Legend of Kay
It's like Zelda! With cats! That's a good thing, right?
Published: October 1, 2005
If you're going to rip-off an action platformer, make sure it's a good one. In this respect Neon Studios' Legend of Kay bites from the best; so many parts of the experience are lifted heavily from Naughty Dog's Jak games and the Zelda series that it's enough to cause a serious case of déjà vu early on. Later, the game's combat and weapons mix things up enough to keep it mildly interesting, but the game's voice acting eventually drags it down to the point of a mildly decent overall experience.
Kay is a young cat growing up in a small village slowly being overrun by gorillas. Long ago, his world of Yenching subscribed to The Way, a balanced belief system that resulted in the cozy existence between cats, frogs, rabbits and pandas.
Most of this was because of a series of fountains in each species' village that imbued them all with groovy feelings. However, the fountains eventually ran dry, and dissent slowly built. By the time the rats and gorillas banded together to begin a takeover, Yenching had largely forgotten about The Way and let the big knuckle-draggers march right in.
As Kay slowly learns through the teachings of his lush of a mentor, The Way and its techniques still offered an out for someone strong enough to rise up and claim their destiny as the liberator of the more docile animals in Yenching. After one too many gorilla-fueled shakedowns, Kay grabs a ceremonial sword meant for a prophesized hero and sets out to clean up the world.
He cleans house mainly through the use of his weapons and the game's basic fighting system, which allows for quick button mashed combos, a few attacks used to hurt enemies down on the ground, a charging attack and an area-zapping magic attack. Kay can block incoming attacks and scoot around enemies that do the same to get in a quick hit or he can throw them from behind for an easy dizzy. If it seems like it's a rather robust system for a platformer, you're right, but it does make for some great fights to even out all those jumping bits.
The combat is easily Legend of Kay's strongest aspect. At first, it seems like the game will offer a wealth of personality from the different animals around Yenching, but it really all decends into a set of basic clichés and platforming mainstays, which dampens the fun of fulfilling the myriad quests that are put forth, from item fetching to rescues. Along the way, Kay does pick up more weapons (a hammer and claws), and each introduce more variety to the moveset Kay can sport, but any real personal growth comes from finding heart and magic containers that up his max life and magic reserves by a slot.
The only truly original bit of the game comes from the combo system. Scattered throughout levels are demon statues of various materials called zhongs. Hitting these starts up a combo and lets you tap the Triangle button to zoom over to the next zhong. By hitting multiple zhongs, you can build up the combo multiplier, which then lets you open some chests and press switches.
These are the bulk of the headier puzzles you'll go through in the game, but the puzzle bits themselves are mildly interesting (if easy). It should be noted to that starting a combo can mean lesser enemies can be taken out in a single hit if not correctly, and when combined with the dodging and basic combat moves, there's a frenetic, almost dance-like feeling to the fights, and it's again the best part of the game.
Given that Neon chose to go with the RenderWare suite as their development platform, it's not surprising that things look and move rather smoothly most of the time. The game sports a solid framerate save for a few times when multiple enemies cause some slowdown, but the lighting and texture work that Neon put in place shows a wondering level of control for the most part. There are some levels where huge patches of rich colored lighting is thrown about haphazardly, and it makes things look a bit amateurish, but in most situations the game sports quite a bit of detail.
The textures and animation go a long way towards selling the whole look of the game. Kay moves wonderfully, and the enemies aren't without their own personalities either. Generally when interacting with the cookie cutter good guys, the game doesn't make too much of an effort to distinguish one guy from the next, but the overall models have some great fur and nice touches like teeth and whiskers.
Then they open their mouths and it's all ruined. I can understand Neon wanting to go with a set of voices that were mildly kid-like, since this is definitely a game aimed at the wee tykes out there, but the painfully bad, squeaky, chirpy voices are beyond annoying.
It doesn't help that the game sports a whole hell of a lot of dialogue, most of which is only uttered a few times at most, but every time Kay spouts off with some smarmy little comment, I want to throw my controller through the TV. He's a stupid, unappreciative, bratty little sack o' lip, and if there was any motivated to help him save his world, it's gone after about two or three hours of listening to him badmouth any and everyone.
Luckily, the voices can be turned down, and subtitles can be thrown on, which helps shift the focus a bit to the effects, which are clean and subtle at times, and the music, which is genuinely fantastic. It has a definite Asian flair to it (meandering somewhere between Japanese and Chinese tones most of the time) and it really does help add authenticity to this world that Neon has created.
Neon did a great job of creating an earnestly engaging world. Sure, it's heavily influenced by the better platformers out there, but there's nothing wrong with that, since the take they have on the whole mix is engaging. Casting your hero as a little bratty ass probably isn't the best idea, though. Aside from the world they crafted, Legend of Kay is pretty standard fare.
The storyline's decent enough and the graphics certainly better than average, so the whole experience ends up being more than a typical knock-off. Just make sure you turn down them voices, or you'll be regretting it, trust me.
Kay is a young cat growing up in a small village slowly being overrun by gorillas. Long ago, his world of Yenching subscribed to The Way, a balanced belief system that resulted in the cozy existence between cats, frogs, rabbits and pandas.
Most of this was because of a series of fountains in each species' village that imbued them all with groovy feelings. However, the fountains eventually ran dry, and dissent slowly built. By the time the rats and gorillas banded together to begin a takeover, Yenching had largely forgotten about The Way and let the big knuckle-draggers march right in.
As Kay slowly learns through the teachings of his lush of a mentor, The Way and its techniques still offered an out for someone strong enough to rise up and claim their destiny as the liberator of the more docile animals in Yenching. After one too many gorilla-fueled shakedowns, Kay grabs a ceremonial sword meant for a prophesized hero and sets out to clean up the world.
He cleans house mainly through the use of his weapons and the game's basic fighting system, which allows for quick button mashed combos, a few attacks used to hurt enemies down on the ground, a charging attack and an area-zapping magic attack. Kay can block incoming attacks and scoot around enemies that do the same to get in a quick hit or he can throw them from behind for an easy dizzy. If it seems like it's a rather robust system for a platformer, you're right, but it does make for some great fights to even out all those jumping bits.
The combat is easily Legend of Kay's strongest aspect. At first, it seems like the game will offer a wealth of personality from the different animals around Yenching, but it really all decends into a set of basic clichés and platforming mainstays, which dampens the fun of fulfilling the myriad quests that are put forth, from item fetching to rescues. Along the way, Kay does pick up more weapons (a hammer and claws), and each introduce more variety to the moveset Kay can sport, but any real personal growth comes from finding heart and magic containers that up his max life and magic reserves by a slot.
The only truly original bit of the game comes from the combo system. Scattered throughout levels are demon statues of various materials called zhongs. Hitting these starts up a combo and lets you tap the Triangle button to zoom over to the next zhong. By hitting multiple zhongs, you can build up the combo multiplier, which then lets you open some chests and press switches.
These are the bulk of the headier puzzles you'll go through in the game, but the puzzle bits themselves are mildly interesting (if easy). It should be noted to that starting a combo can mean lesser enemies can be taken out in a single hit if not correctly, and when combined with the dodging and basic combat moves, there's a frenetic, almost dance-like feeling to the fights, and it's again the best part of the game.
Given that Neon chose to go with the RenderWare suite as their development platform, it's not surprising that things look and move rather smoothly most of the time. The game sports a solid framerate save for a few times when multiple enemies cause some slowdown, but the lighting and texture work that Neon put in place shows a wondering level of control for the most part. There are some levels where huge patches of rich colored lighting is thrown about haphazardly, and it makes things look a bit amateurish, but in most situations the game sports quite a bit of detail.
The textures and animation go a long way towards selling the whole look of the game. Kay moves wonderfully, and the enemies aren't without their own personalities either. Generally when interacting with the cookie cutter good guys, the game doesn't make too much of an effort to distinguish one guy from the next, but the overall models have some great fur and nice touches like teeth and whiskers.
Then they open their mouths and it's all ruined. I can understand Neon wanting to go with a set of voices that were mildly kid-like, since this is definitely a game aimed at the wee tykes out there, but the painfully bad, squeaky, chirpy voices are beyond annoying.
It doesn't help that the game sports a whole hell of a lot of dialogue, most of which is only uttered a few times at most, but every time Kay spouts off with some smarmy little comment, I want to throw my controller through the TV. He's a stupid, unappreciative, bratty little sack o' lip, and if there was any motivated to help him save his world, it's gone after about two or three hours of listening to him badmouth any and everyone.
Luckily, the voices can be turned down, and subtitles can be thrown on, which helps shift the focus a bit to the effects, which are clean and subtle at times, and the music, which is genuinely fantastic. It has a definite Asian flair to it (meandering somewhere between Japanese and Chinese tones most of the time) and it really does help add authenticity to this world that Neon has created.
Neon did a great job of creating an earnestly engaging world. Sure, it's heavily influenced by the better platformers out there, but there's nothing wrong with that, since the take they have on the whole mix is engaging. Casting your hero as a little bratty ass probably isn't the best idea, though. Aside from the world they crafted, Legend of Kay is pretty standard fare.
The storyline's decent enough and the graphics certainly better than average, so the whole experience ends up being more than a typical knock-off. Just make sure you turn down them voices, or you'll be regretting it, trust me.
