into the first level.

Kao is not fun to play. The movement is slow and straightforward, with no interesting movement options. The jumping is imprecise, with Kao clipping through or sliding off platforms constantly. They didnt even bother trying to make combat somewhat unique. Just mash the punch button.

The only thing this game has going for it is the fact that the devs filled each if its levels with lots of things to collect. That's it.

Even the most die hard fans of games with collectables will have a hard time getting through this one. Not because of well placed secrets or clever level design though, but because you'll be battling trying to stay awake while playing it.

Kao the Kangaroo é um platformer 3D bem decente pra o que se propõe. É curto, fácil, divertido e sem muitas inovações. Em vários momentos me senti jogando um jogo de PS2, no bom e no mau sentido. O jogo tem bastante bug visual e de áudio, cutscenes com diálogos meio sem graça e história super previsível. Mas a jogabilidade é refinada, e movimentação e combate são bem satisfatórios. Dá pra enxergar claramente inspirações em outras franquias como Crash Bandicoot, Rayman e até Sonic.

Ver um personagem das antigas sendo revivido e homenageado com um novo jogo é sempre legal e reboots como esse são sempre muito bem-vindos.

Keep 'em coming!

I'm a big 3D platformer fan, and I've always wanted to play the original Kao the Kangaroo games (or at least the second one, anyway), so when I heard the series was getting a reboot, I was excited. However, I ended up with mixed feelings about this game. On one hand, it seriously lacks polish and is extremely janky, but on the other hand, there was definitely some sincere effort put in here.

Gameplay:
Kao the Kangaroo is a 3D platformer where your goal is to make it from point A to B in a level, collecting things and fighting enemies along the way. The movement feels pretty good. There's some standard mechanics like double jumping, rolling, grappling hooks, ground pounds, and so on. There's also a spin attack you can perform in the air to give you a little extra height. My only issue with the platforming is that ledge grabbing can feel extremely janky. You have to stand and jump at a certain angle to grab onto ledges, and it can get really exhausting to fight with sometimes. The grappling hook is also inconsistent, and I often fell to my death because of it. There's a lot of actions in general that just never feel quite right.

There's a small emphasis on combat in this game, though it's nothing too complex. You'll mainly be mashing the attack button, but you can also build up a combo meter to unleash a finisher, which slightly helps in breaking up the monotony. There's a surprising amount of enemy variety too. The enemy types didn't really shake things up, but the effort is still commendable. Though the combat tries not to overstay its welcome, I still found myself getting pretty fed up with it by the end of the game. The boss fights are okay at least, requiring some thought with the use of Kao's abilities.

The level design is fairly competent. Levels are a decent length with interesting, though sometimes confusing, paths that branch out into hidden collectibles. The levels feel like they take good advantage of all of Kao's abilities, including the elemental power-ups. The power-ups might have been my favorite mechanic, as the ability to store up to three and use them at any time led to some creative moments. The wind(?) power-up was kind of questionable though, as it wasn't implemented very well. The one thing about the level design that really bothered me was the amount of breakable boxes. There's piles of breakable boxes around every corner that drop tons of coins when destroyed. Luckily, they can be ignored since coins are a non-essential collectible, but seeing them everywhere gets old fast. Speaking of collectibles, they all kind of feel pointless. The runes unlock new levels, but you never have to go out of your way to collect them. I'm unsure of what the purpose of the gems and letters are, but I'm guessing they unlock more costumes which you can buy with coins. The only useful collectibles are the heart pieces to expand your health bar, and getting more hearts is nice because for some reason this game has lives, and it's easy to take a lot of damage from falling due to this game's plethora of glitches.

Story:
Kao the Kangaroo's story is about Kao going on a journey to save his dad and sister. He is accompanied by his mentor and a talking pair of gloves that are connected to a magical force. The story tries to have some twists and turns, but nothing ever feels like it has much weight. The ending definitely had me scratching my head, and I felt like I missed something. I didn't care for any of the characters either, not even Kao. It was underwhelming, even by simple kid-friendly platformer standards.

Sound and visuals:
The sound design is bad. A lot of sound effects seemed outright missing, and the mixing was pretty off. It isn't too in-your-face with its inconsistency, thankfully, though during the ending cutscene it got laughably bad. It was hard to hear any of the voices. Speaking of voices, the voice acting is pretty mediocre too, and the writing certainly doesn't help. Luckily, the music was okay.

On the surface, the visuals are quite good. The art style is pleasant, the environments look nice, and the character designs are pretty alright (mostly... there's a few really bad ones). The animations are where things fall flat though. Kao's core animations in gameplay are fine, but everything else is pretty sloppy. Sometimes I wasn't sure if my game was glitching or if an animation was really that bad. I guess it doesn't interfere with gameplay, but it is an unfortunate part of an already janky mess.

Conclusion:
Kao the Kangaroo is full of jank, glitches, and an overall lack of polish, which is really disappointing, because with some creases ironed out, this could have been quite good even if kind of generic. It's obvious that there was heart put into this game. I was surprised by how many levels and hub worlds there were, and to have them all be pretty well designed and of a decent length was nice. It really felt like the developers cared and wanted to make something cool. Sadly, there's just nothing here to justify recommending it over other 3D platformers of a similar price range out there.

Nothing incredibly amazing nor horrifically bad, perfectly average. Poor voice acting and writing, cut-scenes were really begging to be skipped. Story was also weak, and I know you don't come to these for story but if you're gonna add in cutscenes and dialogue then you gotta make something good for it. It's never established why the bad things are bad or what the Kao's impact on the world is. We're just told that he saved the forest and the ice slopes when in my mind all I know is I came in and punched a bunch of random people until I had enough runes to meet the boss.

Controls and movement all feel fine, though some things are a little unforgiving. If your hooks and ledge grabs are wonky I'd like to have slightly more forgiving aspects to like falling in water and dying. Would have loved a Battle for Bikini Bottom type of thing where touching water damaged you and sent you flying back first. Instead of just instantly dying and drowning the second you touch water. Which definitely didn't make me rage-quit the DLC after dying to a bad case of foot-touched-the-ocean several times.

I know the original Kao games weren't anything special so I can't judge this too hard but yeah. Solidly decent game. Platforming and gameplay is fine and that's what really matters.

I'm not sure what was worse, the acting or the lack of anything interesting in the game. There was one interesting level, the ice slopes one, but that was just because it was something different. The game has no interesting movement options and no way to have any fun, as invisible walls will block off any thoughts of creativity.

The characters are really flat too. You could do a lot with a platformer starring a Kangaroo with boxing gloves, and they chose to do practically nothing. He just spouts the most unfunny dialogue or empty eye rolling pop culture references. in this awful voice that I can only describe as "teenage boy struggling with his identity and a cold at the same time". The villain, who comes off as an unfortunate stereotype in his own way (I didn't even know he was supposed to be a monkey until I looked it up he looked like something else), is empty too and only gets a motive in the last 5 seconds. There's this idea where all the fighting schools are turned into other businesses, but nowhere do I see why that's a bad thing.

The collectables are also rather pointless, as you will get literally all of the Runes just by playing through the linear levels, the scrolls give you lore, and none of the other collectables like diamonds or KAO do anything and seem to just be there for the sake of having more collectables. It's also rather unpolished, with no proper transitions, loud sound effects in cutscenes, lots of missing sound effects in boss fights, hell I even took a walk below the death plane once. Oh, and I got a crash on the 3rd Boss fight. Can't forget that.

All in all, I haven't played the game that this is a sequel/reboot of, but if this is any indicator then perhaps it should have stayed in the past.

A hop n' bop run of the mill 3D platformer that's inoffensive, but a decent time. It doesn't really do anything crazy or noteworthy which isn't a bad thing at all. This new game feels like a GCN/PS2 era game but with a higher budget with feel & visuals, this is a fairly pretty game fwiw.

It isn't perfect though, audio mixing is kinda jank in cutscenes. I didn't mind the voice acting, but it definitely provided some unintentionally funny moments but was still charming. Yeah some outdated trendy references were there but its only like what, 3-5 lines of dialogue in the game? It didn't bother me too much at all bro lmao people overblown the hell out of it.

Levels were fun to traverse and Kao was fun to control. He has a pretty standard moveset (he always did to my knowledge) so it was nice they kept that intact while adding some new things that felt right for this interpretation of him. He controls good! Music was aight.

Overall, while the game is solid and had a bit of tedium/repetition to it, this was a decently fine game. Its not some cashgrab, it was made out of love from the developers.

I mean hell they re-released his games on PC for basically pennies just so people can play em, they provided and made what they wanted out of love and not greed. I wish that genuine care still existed in the games industry (outside of indie devs of course they rule).

The platformer genre is a favorite of mine, thanks largely to its wide array of colorful settings and characters. This reboot of the 2000 game of the same name manages to fulfill what makes the genre such an entertaining piece of media, but with a few stumbles that make it far from a worthy experience for everyone.

First of all, Kao the Kangaroo offers two largely different experiences: one that is lively and fun, while the other is cringe-inducing.

The best parts of the game is, of course, its gameplay that provides a childlike wonder and enjoyment. This is further true thanks to its sampling of gameplay mechanics from the Crash Bandicoot remakes and gorgeous artstyle of the remakes of Spyro the Dragon trilogy.

And although there are only a small amount of worlds and levels to explore, they all take around 15 to 20 minutes to finish, and there are also some hidden collectibles and secret challenges to discover as well.

However, despite the fun nature of the gameplay, the story and voice acting's terrible quality take away from what would have otherwise been a promising platformer.

Many games from previous years have offered an immersive experience that rivals that of seen in movies, so it came as such a surprise to hear just how terrible all of the voice actors were in this game, not helped by just how terrible the script is. The jokes, if you could call it that, are references, but some of them are so out of date that I don't even know what they are referencing, and when they do reference something recent, it ends up being cringy. The delivery is also so terrible that most jokes don't land at all.

I haven't even started with its numerous technical issues, from severe pop-ins to a lack of animations for environments and taking damage.

It's also so weird how, literally, not 5 seconds after the credits rolled and you talked to Kao's mother, she mentioned how your missing father and sister still haven't returned. The endgame content is so underwhelming that the developers didn't even bother changing the characters' dialogue after finishing the game.

Kao the Kangaroo is a platformer game with a lot of potential but needs a little more time in the oven if it wants to stand between its contemporaries.