Whew! We've got tons of new info that needs to be in this preview, so without further ado...

Judging from NOA's press release and the Kameo playable demo at E3 2001, the gameplay is indeed very focused on the various animals. There are supposedly dozens of different critters, and they can be built up and evolved just like Pokemon. Some creatures will be stored in your pack and released to do battle or whatever...some you will actually turn into. We're still not sure if all animals can fit into either category, or if there are just certain "morph" creatures and certain "buddy" creatures.

With either kind, at least a decent portion of the game seems centered around building up the creatures. Direct-feed video of the game from around E3 shows Kameo turning into a small dinosaur-type thing. She proceeds to walk around a clump of land with dead trees, apparently singing or howling. This causes some sort of glow-worms to come up out of the ground, which she then eats. After eating so many of them, this particular critter evolves into a new form.

As for the "buddy"-type creatures that Kameo releases from her pack, they will thankfully be more balanced than what was shown at E3. At the show, Kameo had two gigantic, almost golem-like creatures that could be released from her pack. Once free, they would seek out any nearby baddies and dish out major violence. While undeniably cool, this made the level rather...easy. Not exactly Rare's style. Here's what the developer had to say in a recent Scribes comment though: "Every monster will react and respond to fights in very different ways. Some will be very brave and aggressive, others will be timid or passive. The monsters in the E3 demo behaved in a very aggressive way to make it easy for first time players to get to grips with the basic controls." Still, the question remains: why not just always carry around the most aggressive monsters? There must be some incentive for using the more peaceful ones, which indicates that these buddy-creatures will be employed in solving puzzles and carrying out other tasks.

At E3, Kameo could morph into four different animal forms: a flying dinosaur, a high-jumping frog, and a lumbering bear-like creature who could punch enemies, and a lizard who breathed fire and laid bombs as if eggs. Each of these forms (except for the lizard, which was only available in the boss encounter) had only one special ability, but Rare has since confirmed that they will all have multiple abilities in the final game. Also, direct-feed video of the game reveals yet another cool form: a Gekko-like creature that can crawl up walls, just like Spider-Man!

One very interesting thing about the game's boss battles is that they're introduced with a bizarre little face-off/taunt sequence, like something you'd expect from a fighting game. The boss at E3 was a big hydra thing sitting in the middle of a lake.

Finally, it seems that all these monsters will have to be used in some kind of strategic plan at times. One scene from our direct-feed video shows Kameo deploying two very large creatures from her pack to distract the enemy, while she morphs into a tiny little critter and darts under the big guys' legs to safety.

Now then, if only you can capture and transform into Mr. Pants...

Last updated: 05/16/2001

Two days ago, PGC revealed Rare was working on a secret title and provided the first info on it before anywhere else. Today, we’ve found out what it is after catching a glimpse during Nintendo’s press conference. The game is called Kameo: Elements of Power and it looks to be a unique blend of action/RPG and monster collecting. Oh yeah, did we mention Rare is doing this game?

As previously reported, the game features a girl with animal powers. The girl is the fairy princess Kameo, who lives in a world full of monsters. Kameo is a bit of an animal lover apparently –she captures and trains many of these creatures and keeps them at her side. Her special gift is the ability to morph into any of her monsters and use their abilities to complete her quest.

Two of the monsters can join Kameo on her quest and when united with her, the group can fight as a unit, something that sounds & looks quite RPG like.

Kameo must use her special powers and animal friends to save six Elemental Ancestors from the Dark Troll King, known as Thorn.

Since our source was right about the game existing, we get the feeling we might be able to play it at E3. Could this surprise game be a launch title? Who knows. We’ll be sure to have more once the show starts & will hopefully have media of the game going up soon too.