Jambo - nbhgvbjhu7ytfdfdj

Yes, I bought this game solely because its name is one letter away from my own name.

The warning signs were all there. A thumbnail with artifacting around the edges of the image. No user reviews. It being a platformer. The fact that they listed the game as “Jambo” in the title but referred to it as “Jumbo” in the description. It being made in Russia. All in all, it just seemed like something that Jim Sterling would play and say in that lovably sarcastic voice of his, “…well… it’s not very good, innit?”

BUT I DIDN’T CARE. I DIDN’T LISTEN TO MY HIGHER BRAIN GOING: “Jombo, what are you doing with your life?! You have deadlines that you have to meet! You’re an aspiring artist who wants to have eight kids! You don’t have time to waste playing and reviewing this unimaginative spleck, you need to learn how to draw hands without references, dangit!”

Instead, I listened to my lower brain going: “hehheh…Jambo sounds like Jombo. Funny.”

So, I booted it up and was met with incredibly loud music and a level select screen. I clicked on level one, moved right, and found that the platforming was quite possibly the worst I had ever experienced in any game I’d ever played in my entire life forever. It felt like one of those rage games that would be free on a sketchy website with popup ads, only someone was charging REAL MONEY for it on Steam.

 ...

 ...

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Y’know, things weren’t looking good for Jambo. But then, the strangest thing happened. While I was playing this absolutely gosh-awful excuse for a platformer, a seven-foot tall alien woman with an unrealistically curvy physique and a tattoo of prog rock legend Jon Anderson on her thigh came in and started talking about how she agrees with all of my political and religious views (in a sexy alto voice) before asking if I’d like this steak that she cooked for me. 

"Traditional gender roles are sexy, and contraceptives are for wusses! ;3"

Needless to say, the game went from the worst game I’d ever played to at least a nine out of ten after that. After finishing my steak (medium well, just the way I like it), she fiddled with her cross necklace and asked if I’d like to go see some real action. Still in the process of chewing the thick yet not-too-tough steak, I asked her, “Isn’t this game just some sorta crappy, cynical platformer made with GameMaker as a glorified homework assignment that probably earned the developer a seventy-nine in the class that he’s trying to sell as a finished product in a professional storefront?”

She shook her head and told me that there was an exciting science fiction section of the game that featured Dragon Age Origins-style branching dialogue options, pre-Bloodborne soulslike combat (complete with poise that doesn’t suck), Dragon’s Dogma character customization and atmosphere, and (most importantly) not a single human NPC in the entire game.

It was more than I could bear…but then a single fear niggled in the back of my mind. “Hey…tall, sexy alien woman with questionably-healthy feminine proportions?” I started off.

“Yes?” she replied, rubbing the small of her back.

“…are there going to be any…*gulp*…obvious attempts at pushing left-wing policy in my face?” If this sci-fi was anything like a Bioware game, then I had to be prepared for the worst (turians can be gay, my a-

She giggled and adjusted her wedding ring (which I’d just noticed resembled the ring on my ring finger...so that was interesting). “Of course not, Jombo! Everybody knows in Perfect Game Land, there are no left-wing politics! That’s like asking if Yes uses pre-recorded tracks in their concerts! Or, alternatively, asking if women don’t like being complimented on their physical features by men with a slight genetic proclivity towards acne and bad facial hair! :3”

That series of statements was so perfect that I died. After God put me back in my body with a pat on the head and a reminder to make less art revolving around scantily-clad fictitious alien women, Sexy Alien Woman led me to the good part of the game. 

Bierstadt + Robert Hubert + whoever did the concept art for the bottom image = this game

The graphics were realistic and stylized, running at a consistent sixty frames per second no matter how many enemies were on the screen at once (which weren’t a lot because then it’d be too cluttered…that’s just basic game design :p). The soundtrack sounded like a blend of Eric Whitacre, Austin Wintory, RUSH, Yes (obviously), whoever did the soundtrack for Dragon’s Dogma and Nier: Automata, Disasterpiece, A Trick of the Tail-era Genesis, Jonathan Coulton, Molly Hatchet, Vincent Diamante, Morten Lauridsen, Steely Dan, The Weepies, and Ella Fitzgerald.

There were dozens of well-developed characters, every one feeling like real, distinct individuals. If I were to list out and draw each and every one of them, then I would die of old age. What I can tell you to save both my time and my life is this: None of them were, in any way, shape, or form, reminiscent of Vivienne or Sera from Dragon Age: Inquisition. 

 

"The love of my life died. I feel nothing and emote nothing." / "I'm a 12-year old boy who you can romance!"

…oh!…it was beautiful! And most of them were voiced by people I’d never heard of before, implying that the game was getting out of the rut of hiring the same voice actors for multiple franchises.

The story kept me hooked from the very beginning, and I wasn’t able to predict what was going to happen next. Its mood naturally shifted between serious moments and humorous ones, never sacrificing emotion for tension-reducing comedy. Also, the story hosted a credible threat which was simultaneously objectively evil and reasonable, but it didn't rely on the "literally everything is morally grey when you think about it" approach that most millennials love so much. You were able to root for the good guys, but you weren't left thinking that the villains were evil for the sake of being evil. Think of the Reapers from the GOOD Mass Effect games, but somehow even more intimidating and interesting.

…hmm? The gameplay?...how…how DARE YOU ASK THAT?! IT’S AN INSULT TO THE GAME FOR YOU TO EVEN ASSUME, WITH YOUR FEEBLE, PRIMITIVE CLUMP OF NERVES YOU CALL A BRAIN THAT THIS GAME’S GAMEPLAY COULD BE TRANSLATED BY MERE MORTAL LINGUISTICS! I’LL KILL YOU, I’LL KILL ALL OF YOWa*#regtjaergkseb90sza 3wtq35-qi35@#%@#^@#1725-1

As I was venting my fears of not becoming a successful artist to Sexy Alien Woman (with her assuring me that, at the very least, I could offer to draw some nerds' OCs on Deviantart if I was desperate enough), I heard a familiar voice call my name.

“Jombo,” it said, in a voice that sounded like a man doing really impressive falsetto.

I looked down at Sexy Alien Woman’s thighs. 

Sweet. 

Also, I noticed that the tattoo of prog rock legend Jon Anderson was talking to me!

“Jombo,” he repeated, “you’ve fallen asleep while playing a not very good video game!”

I was distraught. I couldn’t believe it….but at the same time, I knew that Jon Anderson would never lie to me. “Why, Jon?” I asked, “Why are you telling me this? Why are you robbing me of this beautiful dream?”

“Because you shouldn’t just dream of a perfect world, Jombo. You have to go out there, in the real world, and make your dream come true! You know, I wrote a song about an endless dream once. It was a good song. Very beautiful. I don’t remember what the lyrics mean though.”

“B-but Jon,” I gasped, looking at Sexy Alien Woman to back me up. She seemed busy being horrified by the fact that her tattoo was talking to me, however, so I figured I was on my own. “I-…I can’t go back to the real world, Jon…the TV shows pander to atheist millennials, nobody wants to get married and have kids anymore, Rick and Morty started focusing on developing unlikable characters, children literally make fun of me in public (that’s actually happened on more than one occasion. I legitimately don’t know why, but it leaves me questioning everything about myself), people think that minimalist art is acceptable as opposed to lazy, there are only three other twenty-year-old Christians in the entire United States and I’m related to one of them, I can make women laugh and establish long-lasting friendships with ‘em but I’m not pervy enough to make physical contact and establish a romantic connection therefore they end up assuming that I’m an unconfident creep with a good sense of humor, and worst of all, Dark Souls: Remastered is coming out and there’s a massive chance that it’ll get rid of the old poise and parry systems and destroy its role playing potential!”

Jon Anderson took a little while to process the run-on sentence and formulate a response. “Yes, all of that is true,” he eventually replied, “but what I want you to realize is that, no matter how dark the world may seem…there’s always a beautiful sliver of sunlight that weaves through the thorns. And when you finally experience that light softly brushing against your skin, while it won’t make the darkness any less bad, it’ll make you feel like it was all worth it. Isn’t that what life is all about, Jombo? Finding your little ray of sunlight?”

I sniffled and rubbed a tear out of my eye. I’m sure Sexy Alien Woman would have done so, too, had she not been preoccupied with being frightened and confused. Jon was right. I couldn’t just stay in this dream forever…eventually, I was going to have to man up and find my place in the world. I was going to have to find my little ray of sunlight.

“Jon…I just have one question for you before I leave…”

“And what is that, Jombo?” he asked, with a characteristically adorable and not-wholly-lucid smile.

“…what do the lyrics in the chorus of ‘Awaken’ mean? I mean, ‘Suns, high, streams, through, awaken gentle mass touch?’ What’s that all about?”

Jon gave a look like he was about to answer, but then hesitated with an uncertain expression. “I don’t know. But it’s a lovely song, isn’t it? It’s one of my favorites!”

I smiled and nodded my head. “Yes, it is, Jon Anderson. Yes, it is.”

And I woke up, drenched in sweat and feeling like I weighed five pounds lighter. I looked at my phone…an entire day had passed. I opened a google tab and typed in “parenting is good,” and found eight hundred thousand results linking to biased surveys talking about how parenting is bad. “Welp,” I thought to myself, “I’m back in the real world again…and I still have this game to review…”

So, what can I say about Jambo after this exercise in creative writing? Well, despite me contacting Steam and demanding to be refunded the fifty cents I paid for this game on principle alone, I say this:

This game is so bad that it caused me to reevaluate my life by going into a despair-fueled coma and developing a stronger understanding of the importance of hope in trying times. If you think you can get the same experience I got from it, then I say it'd be enlightening. It’s like you’re bearing the sins of every mortal on Earth…things can’t possibly get any worse, so you end up imagining a better world only to find that, in holding everything wrong with the world on your shoulders, everything else in life is open to you, and it's more glorious than you can possibly imagine. There’s always something in this world that you can cling on to, that you can love, that can make life worth living…and sometimes, you just need a reminder of what it’s like to have that thing taken away from you to accept just how special it is.

In other words, I played at most one minute of this game and accepted it as the worst game I have ever played in my entire life. Don’t buy it. Even for a joke.

Bad/10