Written by Jessyca Yoppolo, August 8, 2016, at 6:00 a.m.
Today is the release day for the new point-and-click noir adventure game Bear With Me. To celebrate Exordium Games’ achievement, Slickster Magazine has selected me, their kick ass editor, to review it! So let’s go ahead with our no-spoilers review.
Bear With Me Review
As a point-and-click adventure and noir detective story, this game is pretty standard. It follows the story of Amber Ashworth and her toys, particularly the alcoholic “former” detective Ted E. Bear, as they try to find Amber’s brother, Flint, and solve the mystery of the murderous “red man.”
It’s definitely not a game for children, with the gritty themes and explicit dialogue. Just because it’s a point-and-click doesn’t mean it can’t be for adults.
Gameplay
The goals are clear, though the path to reaching them is left up to the player to figure out. That’s good because you should have some idea of what you’re doing in any game without someone holding your hand. That would make it really boring.
The clicking is actually pretty intuitive. I’ve never clicked on something I didn’t mean to click on. There are many things to click, and some of them are useful. Some of them are useless but clever. Some of them are useless and not so clever. You can’t knock ‘em all out of the park, huh?
Visuals
The visuals could be better. I love the background designs, even the exaggerated perspectives. The designs for the sentient toys are wonderful and really express the characters. Amber’s design really doesn’t do the same thing for me. She looks more boring than the clever and imaginative 10-year-old she actually is. I’m not sure how else you could express that, but traditional clothes and an expressionless face didn’t seem to be the way to go.
I’m going to address the elephant in the room for visuals. The person drawing the characters really did not want to draw feet. Sometimes it’s distracting. Yes, a teddy bear in real life might not have traditional looking feet and definitely does not wear shoes. But Amber’s long skirt is not something an adventurous, resourceful child would wear unless she was trying to hide something… Something like poorly drawn feet, perhaps? I’m an artist, too, so I get it, but… “Are you even trying?”
Writing
The writing is where I start to feel Bear With Me slip. This is really important for a story-driven game with pages and pages of dialogue, but it falls short of its requirements.
The overall structure is not the thing I have a problem with. The dialogue in particular is hit-or-miss. Even then, the hits are few and far between and they’re a lower quality than I would have liked. I can move past the descriptions of the useless items you click on, even if they are unbearably long.
What I can’t stand is that unbearably long monologue transforms into tedious and repetitive dialogue in major scenes. The “what I did or did not do” scene with the Mugshot Brothers would have been 100 times better if there were fewer instances of the word “see?”
Speaking of repetitive, I almost wanted to scream when Ted summarized Amber’s request for his help, and then I had to play that entire scene – with dialogue options – as Amber.
Maybe the solution here would have been to have Ted be the main character. His lines are always more clever and his character better suits the intended audience of Bear With Me. The intended audience is obviously not 10 year olds. I’m interested in what Amber’s doing, but I’m much more interested in what Ted’s doing. It’s his story, but it’s written like it’s Amber’s story.
Sounds
Maybe the dialogue would have been better if the voice actors cared about their jobs? This almost killed Bear With Me for me. All the background sounds are good, and the music is good enough to not be completely distracting. The voice acting… I wish I could come up with a good enough metaphor to describe how mediocre it is, but that’s too much work for it.
Final Thoughts
If you would like to play a standard point-and-click semi-horror detective game, this is a cool game for you. If you really want to play this game and have it be better than irritating, just turn the sound off.
I gave it a harsh review, but I’m an editor so that’s my job. I liked Bear With Me. For the right price, I would recommend it. For a numerical rating, I would probably give it a 6.5/10 or something around there, depending on what kind of person you are.
Anyway, it’s a lot better than it looks and I would give it a shot. If you do, come back and let me know if my review was accurate. If it wasn’t, you have every right to throw rotten tomatoes my way.