At the recent first official UK playtest of the Xbox 360 in London, one game we played really surprised us; that game was Kameo: Power of Elements. Before the event, I’ll admit I hadn’t really been looking forward to this game. The idea of a game that was a cross between fairies and Pokémon didn’t really interest me. However, after spending 20 minutes with this magical game, Kameo suddenly seemed a hell of a lot of fun.

We got the chance to play a one level demo that takes place early on in the game so as to avoid spoilers, which took place in a castle. In the demo, we had 3 of the five elemental creatures available, Pummelweed the Plant, Chilla the Ice Gorilla and Major Ruin the Armadillo. Each has their own individual ability, and strength. As the game progresses your elemental forms gain extra powers and abilities to fight against ever increasing challenges. Morphing is a piece of cake; simply press either B, X or Y (A by default transforms you into Kameo’s fairy form) to select the form that is indicated by the icon in the top right-hand corner.

Starting outside the castle, you have to break in, but not before some ogres with shields drop from a dragon. It is entirely up to you what form you take, although certain forms fair better against certain enemies. I found it easier to take on the ogres with the armadillo form, using its area attack, which sends you on your side as you bounce around the area with some level of control sending the marauding ogres left, right and centre, although I also used Pummelweed’s boxing ability to lay down some pain.

So how exactly do you control the forms? Simple, a combination of trigger pulls, for example with Pummelweed, left trigger was a left punch, right trigger was a right punch, and both together activated his stealth ability which made him go flat.

The level was filled with ramps which called for the armadillo’s boost ability which, in a similar way to Sonic sees Major Ruin spin on the spot for several seconds before boosting off and speeding up the ramp. In fact, Kameo is filled with easy on the brain puzzles such as this. The addition of hint pages spread across the levels also helps; in the unlikely case you become stuck.

Once inside the castle, you are immediately presented with three spiders; easiest thing to do is stay in armadillo form and speed through them. The cool thing about Kameo is the attention to detail and little comedy moments spread throughout the game such as when speeding through the spiders, green spider blood splats upon the screen and slides down.

After another ramp, you are faced with an enemy that in armadillo form you simply can’t defeat. Taking the form of Pummelweed, you pummel the living hell out of the shell an ogre has hid under (if you try ramming the shell in armadillo form the sprite juts out spikes from his shell, hurting you). Eventually, after a couple of jabs and an undercut the shell flips up, and you pummel the sprite to pieces, very gratifying.

However, the tirade is far from as three ogres jump in. Only one thing to do, show them whose boss with jabs and uppercuts Mohammed Ali would be proud off. By this point the focus-esque ability came into effect, which put a sort of purple haze around the screen and slows down the action; cue some serious slow-mo pounding of the ogres, let’s call it fantasy stress relief.

After morphing back into armadillo form to get over the ramp, it’s ogre beating time. As soon as I had flown over the ramp and squashed one ogre, I decided to give Chilla a go.

Morphing after landing on the ogre, I immediate pulled out one of Chilla’s icicles and kebabed an ogre to the wall, the one I had landed on ran into my back and kebabed himself. The ogre I had just pinned against the wall broke free, so I went to grab another icicle but found the ogre who had just impaled himself on my back in Chilla’s hands, fun time! Swinging the second ogre round, I hit the third ogre sending him into a burning barrel killing him. I killed the first ogre by changing back into armadillo form and ramming him into a fiery dragon patrolling round, but ended up attracting the attention of the dragon itself (ok so it was a tiny dragon...). After spinning on his side I managed to slay the dragon by smacking his fiery backside against the wall.

By this time, I’d forgotten about all the presumptions I had about the game and was quite lost in myself.

Just as Halo is the same 30 seconds of action repeated over and over again to create a massive amount of fun, Kameo takes a leaf (sorry bad pun) out of its book, injects a massively fun romp through a fantasy landscape, with some of the most gorgeous visuals seen on any console so far.

I came to the first official Xbox 360 UK playtest expecting to find Kameo slightly lacking, and a bit childish but went home with another game added to the must buy list. Don’t be put off by the games childlike story and setting; who knows, it might just unlock the child in you that loved every game it played on.