Regular readers will already know of my growing desire to own an Xbox360, and will hopefully, be even more pleased to hear that it arrived this past weekend. My gamertag (almost inevitably) is RichardAM. Feel free to look me up sometime if you're interested. But that's not what i'm going to be moaning about today, chances are everyblog and their dog will have playtested an Xbox 360 by now. No, today's subject is launch-game Kameo.

The game is visually stunning, showing just what exactly the Xbox360 is capable of, whether it be hundreds of NPCs on screen at once, intriguing day/night cycles, and altogether fantastic elemental effects- in particular water. The gameworld is physically somewhere where you'd like to go on holiday, somewhere you'd like to explore and just bounce around in without any other commitments or responsibilities, it's the gameworld you'd always wanted to see in your favourite third-person-platformer. But the thing is, it's a gameworld you've seen thousands of times before.

Oblivious to the past twenty years of the platformer genre, Kameo is a game built entirely on expectations and traits of the genre, sadly offering nothing new than, unfortunately, gorgeous visuals. NPC side-quests, enclosed boss fights, double-jumps, and what's worse is the levels themselves. The opening green forestry level, an icy mountain, underwater caves- they're all places you've been plenty of times in the past. The repetitive challenges and quests ensure that they're locales you'll be seeing a lot of, and despite that visual charm, Kameo is no different from any other platformer. Even Nintendo, normally good for their innovation fall flat on level design, just look at "tried and tested" Super Princess Peach.

With a new generation comes the hope of genuinely new ideas and gameplay concepts, or at least, it should. It may be a little unfair criticising one of the first games of the new generation, but it should be these launch games that set the bar for things to come by both innovating and exciting. Again, looking at Nintendo, a port of Super Mario 64 for their DS wasn't exactly a good idea either, but, well, look at the DS go now.

Kameo is a sound game regardless and charming as you'd expect, it's just that it's ideas are a little premature and have been used previously. The inclusion of the morphing ability of the main character is a nice touch, but like the quests, gets a little repetitive. When I bought the game pre-owned for £20 I wondered why someone would even think of trading it in.

I guess I know why now.