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Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2 is a really fun 3D Platformer. Every single stage felt unique and fresh, each with their own mechanics and activities. The themeing is basic but the stages themselves make up for it.. though the game is quite addicted to lava, with almost every world having lava despite some being the polar opposite of lava. While you might do regular platforming in most stages, there's always a new vehicle or other unique mechanics that make them memorable. You may be snowboarding down a mountain in one stage, while shooting down ice pillars with a combat vehicle in another. None of these overstay their welcome and are fun to mess around with. They all control very well too, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but the underwater level might just be one of my favourites in the game. But while all the unique mechanics control well, I have a few issues with how Kao himself controls. The first one might actually be a bug, as in when I try to move Kao directly to the left, he walks slowly instead of running. This made some of the bosses and precise challenges where you had to run constantly pretty aggravating. The rising lava section had you run left constantly and was much harder for me than intended as a result. The boomerang also felt very finicky and not fun to use in most situations. The lock-on decided itself if it wanted to work or not, and it was torture to use at a long distance with enemies that would constantly jump around. And it's not like you can exactly get closer because they shoot homing attacks. Eventually I just rolled around after I got the upgrade that allowed me to roll indefinitely. What I also liked about the game was how Kao improved over the game the more collectables he found, giving more rewards to the curious explorers. While the coins were mandatory for the story and the purple shards led to minigames I personally didn't really bother with, the stars gave some new abilities to our animal protagonist. Some collectables are hidden pretty well, and with a few exceptions of where I missed single-digit coins and had to search the entire stage for them, none were really cheaply placed. And it's also great that when I got the collectables I missed on my initial playthrough, I could grab them later and leave the stage immediately for them to still count. Overall a really fun platformer and for that price, you can't go wrong. Definitely would like to see more Kao the Kangaroo games on Steam!
8/10
