Kao the Kangaroo (Game Boy Advance)
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 You know that Titus screwed up their game when even their RoboCop game in 2003 appear to be more polished than this.
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Kao the Kangaroo is a 2D side scrolling game developed and released by Titus Interactive in December 2001 for the Game Boy Advance.
While the PC and Dreamcast versions received mixed reviews, it isn't the case for the GBA version, as it got way more negative reviews, and this page will be focused only on the GBA port.
Gameplay
Unlike Kao the Kangaroo for Windows and Dreamcast this is a 2D side scrolling platform game. You control Kao through twenty-seven levels.
You basic modes of travel are running or jumping but in later levels, you will have snowboarding, flying and jet skiing. As you travel along, enemies try to stop you. You must kill or avoid these enemies. Your main weapon is a pair of boxing gloves with which you can pound enemies but, if you push down and attack, you can also do a tail spin to attack lower-height enemies.
In each level, there are flags you can pick up and, by pressing select, you can drop them to create your own continue point.
Why It Isn't A Knock Out Punch
- The concept of a 2D platformer in the Kao franchise was a good idea but what ended up being a horrible platformer with nothing to offer in the genre and being one of the worst game of the entire Game Boy Advance library, and would end up beibg even worse than those awful platformers on the GBA, and no this isn't even a joke.
- The beginning cutscene has almost no explanation of what's happening. You just see some hunter guy put a kangaroo in a cage, and the game start after that scene.
- Sure, in the 3D version, the beginning cutscene also had a similar premise but at least it explained gow Kao got put in a cage, but here it isn't even explained and feel like it was here just so the game had a plot.
- The game uses a password system when most GBA games at the time used flash chip back-up for save slots, which is quite lazy and feel like the game was rushed. What make it worst is that due to how short the game is, the passwords are nearly useless.
- Of course, this port is know for it's horrible amount of glitchs that happen in almost every levels, and they are extremely annoying and painful, to the point of making this game completely unplayable and hard for absolutely no reasons, this even make the GBA port of Pac-Man World 2 feeling like it had no bugs in comparison and that's saying a lot.
- It is glitchy enough to even had a glitch where you can litteraly travers the textures of the ground and dying, which doesn't happen that much but still, it is incredibly bad, though it isn't even the worst glitch of the entire game since there's way worse.
- The absolute worst glitch of the game is easily the one where when you get hit by a boomerang, it can even make you getting to the beginning of the stage because it push you in the worst way possible, and this is probably the worst part of the game.
- Other bugs would have been collision glitchs but we will get to this later.
- There is a tail attack, but it's hampered by the fact that it's close to the ground, making it practically worthless when attempting to attack flying enemies or enemies above you, and this definitely isn't helped by the hit-detection.
- The run button is mapped to Up on the D-Pad. This is extremely awkward and there are other buttons that could've been mapped to it, and this can cause some cheap deaths, especially if you accidently move with the up d-pad button and that you're near a pit.
- Extremely atrocious hit-detection that is probably even worse than even The Simpsons trilogy on NES, since when you attack, change to get hit too are very high due to how bad it is, and it is especially true with the horrible punch attack.
- Even worse, sometime you fall off a platform when in reality you did land on it, which show how incredibly rushed this game is overall.
- The soundtrack in this port is extremely bad, since it is so bland to listen to, had annoying loop and are overall extremely forgettable, some of the musics are very ear bleeding to listen to as well.
- Here an exemple of notably terrible musics from the game.
- For exemple, the boss theme is a loop of 7 seconds of music for almost the entire boss fights, and it is so repetitive that it become annoying to listen to after a while, also it doesn't really fit a fight, and it especially doesn't fit for the final boss of the game.
- Lightning Speed probably had the worst music of the entire game since it is an extremely short loop of 3 seconds and is incredibly ear bleeding to listen to, and it isn't even catchy to listen to, even if you heard it 4 times, you will already get annoyed, yep it's that bad.
- Speaking of it, a lot of the musics are reused for the next levels, proving that the developers we're too lazy for making the soundtrack of this game and it show, since the soundtrack is already lazy to begin with.
- Here an exemple of notably terrible musics from the game.
- Absolutely horrible difficulty spike that is way worse than in the original game since here it is hard just because of the terrible hit-detection, awful controls and terrible enemies AL.
- It's easy to get cheap deaths, especially from the infamous "HT jump" in the snowboard level, the entirety of the first and second level, and all the bosses in the game, and this is especially because of the horrible level design and the game design.
- Awful gameplay that is extremely repetitive despite having some variaty in the game from time to time, but the problem is that those phases are so bad that it's just horrible to play there's absolutely nothing fun with those phases of gameplay, which are:
- The snowboard phase is the best of the bunch but that doesn't mean that it is good since the level is poorly designed and glitched, also it is a downgrade from the snowboard level in the PC/Dreamcast game.
- The spaceship phase is easily the worst one since it move incredibly slow and if you hit something, you get damages and even dying, and the level itself is very long and the awful music that play doesn't help either.
- While the graphics are overall decent, they are far below the GBA capacity and instead look like an early SNES game released in 1992, as some of the sprites are just undetailled and some of the graphics range from decent to just downright terrible.
- Some of the sprites are extremely bad and look like they we're draw to be on a late NES game, such as some of the enemies, and some backgrounds that are just so bad it doesn't even look like a GBA game, even for 2001 standards.
- Kao sprite in the Lightning Speed level is easily the worst sprite of Kao in the game, since despite having a kangaroo, in the ship with his position, he look like a poor man E.T, in fact it isn't even hard to see that ressemblance.
- The water look ugly in this game due to the colors palette for it's sprite being oddly poor despite that the game having colorful graphics.
- Kao's boxing gloves are really underpowered, they can't finish an enemy with one hit and require multiple hits to actually knock out an enemy, unless you play on Easy.
- Not to mention that it had probably the shortest range in existence since they are completely useless and do nothing on the enemy, and it is the most notable exemple of the horrible hit-detection of this game.
- The game over screen is incredibly disturbing since we can see Kao being dead and with an awful music that make it slighly more disturbing due to how bad it sound, also it doesn't help that the background in red, it may not be as bad as the game over screen of Kang Fu (which also feature a kangaroo as a protagonist) but still...
- The enemies are relentless and have janky yet fast movement...not helped by the fact that the punch attack is the most stubby and short-ranged punch in existence.
- The enemy AI is brainless, they just throw themselves towards Kao when in proximity
- Awful controls that aren't the worst seen from a Titus game but they had lot of flaws to the point of being worse than the 3D version where the controls we're clunky but not to this extend.
- They are very slippery, even when you doesn't run, and this make most of the platforming sections really hard as well, this is especially true with the level 2 where the slippery controls are at their worst due to the platforms being very small.
- The controls also tend to be unresponsive, especially when jumping, speaking of the jump controls...
- The jumps controls is very bad, since you fall very quickly, in a similar manner to Garfield on the PS2, this can make some of the platforming sections very awkward and sometime just downright awful.
- Terrible boss fights, as they take way too many hits to kill them, and their AL is really bad, since they either are too easy or too hard, also they are hard mostly because of the awful hit-detection of your attacks.
- The hunter in particular is easily the worst boss of the game since his Al is godawful and he move way too fast, which mean that you may die easily or worse, having a hard time to hit him back, it also doesn't help that he take the same amount of hits of the other bosses either.
- While not awful, the box art isn't faithful to the original game at all, since Kao look nothing like he did in the 2000 version box art and it doesn't give him proper googly eyes, also it look like a sort of fan arts of the game that are not faithful and different.
- The snow in the snowboard stage makes it harder for the player to see what they are doing.
- The ending is just the word "END" on a gradient and almost nothing else, aside from the ending cutscene where all the kangaroos carry the defeated hunter guy in a cage. It also goes on for far too long, in fact it is so long that it is 4 minutes long, and not helping the fact that it is boring to watch and there's nothing to see aside from the kangaroo moving.
- The game is incredibly short, lasting about only 45 minutes and it doesn't help that the game doesn't had any replay values and the fact that the game is very bad will not help from making you want to replay it again.
Redeeming Qualities
- Despite all of their problems, the graphics are pretty decent and plaisant to look at, as they are colorful and some of the sprites are pretty good.
- The game had potential to be good but unfortunately it was poorly executed.
- The next handheld entry in the franchise, Kao Challengers, is way better than this and is a huge improvement, even though it had nothing to do with this and is actually a port of Round 2.
Reception
Unlike the Dreamcast and PC version that received mixed reviews, the Game Boy Advance version received mixed to negative reviews by critics and extremely negative reviews by gamers to the point of being considered to be one of the worst platformer on the GBA to date, it was criticized for it's awful level design, the soundtrack and the short length.
On Metacritic, the GBA version had a score of 52/100[1], in comparison to the console versions which had a 60 for the PC version, and 63 for the Dreamcast version.
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Categories:
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