(HOLY SHIT ATTEMPTED CLAYMATED SODOMY!)
Tombi!/Tomba!Developer: Whoopee Camp
Publisher: Sony
Year: 1998
Genre: Platformer
System: Playstation
How many of you love fetch quests? You know, that time-honoured task in games to find one thing then another then another then another to lengthen out gameplay but not usually be as mind-numbingly unthinkable in solutions?
No? Well imagine an entire platformer based on 130 small fetch quests precisely, with charming colours, a motley cast and sugary music. You'll have to anyway because today's review is all about that.
Story - Tombi (or Tomba as he is known in the USA) is a wild beastly lad who lives on a small set of islands not found on any map, on his average day out of hunting down meaty feasts that walk around in the form of boars or birds, when he finds sentient pigs slowly appearing throughout the land, able to stand upright, use weapons and talk people into making them give all their worldly possessions over.
Not taking any of this bullshit of food talking back at him, Tombi goes all Thog on their ass but loses his grandfather's precious bracelet in the process, an heirloom of his. So he heads out to find the Koma Pigs' base of operations to find they're slowly taking over the land with a wealth of magical power, which is amplified by gold.
Throughout the various regions of the islands are many people with problems all affected by the Koma Pigs ranging from missing dogs to the entire land itself changed. Some are needed to progress with the story. The rest are just optional to kill time.
(Tombi gets a Time Out on the Naughty Spring)
- Tombi is one of the early beginners of 2.5D, the illusion of a 3D environment running on 2D paths with the exception of being able to go into the background by either jumping on walls in the background or reaching the end of certain paths to let you progress to another side of an area, and by side I mean an actual other side in terms of geometry. Cubes and Trapezoids and shit.
The rest of the cast and items though are in 2D alone, pastel-cut lovingly into the scene with their own motions, including the range of enemies that stand in your way and a variety of various habitats to gaze upon. Sometimes there are overhead views of 2D areas you can travel in any direction through, normally villages.
Gameplay - As I said earlier, the entire game is one huge fetch quest composed of many smaller fetch quests. Now some of you might find that to be a real chore, but don't fret, you don't have to do all of them and some of them are even fun! These range from a variety of puzzling solutions that you will soon recognise as being nothing more than using this at the right area, which the game eases you into quite easily with the tutorial-esque region of The Village Of All Beginnings.
Solutions range from using a miniature tornado to clear fog, finding herbs on a perilous wind-torn mountain, rescuing a baby mouse, killing specific enemies, eating a mushroom that makes you laugh or cry to inspire people, and fetching ingredients for a witch. They all range from the pathetically easy to the laboriously frustrating with a range of kooky characters to receive them from, but they do have a reward other than items and warmth in your heart. Experience.
(Now anyone else would be locked up if they were running around in their pants attacking large floating caterpillars with a spiked ball on a wire rope)
In Tombi, you earn Adventure Points or AP by collecting items, defeating enemies and clearing quests, all of which allow you to open special boxes containing more interesting items for you. Other than that it's more to have a nice fat score of AP. Tombi can fight in two ways. Either by jumping on an enemy with a biting attack and then hurling them away, or using his trusty mace-on-a-rope, the Blackjack. The Blackjack can also be upgraded when you find a better variant of it with other weapons such as the Grapple to climb up areas or the Boomerang to get out-of-reach items.
Tombi also has one item of clothing and defence upon him, his pants. Upgrades to his pants make him able to jump farther and run faster, while his health can be upgraded by finding Vitality markers the same with any other item. This is largely a game of collecting and finishing quests, but is by no means boring if you can like that sort of thing.
(Joker's eventual redesign of Arkham Asylum were quite impractical but praised for its neomodern cubist motifs)
- Little can be said for the music other than its sugary overall feel of sounding rather kiddy, which frankly matches the mood of the game that doesn't make any attempt to be something it's not as a straight-up collectfest kid's game. From the simplistic Spanish feel of Baccus Village to the Wonderland feel of the Mushroom Forest, every place matches its mood neatly with the music to be incredibly charming yet not very annoying.
Sound is also quite clear whenever Tombi shouts or a pig squeals from a nasty beastlad bite attack.
Okay I admit this game might not be for everyone but collectionists and completionist whores would enjoy this certainly, it is at least simple but original with good if slippery controls and a warm hearted feel of itself. It's a simple game that due to its gameplay will feel quite long, but for those of you who don't mind or even enjoy going around a whole game trying to obtain EVERYTHING (and I know who you are, you got all 251 stars on Super Mario Galaxy without even stopping), well this is a return to simpler times of the same agenda. So GO CRAZY!
(What every Scotsman looks like when they've run out of whisky. While on drugs, because flowers do not exist in Scotland)
Replayability - 3
Gameplay - 4
Presentation - 3"Videogames are bad for you? That's what they said about rock 'n' roll." - Shigeru Miyamoto
Hail Slither, The Eternal Champion!