TEMBO the Badass Elephant - Xbox One Review

Does anyone remember when SEGA were great? When you couldn't wait to get home from school and fire up Sonic the Hedgehog? Those days have been gone for a long time, but now we have a new hope...

In TEMBO the Badass Elephant, you control TEMBO (that's right, he's so badass that he spells his names in ALL CAPITALS). TEMBO is an elephant recruited by the army to face off against PHANTOM. In his attempts to eradicate PHANTOM, TEMBO must travel through a variety of zones (remember when games had zones?) killing bad guys and rescuing civilians.

As you'd expect from a badass elephant, TEMBO is pretty badass. He can charge through pretty much anything, uppercut things into oblivion using his trunk or smash and slam his enemies to the ground. Plus he can squirt water on them, just to rub it in. Well, and put out fires.



Anyone who loves old-school platformers will love this game (and if you don't love old-school platformers, what's wrong with you?). The action is fast-paced, frantic and a hell of a lot of fun. Whether you're charging through PHANTOM soldiers, destroying PHANTOM tanks, or attempting to Sumo wrestle massive mechanical monstrosities into lava, you're going to have a good time.



As well as a wide variety of enemies, you have all the standard platform action such as conveyor belts, fireballs, Thwomp-like things that try to crush you, as well as trampolines, cannons and swings to help you get around. In short, I have absolutely nothing bad to say about this game, at all. SEGA have spent decades trying to recapture the magic of the original Sonic games on the Megadrive. Not only has this recaptured that magic, it's basically the game that Sonic wishes it could be.

I don't believe in giving games a perfect score, so TEMBO will have to be happy with a staggeringly badass 9/10.

SOLD!

Clone loves his retro types!

Nice review, not one for me but appreciate you taking the time.

Great review of a great game!

Who wants to see my elephant impression?

Nice review mate. Well done.

I have since discovered two negatives:

1. It really takes an age for the game to load up. There's like a minute-long black screen before the splash screens turn up.
2. The in-game volume is very, very low. It can easily be drowned out by a toast pop, for example

Neither of these have any impact on what is a fantastic game, though.

number 1 is strange as the splash is normally instant but on screen for ages

number 2 - just to make sure: TV is actually turned up right? I know its been a while since you tested anything

Shut up, Sedge.

For those interested, here's a video of me playing the first Stage:

Nice speed run!

I should put my 100% collectible run up for comparison as it takes me about 9 minutes!!

I can do that in 3 minutes if you want me to show that

Yeah, I'll show you anyway :p

I can do it quicker now that I know the route, but I was well chuffed to get 110G on the first level in 9 mins.

1st run, one take hammer

Finally hit 99 lives. Just managed stage 1 in 2:17.4 without even realising it (cool)

Will have to pick it up at some point

It's great fun, but the bosses are proper Megaman levels of frustration. Though not quite as hard.

Cool review. Think I have used a walkthrough of yours Ackter, nice to hear your thoughts on games as well