Proboscidea With 'Tude: Tembo The Badass Elephant Out
NOT SONIC
Update: Ho ho, actually it's not on sale right now - it was quickly pulled as they initially released the wrong version, but it should return real soon.
I can only see Tembo the Badass Elephant [official site] as a gritty, bandana-wearing replacement for Sonic the Hedgehog. Watching videos of the new platformer from Game Freak (yes, the Pokémon lot), something went wrong and that's all I see the character as. The game isn't quite Sonic, though Sega are publishing and the mammal does charge up and zoom around and spin and collect shiny floating golden doodads and occasionally go into a giant pinball machine - it's a fightier, stompier, smashier affair. Tembo is a heffing great elephant, after all.
You can see for yourself as it's out now, as this launch trailer announces:
But you see what I mean, right? Down to the weird 3D sections that Sonic got into.
"Sonic is dead," I can see Ian Sega declaring. "Fans clung on through decades of rubbish games, but Sonic Boom finally ruined it all. We need a new rude dude with 'tude. Bigger, stronger, better. Hedgehogs aren't cool. Hedgehogs are small and puny, but cool things are big - look at those daft watches everyone has nowadays. And up the 'tude - give that dude a rude bandana."
Except that clearly didn't happen.
Help. I've ruined for myself a game which looks like it might actually be quite fun what with all that running and jumping and stomping. Everywhere I go, I see that sodding Hedgehog tapping his toe and waggling his finger at me. THAT'S ENOUGH 'TUDE FROM YOU, HOG. Get over it. Yes, it's sad what happened to you, but we all fall from grace. What state do you think I'll be in a decade from now? Doesn't bear thinking about it, does it? But it happens to us all. So that's enough. Move on. Deal with it. Get out my head. Time to die.
Tembo is £9.99/12,99€/$14.99 on Steam for Windows. It really doesn't look that much like Sonic.