Kingsley's Adventures can be seen as yet another attempt at cashing in on Sonic's success by having a cartoon animal star in it. The plot of this game is the Fruit Kingdom is under siege by the evil wizard, Bad Custard, who has stolen the queen's book of magic spells, using it to turn the castle's four greatest knight evil. Now the kingdom's hope lies in a fox named Kingsley, who, at the start, has to train to become a knight, then go through the realms, collecting the True Knight items to stop Bad Custard.
This game was mostly ignored on release, despite some positive reviews, and people who played this will see the positive reviews are wrong. One of the main issues I had is the controls. Unlike popular 3D platformers such as Crash Bandicoot and Super Mario 64, Kingsley controls like a tank. While up makes him go forward, holding back causes him to slowly jump backwards, and left and right only turn him around (alongside the camera). In order to move left or right, you have to push one of the shoulder buttons to make Kingsley strafe in the desired direction. While this control works for some games, it does not work well for a action adventure platformer aimed at kids, as it actually makes jumps hard to land (especially on smaller platforms) and it mess up your aim when you need to fight an enemy.
Like a Zelda game, Kingsley gets many items, but sadly, the new weapons he gets will be a more powerful version of what he wielded before, with no trade off like in Spyro, as there are no enemies who are immune to all but one weapon. Also, there is little to no exploration to be done unlike Super Mario 64, as there are no hidden dungeons, no secret rooms to get items, it's all straight forward. Plus, the game holds your hand too much, not allowing you to figure things out on your own as you are told how to progress.
The only good things about it are the charming characters and the humor of some of the NPCs. But sadly, this is a game that needed better controls, more strategy, and the ability to let the player figure out how to progress themselves (the target audience it was aimed at are not that dependent for help).
This game was mostly ignored on release, despite some positive reviews, and people who played this will see the positive reviews are wrong. One of the main issues I had is the controls. Unlike popular 3D platformers such as Crash Bandicoot and Super Mario 64, Kingsley controls like a tank. While up makes him go forward, holding back causes him to slowly jump backwards, and left and right only turn him around (alongside the camera). In order to move left or right, you have to push one of the shoulder buttons to make Kingsley strafe in the desired direction. While this control works for some games, it does not work well for a action adventure platformer aimed at kids, as it actually makes jumps hard to land (especially on smaller platforms) and it mess up your aim when you need to fight an enemy.
Like a Zelda game, Kingsley gets many items, but sadly, the new weapons he gets will be a more powerful version of what he wielded before, with no trade off like in Spyro, as there are no enemies who are immune to all but one weapon. Also, there is little to no exploration to be done unlike Super Mario 64, as there are no hidden dungeons, no secret rooms to get items, it's all straight forward. Plus, the game holds your hand too much, not allowing you to figure things out on your own as you are told how to progress.
The only good things about it are the charming characters and the humor of some of the NPCs. But sadly, this is a game that needed better controls, more strategy, and the ability to let the player figure out how to progress themselves (the target audience it was aimed at are not that dependent for help).
