Legend of Kay

PS2 review by Jim Smith - Friday 4th March 2005

It’s been a long time now since the words ‘3D action arcade adventure’ really cut any mustard. Sure ten years ago when 32-bit consoles first made that huge leap from 2D to 3D, it was astounding, awe-inspiring even, and quite rightly turned a lot more people on to gaming than there ever had been before. These days however it’s all starting to seem a bit old hat and the feeling that if you’ve seen one '3D action arcade adventure' you’ve seen them all is becoming more and more prominent in our collective tiring consciousness. But developers keep developing these titles and publishers keep publishing them and you guys - Joe general public people - seem to keep buying them, which means blue jewel cased promo discs keep arriving through my letterbox.

So here we are again.

Look man either pick more or skip, what's a matter with you?

But where are we exactly? Well, Legend of Kay certainly starts out full of promise. The crash of oriental gongs fill your ears as the title screen appears, and a suitable 70s Kung-Fu movie style soundtrack kicks in (think Shaw Brothers) putting you well in the mood for some light-hearted '3D arcade adventure' action. The intro impresses too as the back story is fed to us through an old fashioned anime comic strip, complete with speed lines, characters going “Aaaaargh!” a lot (just like they do in Dragonball Z all the time) and other characters kung-fu kicking their way from pane to pane, while those left over actually tell us the story.

The land that Kay lives in is apparently going through changes, you see, as the harmony between the rabbit village, cat village and rat village has been disrupted by the arrival of the gorilla invaders. They’ve charged in with half-arsed talk of liberation, but it’s really a disguise for an obvious occupation. First they offer protection (“From who?” asked one of the villagers), then they ask for weapons, then they take food to feed the soldiers, then they take just about everything else. The villagers don’t know what to do - their major has been seduced by the promises the gorillas make and they have no other organised means of defence, so how can they stop them? It’s a shame there’s not a young, arrogant, handy with a sword type of villager fella that could step forward, fulfil the ancient prophecy by taming the savage blade and save the day for everyone. Hmmm... sounds familiar doesn't it?

Oh, jump from lilly pad to lilly pad and dodge the pendulum scythes, I get it.

Despite having the kind of plot that you could scribble down on to the back of a beer mat, Legend of Kay isn't quite as innocent as it initially appears. It has the high gloss, big-budget, colourful look that platform games pretty much have to have as standard these days just to compete, but it’s hard to work out where the target audience is. For such a kid friendly graphical look, it’s a surprise the language that they get away with. I laughed out loud when, in one of the early levels, a rat called my cat character 'pussy boy', and my character replied by calling him a 'bastard'. That’s just a couple of examples of the cheeky vocabulary you hear sporadically throughout the game and, even if it's not big or clever, it adds a certain little edge to the proceedings.

But apart from the language thing and the cool intro, there really isn’t much to tell you about Legend of Kay that you’ve probably not already guessed. Don’t get me wrong, there’s not much to complain about with the Legend of Kay package, not at all, it’s just that the feeling of dejà-vu is strong and recurring.

Now will you look at the size of that arrow...

The game engine is a very precise affair, laid back and reasonably intuitive, and for once the camera actually plays along and is remarkably helpful. The combat system is similarly useful, relying on the standard triple hit combo, block and roll manoeuvres, with a tasty little reversal role available to sidestep around enemies that tend to block a lot. There is no lock-on feature (which is a surprise considering how common they are these days in '3D adventure arcade action' titles) so you have to either put a lot of faith in the camera or get proficient in using the right analogue to keep you tuned in. But the game does feature a refreshing combo system - if you can rack up strikes in quick succession, a combo count appears on screen and you get the option to charge one of your nearby assailants simply by tapping triangle and nudging the left analogue stick in their direction. Multiple combos are easy as once you start you tend not to stop as long as there are still baddies to beat up, plus the combo charge defies all measure of gravity, meaning you can literally leap across gaps or to high platforms providing there’s a bad guy there to thwack at the end of it. It’s a bizarre system but it works, and it has the added advantage of allowing you an extra option in trying to reach those tricky secret ledges (you know, the ones where all the cool special artefacts are hidden). And once in combo mode the pointers that appear onscreen also point to enemies offscreen, so you don’t even have to worry about the camera keeping up anymore. And they say gaming requires a competent amount of dexterity, sheesh!

I'll teach you to call me pussy boy!

The save system is also a joy as you don’t even have to access any menus – just walk past a saving post (they look like the one’s in Onimusha) and the game saves itself for you. No pissing about with menus, no having to confirm overwrites, just get one with the game - brilliant. When passing a save post you also get all your health back without having to stop moving either, which is equally satisfying and makes you wonder why we don't see this set up used more often in other titles.

Unfortunately, that’s where all the innovation ends as the rest of Legend of Kay feels like an uninspiring pick and mix of the decent bits from all the platform games you’ve seen since Mario 64. You’ll jump from platform to platform, scale walls, swing on ropes, collect items, chat to other characters, have a little fight, etc, etc. You’ll wade through level after level completing weakly disguised door-key missions as you go (“If you find my children hidden around the village, I’ll give you a banana that you can give to the gorilla at the gate, who’ll then let you through to find Tung La’s lost pumpkins!”). You'll fight waves of baddies at scripted set locations using the flashy combo system you've learnt, before moving on to fight each level’s boss and ultimately unlock the next area. You also have to participate in the occasional unavoidable riding section, which turn out to be more irritating than anything as the dodgy controls and restrictive time limits will force you to restart that section more times than you’d care to mention, padding the game’s length – yes – but ultimately taxing your patience too.

More games should have giant golden magic moosehead hammers in them.

And that’s about it, that’s the game, so let’s recap - a young, arrogant farmer’s boy, an ancient prophecy about a mystical sword and a village in peril. Jump from platform to platform, scale walls, swing on ropes. Fight baddies, complete door and key missions, beat end of level bosses to push on with the game. Yes, been there before. Yes, I’m sure we’ll go there again, but I'm not exactly holding my breath with anticipation. Legend of Kay does a okay job at presenting a well organised little '3D action arcade adventure' title, but with so many must-play titles on the market at the moment, Kay will probably get overlooked and, at the end of the day, with sound reason. I hate to repeat myself, but it’s been a long time now since the words ‘3D action arcade adventure’ really cut any mustard...