Kao the Kangeroo - PS 5
This game is basically a Playstation 1 era style platformer in the vein of Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Mario 64, etc. Overall, it's decent, but rough around edges.
There's tons of technical issues, bugs, glitches, that I'm sure will be addressed in future patches.
The graphics and music are passable, nothing too out of the ordinary for a game of this type. Very Crash Bandicoot/Jak and Daxter vibes for the most part, like some ex-Naughty Dog people designed it. It looks and sounds fine, but nothing about the art style or music is distinctive. This is one of the problems with the game that also extends to the gameplay. It borrows from great games in the genre, but rarely injects its own personality or any real creativity or imagination. Like so many indie games, it's happy to copy the greats rather than take those formulas and innovate with them or improve upon them in any way.
The gameplay is fairly solid, but amateurish in a lot of ways. Many of the levels are far too long, unlike modern classics New Super Lucky's Tale and Astro Bot: Rescue Mission who know how to keep a level from wearing out it's welcome. I think Crash Bandicoot 4 suffered from this as well.
There are also these obnoxious explosives that randomly show up when you smash crates and things. Any one who is familiar with 3d platformers understands that smashing stuff is one of the joys of the genre. Lego games feature a TON of stuff for you to smash. Penalizing players for one of the most fundamentally fun aspects of the genre is a level of stupid that I can't wrap my head around. I say this a lot, but a lot of modern day developers really are fucking morons. At least in the Crash Bandicoot games you KNEW what things you couldn't smash because they were colored red with the words TNT on them.
Also annoying is the checkpoint system. It doesn't save your progress, which I wouldn't complain about if the levels weren't so obnoxiously long. Also, when you fall into a pit or hazard, instead of just losing some of your health you also get teleported back to your last checkpoint and have to return to the spot where you missed your jump...aggravating.
Kao tries to bring a bit more action to the genre with some beat 'em up style combat, but it all feels so sloppy and poorly executed. Also, because it's 2022 and if anyone releases a game that doesn't have some sort of parry/deflect system in place the gaming gods will apparently rip off your balls and feed them to you, Kao has lots of ranged attackers who throw stuff at you and the game expects you to jump in the air and deflect them with your Jak and Daxter style aerial attack. Like practically EVERY game that has parry/deflect systems in place these days, the timing feels wonky and un-intuitive. Also, sometimes the enemies that throw shit at you do it from off screen, which is just annoying. Trying to deal with range attackers while fighting other enemies or doing some tricky jumps is especially annoying.
The camera can be slightly annoying too when platforming through some sections of the game, you have to manually control it because it doesn't just automatically give you the best viewing angle.
Despite all these issues, the game gives you what you'd expect from a game of this type. You'll do lots of tricky jumping, find hidden secrets, collect lots of stuff, interact with lots of anthropomorphic animals while controlling a generic, mascot character who is nowhere near as cool as Mario, Sonic, Ratchet, or Sly Cooper. It's your standard 3d platformer. If you like those, you'll like this, but there are far better modern examples of the genre that are more deserving of your time like New Super Lucky's Tale and Astro Bot: Rescue Mission. I'd probably rate those games 9-10, while Kao is more of a 7 out of 10 game. This is a bargain bin/steam sale type game