Getting straight to the point, dear reader: the development process for Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2 seems to have consisted of little more than checking the relevant platforming boxes. The game is such a mish-mash of videogaming clichés: the amount of intertextuality here almost trumps the masterful WarioWare.
You see, every corner brings another episode of déjà vu. Kao’s Miyamoto-influenced signature butt-stomp. The set-piece stages that see you constantly fleeing, towards the camera, from some rampaging animal or deadly contraption (reminding one of a certain bandicoot). Quasi-2D levels along which floating baddies open fire from the distant background (á lá Donkey Kong Country 3, all those years ago). As if all that were not enough, the game packs in speedboat racing, badger herding and white-water rafting in what is quite a comprehensive package.
It’s not like the game suffers from any sort of over-complication, either. The sections that offer a break from the norm often only require the analogue stick to control, at worst the analogue stick and one control button, taking away the need for an excessive amount of explanatory screen furniture. Such clarity of design makes the spaces between bosses a fitting tribute to the very best of all the games Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2 respectfully tips its hat to. Happily, too, the learning curve herein is not so cretinously steep that it bars a great percentage of its players from ever sampling its delights, making the greater part of the game more of a relaxing holiday to some of your favourite destinations than some repetitive slog. The fact that respawn points are interspersed, at times, by as little as twenty seconds or so of action, and that there are an unlimited number of lives available may sound laughably weak to some, but in actual fact the two combine to add greatly to the game’s relaxed, reminiscent atmosphere (which appears to be the real thing Kao offers up for your enjoyment).
The lack of unnecessary clutter does have its inherent problems, however. The game’s boss fights, which largely see you strafing in a circular pattern around a central enemy, offer no explanation at all detailing methods of attack. In a game where you are encouraged to skip effortlessly from riding barrels down fast-flowing rivers to throwing giant acorns at platform-producing targets, it is extremely disappointing that what should be the crescendo of proceedings should fail on the count of being insufficiently intuitive. In a linear platforming adventure like this, such a flaw can often prove fatal, leaving the player no other progress except flicking the power switch. Similarly depressing are a few more general aural and visual aspects of the game. Taking into consideration the utterly simplistic plot on offer, an opportunity has been missed to add sufficient variety to the voice sampling of the NPCs. Often, the animals that it is Kao’s task to save utter the same distressed phrase from the inside of every fresh cage discovered. Similarly, upon meeting their hero, all of the creatures (of the same species) seem to dance the same jig and speak with the same voice. Putting these gripes to one side for a moment, the game shares the colourful flair of recent JoWood release Legend of Kay, providing a passable, though somewhat formulaic, range of environments to explore.
Although Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2 seems to constantly offer up a new genre at every point the action might otherwise become dull and lifeless, there is a persistent feeling during play that the game never seems to stand on its own feet. Gamers with little knowledge of the early-to-mid-1990s may actually enjoy this title all the more due to their own lack of knowledge of the past, but for the rest of us the experience on offer might be a little too much like a favourite compilation tape grown fuzzy through excessive copying.
