Video game publisher Titus was never one that I associated with quality. That’s why I had low hopes for Kao the Kangaroo on the Sega Dreamcast. This 3D platformer was published by them. Upon release it recieved mixed reviews. This is yet another reason I had little hope for it because most games of this type don’t age particularly well. Nonetheless I decided to give it a try. Kao the Kangaroo is certainly not an amazing game, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected.
Kao is, as you may have guessed, a kangaroo and serves as the protagonist of this game. He’s a kangaroo with boxing gloves who can jump, kick and punch. The boxing gloves are because kangaroos have been known to punch during fights. Whatever. It’s not completely out of left field, at least. Either way, the game begins as all of his fellow marsupials are captured and he’s just the hero to save them. Boxing gloves… sorry, I struggled with how cheesy that was.
As the super marsupial your goal in every stage is to make it from the start to the end. The environments are pretty straightforward most of the time. For the most part it feels like you’re running through corridors. This was in the days where exploration based gameplay was becoming popular, and given the upgrade in hardware it’s surprising they didn’t make this one more open ended. Kao has the typical arsenal of tricks up his sleeve. He can jump abnormally high, punch, whip his tail, and with power-ups can shoot boxing gloves at his foes. You also collect coins to gain extra lives, and there are a few power-ups that are short lived. It’s not original, but it’s fine.
The game itself is a pretty typical 3D platformer. It’s so standard that it borrows elements from just about everything that was popular at the time. Remember the slides in Super Mario 64? It’s got that. How about the sequences in Crash Bandicoot wherein you run into the camera away from an environmental hazard? That too made the cut. Hang gliding? Well, you get the idea. It copies so much that Kao the Kangaroo really struggles to carve out it’s own identity. You could just play the titles that it steals elements from and have more fun. It does everything, but nothing particularly well.
So it’s not a great game, but is there something salvageable here? You bet. Kao the Kangaroo is actually moderately enjoyable. The constant switch of gameplay styles keeps things very fresh. I was actually pretty interested in seeing what it had to offer next. Furthermore I didn’t hate the level design. Each area of the game is well populated with enemies and environmental hazards. The best part? No level overstays its welcome. There’s no area of the game that takes longer than a few minutes to complete. Modern developers could learn a thing or two from this approach.
Thematically the game is pretty decent too. There’s pretty good variety here. The game starts off grounded in reality with tropical based stages, but soon you’ll be hopping and bopping through the tundra, lava filled caves, outer space, and more. There’s pretty much no transition between these which can be pretty weird, but I couldn’t be bothered to care. I went in expecting there to be just tropical based stages. I know, it doesn’t make much sense for a kangaroo to be stomping around in the snow and ice, but it’s a 3D platformer so I’m willing to cut it some slack here.
That’s a lot of positivity. Let’s move on to another of Kao the Kangaroo’s flaws. The controls are less than decent. Instead of giving you full freedom of movement you’re instead stuck with what feels like are light tank controls. You have to turn Kao around in order to move him forward. That doesn’t sound like a big deal but it can be nightmarish at times because you have no camera controls. You have to face him in the direction you want to move, and then wait for the camera to swirl behind him.
The first few stages are forgiving for the impatient, but later on the viewpoint is absolutely necessary or you’ll fall to your doom. The biggest offender however is the ‘chase sequences.’ When you’re running from the camera you still hold up to move forward. It’s tough to get used to, but it sort of works after a while. Still, this was overlooked.
Kao the Kangaroo has to be very close in order to hit his opponents. This is another reason the camera sucks. There’s a surprising amount of precision required. The game offsets this by giving you a liberal life bar (in the form of a heart at the top of the screen that drains as you’re hit). It’s still annoying. Furthermore it feels like the ground is covered in glue. He (or she? I don’t know) moves in a very stiff fashion. Personally, I would expect a kangaroo to be more nimble. I don’t expect him to run like Sonic but I can’t help but feel Kao was slowed down in order to make the game last longer. Even with this it’s short and can be beat in just a few hours.
I hold Dreamcast games to a pretty high standard as far as graphics go. With that said Kao the Kangaroo is both good and bad. I really liked how colorful absolutely everything is. Furthermore the developers used a pretty advanced lighting engine and took great advantage of it. Unfortunately the game is pretty low as far as polygon count goes. Most launch games on the console looked better. This, paired with the enclosed environments makes for a pretty unimpressive graphic engine. Kao the Kangaroo looks like a game that could have been pulled off on the Nintendo 64.
The soundtrack is even more disappointing than the graphics. The developers went with midi style compositions, and not in a good way. I expect redbook audio for a game released this late. There’s a fair share of bleeps and blips that just plain seem out of place. Thankfully there’s no voice acting (I’m sure it would have been nightmarish). With that said some of the compositions are decent but again, highly derivative. There’s nothing here that carves out an identity for the game.
I had pretty low expectations for this game. Kao the Kangaroo had a lot working against it before I even powered on the console. It managed to overcome some of what plagued the genre at the time of its release, but in the process it lost its identity. Kao the Kangaroo is a very basic, simple, and generic platformer. You could literally throw any other protagonist in and it would still make sense. It’s a decent game, but don’t go in expecting anything earth shattering or even new for that matter.
