O.K. K.O.: Let’s Be Heroes is a new show on Cartoon Network.  It’s about a boy named K.O. who lives in a world full of super powered heroes.  He aspires to be a hero himself, so he gets a job at a convenience store in a strip mall.  But this isn’t just any convenience store, this store has all sorts of supplies for super heroes.  In the show, K.O. gets help from his friends, family, and co-workers and learns what it means to be a true hero.  And now you can help K.O., too, in the video game based on the cartoon show called O.K. K.O.: Let’s Play Heroes.  It’s available to download on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

In the game, a company has just released a line of trading cards based on the heroes K.O. knows, and now he’s excited to collect them and maybe have a hero card of his own!  But the evil Boxman takes over the card company and resets everyone’s hero power levels on the cards to zero.  Now K.O. must do good deeds around the plaza and make people happy, which in turn will help his and others power levels on the cards go up again.

The game has two main parts.  You mostly travel around the store and strip mall plaza, talking with people and taking on fetch quests.  Some of these involve you retrieving an item, while other times you must fight Boxman’s robots.  Completing these quests will raise the power levels on your friends’ cards.  When their levels are high enough, you can unlock their “Powie Zowie” and use their cards in battle to summon them for a special skill.

Speaking of battles, that’s the other main part of the game.  At certain points you’ll have to fight Boxman’s robots in a single screen battle.  The controls aren’t as complex as a regular fighting game, but they’re more akin to Smash Bros.  You’ll punch, jump, and dodge attacks and when your meter is full, you can summon heroes from their cards to give you a hand.  When you defeat all the robots, you’ll earn stat boosters to level up your strength, speed, and ‘coolness.’

At the end of the day, you’ll receive a paycheck from your boss, as well as sometimes getting an allowance from your mom, who works at the gym across from the store.  You can then use your money to buy more cards, or stat booster foods in the store to help you level up faster.  The visuals look a little different than the cartoon, but they still fit the theme well.  I’m very impressed that they got the entire voice cast to do this game.  Is that Jim Cummings as the voice of Boxman?

While this game is cute and fun, it does have a few problems.  I wish there was a difficulty selection because some of the fights can be pretty tough and I just barely scraped by a lot of them, so I can imagine young kids, who this game is clearly aimed at, would find it pretty difficult.  A two-player option would’ve been neat as well, but I don’t know who the other player would be.  Controls are decent, but once you start having to jump on platforms in the fight sections, it can be a little annoying getting knocked off all the time.  And plus, the game can get a little repetitive after a while.  But if you’re a fan of the show, you’ll still like this game anyway.

Kid Factor:

O.K. K.O.: Let’s Play Heroes is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence.  You punch all manner of silly robots that fall apart when defeated, but that’s about as violent as it gets.  There are a few poop jokes here and there as you must collect rainbow colored dinosaur droppings for one of the missions.  But if you’re OK with your kids watching the cartoon, they’ll be OK with this game, too.  Even though this game is mostly fully voiced, reading skill is still helpful for some of the text.  While I didn’t get into the cartoon much, I did enjoy the game more.  And I do like how the main character is so eager to help his family and friends.  I think that’s a good message for kids.

Cartoon Network Games sent me a code for this game for review purposes.

Tags: Game Reviews, Television