I’m not about to say that Sega has a new mascot, but Tembo is a breath of fresh air in the genre and I think it’s going to be a success that Sega very much needed. The premise of Tembo is simple — you play a seven-and-a-half ton commando elephant who is called back into action from the jungle to save Shell City who are under attack by the Phantom Army. The Shell City military is vastly out-gunned and it’s up to Tembo to use his immense size and agility to smash and crash his way through hundreds of Phantom Army soldiers and all of their diabolical equipment and machines.
After a funny comicbook-style intro, players are dropped into a training area that introduces the controls. This takes just a few minutes and you can go back to it anytime from the mission select screen. Being able to go back and replay this tutorial probably won’t be necessary for most players, but it’s an option I wish more games had. I don’t know about you, but if I go a couple of weeks without playing a game, sometimes I forget some of the nuances of the gameplay mechanics, making progress in-game more difficult and less enjoyable than it should be. But with Tembo, Game Freak addresses these concerns by giving players an easy way to go back and review tactics.
Speaking of going back, Tembo has proven quite challenging in what I believe to be about the halfway point of the game. The Leaderboards that you can pull up from the main menu give away the total number of stages, which I will not spoil for you here. There are at least three major zones (yes, zones, just like in Sonic haha), each with several stages. To get clear a zone, you have to have a certain number of points before you can take on the boss stage. The points in this case are represented by a purple cartoonish skull, and you get these points by destroying the Phantom army. Each “kill,” which seems like an overly aggressive term given the game’s cartoon nature, is worth at least one point, and certain enemies are worth more than this. Playing through the stages the first time through, I was some seven hundred points short coming up on the zone two boss. Seven hundred points is far more than you get in any individual stage up to that point, so I had to revisit previous stages again, which I admit was not the most enjoyable thing to do.
Part of what makes replaying previously beaten stages less enjoyable is that you only get more points if you beat your previous record. That makes sense I suppose, but, I didn’t understand why there was this arbitrary point limit in the first place? There is no upgrade system for Tembo and the points are, as far as I can tell, simply points for points sake if you know what I mean. When you complete a stage, other than besting your own record or possibly getting a seat at the leaderboard, the points mean nothing. At the time of this writing, I have yet to complete Tembo because of the points requirements, which is shame because it is reducing the fun and momentum of this game considerably. Ultimately, the points criteria are probably intended to do exactly that — slow the player down and keep them from finishing the game “too quickly.” I’m hoping that a future patch gives the player the option to toggle these requirements or at least make it to where points that you do earn in replaying a stage, even if you do not set a new personal record, are counted towards the total you need.
The design issue or flaw I just described is my biggest gripe with Tembo. You could argue it’s just a matter of my lack of skill or patience, but I would counter that replaying stages/levels/events in any game gets tedious sooner or later, and moreover who the hell has the time? Quite a few people I’m sure, and ten years ago I would have been one of them, but anymore I just don’t. That said, revisiting stages does give you a chance to find more of the hostages (ten of these are hidden, or not so hidden, per stage), and that’s nice, but again that points requirement just felt like it was holding the game itself hostage, if you know what I mean.
Each death, whether it be from draining your health meter by taking hits from the Phantom Army’s missiles, bombs, blades, fire traps, and so forth, or an insta-death from falling off the map, result in about fifteen seconds total comprised of the same failure screen and load time. That might not sound like much, but I would have loved to have seen a way to get the player right back in the game instead of watching and waiting through this every single time.
A third ‘negative’ or concern I would have with Tembo is really more of a PSA. It took me a little while to notice this as I played through, but, it’s vital that you take into consideration whether Tembo is airborne or on the ground whenever you try to perform a certain move. On (many) occasions I found myself careening off of a cliff side or other death-drop because I had pressed Square while I was in air. When you are on the ground, pressing Square causes Tembo to lower is head and take off running, but, if you’re in air, he rolls up into a ball and sort of shoots himself downward at a forty-five degree angle. This attack is a great thing when needed, but my intent was to “hit the ground running” instead doing the attack move. So if you’re timing is off, it can cause you to fall off the stage altogether. I wonder if just using a third button to separate these functions might have been a good idea, because there are many buttons that are not used at all. Actually one other weird control note I lump in here is that, sometimes, the d-pad would not work for moving left or right. I’m sure my battery was charged and my controller is fine, but there were times when Tembo would be standing still and I could not get him to turn around with the d-pad, but the left stick always worked. Go figure.
Ok, so I have established that dying, replaying stages, and a couple of control woes are little-or-no fun, but I’ll be damned if not everything else with Tembo is. From its confident cartoony presentation to its deceptively deep 2D platforming gameplay, Tembo boasts creativity and clever game design. Developed on Unity, Tembo has an almost cel-shaded look to it that’s always super colorful, super smooth, and a treat to look at. Tembo’s facial expressions are one of many little graphical treats that further show that Game Freak and Sega put some TLC into this. Whatsmore is that Tembo is a simple, yet very likeable character that could have a bright future in terms of sequels. And, sidenote, I can understand how using the term ‘badass’ in the game title automatically generates eye-rolling from some, but I suggest looking right passed that and enjoying the game for what it is.
To the summary…
