Kingsley's Adventure

    As the cover implies, you are a fox named Kingsley, and you have an adventure to do: namely, saving the fruit kingdom from a very bad cook. Before you go on thinking this game is all sorts of fruity, look at the castle on the right side. It is made of carrots. So this game is fruits and vegetables, exactly what any young aspiring gamer should eat as part of a nutritious diet, even if you are a fox with a very smug set of eyebrows.
    I came across this title on the mud pile that is /v/ under a thread entitled "Games only you played." I saw this and wondered; I'm fairly sure whoever posted this is the only person who played it. Well I intended to change that. I got my hands on this and started it up, soon to realize that this was not a very high inspiring game, it was very clear the developers understood they would not be immortalized in history for the glory that is this game. Yet that is a good thing, as through every moment I could feel that this game was made to be played, not merely to be sold.
    The game itself is very much so like any 3D Legend of Zelda, with it's dungeons, and puzzles, and swords of adventure. At the same time, it is nothing like Zelda in which this game comfortably lives within it's boundaries. It does nothing new, and it very well accepts it's technical limitations without question. It does so with dignity though, which is more than many games can claim.

There are mountains behind that shack.

    As you can see on the left we see a deformed figure in the distant blue horizon by the sea, yet as we approach said denizen of this beach, we soon come to see beyond our initial 20 foot vision (I counted actual footsteps) a pier with a shack was right behind him. Clearly (or not so as it was hard to see at first) this game suffers from a horrendous lack of draw distance. So bad, that during every boss fight, they sit well beyond your sphere of vision firing magic missile at your tail. Even so, it was quickly overlooked for the charms that I could see within my vision sphere.

Is that not the most adorable spider that still wants to kill you?

    Seriously, look at that spider with his crazy Nicholas Cage smile. Don't you just was to kick it's face? Well you do, as that is the default attack when dealing with them: kicking them clear across the room.
    The hub world consists of the Carrot Castle which you happen to live in as an orphan (every game needs a hero with no parents: see FF3, FF8, Dark Cloud 1, near any Zelda game), and take upon yourself to become a true knight and recover the magic cookbook the evil chef stole from the queen. You connect to the various places with "foxholes" found in the basement and around the garden; taking you to the seaside town to save them from an evil scurvy pirate with a cannon for a gun and retrieve the stolen Galleon with sea eels with tridents and orcas with clubs for minions, to a village ransacked by a dragon who built a conveyor belt from the town to his dinner table, then a village who thrives on root beer made by secretive monks unaware their latest batch was poisoned, to a countryside castle run by an evil wizard who stole the spiffy robes of the good wizard. As you save these lands of evil, you attain the pieces to the true knight, from armor to an axe, to a sword crafted from the dragons fork and knife, to gauntlets of power, and boots of steely spring, and finally a magic gem of shielding power. These items each help you access a special area in each of the four worlds to defeat the dark knights that inhabit them. Once each one is saved, you go straight to the evil cook/wizards lair above a floating island inside a volcano (of course right?). When the evil is slain and the book returned, all is well in the fruit kingdom as you are knighted as Sir Kingsley.
    You may ask why this game is so purely stereotypical and old. Well, it is actually, but it goes about it in such a way that no other can, with charm and mild wit. From the fruit shaped keys, to the goofy enemies, and the smug look on Kingsley's face at any given time, you can't help but love the character design.

It's called caffeine addiction Paul the creepy faced dolphin.

        

    Even if the rooms are made of less than 25 polygons and and the enemies make no sound as they shoot at you through your painfully limited vision sphere, you press on shooting back where the arrow came from and smirk as you hear their painful grunt; swinging your sword or axe and holding your shield strong in order to save the cheerful people from their generic fate.
    Even I was skeptical at first, with the odd non-camera motivated controls (pressing back makes him actually walk in a backwards fashion and dedicated shoulder buttons to help strafe), I found it cute with his little back-flips to avoid the spiders; or the very bad vision, yet colorful and well-put together character models. After a few moments I soon forgave it's limitations that only existed from the hardware it came on, and enjoyed this very "family-orientated" action adventure alternative. The developers liked what they made and didn't particularly care if it made big money.

Yes, that switch has my paw print on it, yes that key is a cherry, and yes my shield has my emblem on it. But hey, when did you last slay a dragon and forge his eating equipment into this sword or kill the bat fiend in catacombs beneath a monastery and save a village from being poisoned?

    So if you are tired of the Zelda franchise yet want your swords and adventure and can bare to tear yourself away from the shimmering glittery fanciness of current gen "grafix" with it's incessant need to have gore and maturity for it's mature gamers just to make it worthy of play, go on and play this one, it will only take about 4 hours of your time. Even if you are a fox orphan child in a fruit kingdom full of other crazy animals and their wacky stories, this game is for all ages.
    One out of one.