Tembo the Badass Elephant (PC, PS4, One)

**YellerDog** · 26 Jul 2015, 02:25 AM

The director of the game was James Turner, a British guy. Also did HarmoKnight.

**AaronChance** · 26 Jul 2015, 11:06 AM

The aesthetic definitely feels like Britishisms through a Japanese lens.

**Son of Bryce** · 25 Aug 2015, 11:15 PM

From Game Freak and Sega, to you!

I couldn't believe there wasn't a thread or much discussion about this game at all. I fell in love with it immediately after it was first announced. I heard some good mentions on Game Informer podcast so I knew I had to jump in and check it out.

It's a pretty straight forward platformer with a bit of unusual play mechanics. There's a dash button which pushes you forward instantly while on land. You need this to blast through enemies and obstacles, as well as clear larger jumps. You can hold jump for a flutter jump a la Yoshi's Island. There's a Yoshi style ground smash. And pressing dash in mid-air will shoot you forward into a ball to smash enemies and bounce a couple times. Wait, there's more! The right shoulder button allows you to spray water, you can control the angle with up & down. You can use this to put out fire and spark electric objects.

I was sold on the style and flavor of the game. The art and story is great. They keep it simple and don't bother wasting your time setting up the ridiculous scenario. The army summons Tembo from the jungle to help save Shell City. The story is presented through straight forward comic panels here and there throughout the game. The music fits well but becomes a bit repetitive since each world only has 1 song and stages can last about 10-15 minutes. Not as catchy as a Sonic game.

When I started hearing comparisons to Sonic, I got really excited. The early stages offer a feeling of excitement similar to Sonic. Dashing through stages, busting through enemies, wrecking buildings and sending debris scattering. Once the novelty of playing as an elephant wears off they start pumping up the difficulty by slowing down the pace so you must make more calculated movements. Platforming but mostly a lot of avoiding enemy attacks. Towards the end of the game, it starts to get really frustrating as you have to time between enemy attacks perfectly because you can only take 5 or so hits and health is sparse.

There are 10 hidden people to rescue in each stage. When you find them they jump on your back -- 10 people on your back is a fun visual. In addition to that, you get points for each enemy and enemy structure you destroy. After destroying tanks, a soldier will fly out so you have to make sure you get them after the dust settles. This adds a bit of replay if you're a perfectionist. They lock off the last stage of each area with a quota for the "destroyed enemy" points, but I only had to replay one level to get the required points. It's pretty easy provided you're thorough the first time around.

I made it to the last stage but just gave up with the last boss. It's so friggin annoyingly hard. Randomized attack patterns in games like this don't sit well with me! The last stages in the game are also pretty frustrating so I quit while I was ahead before I ended up raging and regretting, haha!

You should check this game out if you want to play a really straightforward platformer game that doesn't rely on too many gimmicks. No wall jumping/slow motion/gravity flipping/etc. that a lot of recent platformers rely on to seem different.

My 2 cents!