Indeed, when were first looking at it we wondered if instead
we should just go back and play one of its main influences instead? As it turns
out that would have been a mistake as Kaze has more than enough of its own
personality to stand alone in the market.
As always with these things the plot is somewhat crazy. In
this case you need to save your friend Hogo from a host of recently cursed and
mutated evil vegetables. In order to do this you need to use magical masks that
offers unique abilities as well as your standard running, jumping and floating
skills. The masks in question are similar to Donkey Kong’s animal friends and
allow Kaze to draw on the powers of a shark (for swimming), A Tiger (for
climbing) an Eagle (for Flying) and a Lizard (for, erm, zipping around).
You can’t use the masks all the time and they are instead
limited to specific levels designed around the particular skill set required.
The abilities help to add variety and do lead to some fiendish and downright
evil level design. Speaking of which, the games that most influence Kaze’s
levels are clearly both the original Rayman and the Origins and Legends
reboots. The rhythm of them is very similar and when you are placed into one of
the ‘chase’ stages we couldn’t help thinking about the crushingly difficult
auto-run stages featured heavily in Origins in particular.
This highlights another feature of Kaze, that being it’s tough
even from the early going. This can be mitigated to some degree though the
settings which allows players to pick a difficulty which adds extras
checkpoints but be prepared to need a sizable chunk of patience in order to
progress. You are also going to need to have a Jedi-like understanding of the
controls as well. This isn’t one for the feint hearted.
It’s handy then that the controls work well. Away from the
masks, Kaze has a number of standard abilities at the player’s disposal. The
key ones are the spin (which acts much like Dixie Kong’s hair, Or a Tasmanian
Devils spin for that matter), a downward dive and the good old head bounce. The
head bounce is surprisingly the one that you’ll need to get the hang of due to
the fact that you spin afterwards. This fine for when you need to continue
forward momentum but you can’t jump out of the animation. This means if you
miss time jumping on an enemy that you need to bounce off to reach a platform
by a fraction you normally end up plummeting to your doom.
On the standard setting you only get one checkpoint per
level as well so be prepared to repeat the same sections over and over again.
This highlights one feature of Kaze and retro gaming that we really don’t want
to be reminded of. Yes, the dreaded ‘memory test’ is very much present here.
There are numerous levels where players have no real chance
of progressing without edging through each section following death after death.
There simply isn’t enough time for players to react to things on the fly so
remembering how enemies move and the sequence of obstacles becomes the only
route to progression. The same fate befalls boss battles meaning you are
effectively having to play each one at least three times to have any chance of
success.
The level design in general though is excellent, so those
that can cope with the throwback style will find little else to complain about.
This goes for the game overall as well as the general presentation and feel is
excellent. The fact it easily matches Rayman and Donkey Kong in terms of
mechanics and style speaks volumes for the work that has been put into it.
Overall, Kaze and the Wild Masks is a perfect throwback to
the days of the 16-bit platformer (or at least the homages to 16-bit
platformers that came later). This is both a good and bad thing depending on how
you look at it. We could have done with it being a little bit less faithful in
a few aspects but there is so much here to love that anyone with that retro
inkling should put it at the top of their platforming wish list.
Overall 8/10
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