[KneeCo]

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OK, I promise I wont call you a sucker if you give me a little review of Kameo. Specifically, Is it more Zelda-like, or Platformer oriented?

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It's Zelda-esque, particularly in a wind-waker type way.

You play as elf/fairy type thing named Kameo and are a shape shifter trying to save your family. You can change into different element based creatures. In the first dungeon you have three of these creatures but then lose them all (its kinda like Metroid Prime in that way). All the action RPG staples, coins for trade, rare item to make your health bar bigger, mini map in the corner, exposition cut scenes, bla bla bla.

The graphics are really good and smooth, when you are not a creature you can fly around the areas pretty fast and fluidly, water effects, background animation and 'blood'' splatter are especially impressive. The camera is pretty good (this is usually my gripe with full 3d games).

I had no idea what the game was until the box was delivered this morning, but having played it a bit I think I'll play it through, it's seems pretty good. I was expecting to get either Need for Speed or Madden included but neither is out yet so they included that and a letter explaining I can expect either one of those two games in a couple of weeks (I don't get to pick among them... please be madden, please be madden!).


I've also spent like an hour playing Hexic (its one of the arcade games already on the machine), my goal is to have all the top scores on xbox live before the thing goes public :P

Side note, the 20 gig HD that came with the thing only has 12 gigs free space, but some of that space is taken by trailers and stuff that I can delete (the trailers are uninteresting and no, there isn't one for Halo 3).

Also, I put a Data DVD in there full of all episodes of poker I had downloaded (.avi files) to see if it would let me watch them on the tv, it did not, though I should be able to make that work when I get the Media Center compatibility hooked up, which I haven't done yet. I might also try copying the avi files to the xbox HD.

Finally, the thing is great as a DVD player. My old DVD player (a PS2) was way outdated, it stalled for a sec on the layer change on some dvds and the volume levels always seemed to low on some movies, both these problems seem to be fixed on the xbox.

Also, after a couple of hours of play, the batteries havent died on the controller, which I thing is a good sign.