There is a bear and a restaurant, however this mild journey is heavier on story than delicacies.
There’s a subset of journey video games the place the main focus is so squarely on their narrative that there’s little room for any precise gameplay. This isn’t at all times a nasty factor, although: generally it permits for simply sufficient participant company to be the cherry on prime of a really endearing story. Bear’s Restaurant falls someplace in between, because the absence of a lot to do apart from strolling round and interacting with different characters makes up the overwhelming majority of the motion. Happily, with an emotional story at its core, it manages to supply a reasonably fulfilling option to cross a pair hours.
You’d be forgiven for considering that, primarily based on the title and the sport’s opening, you’re about to take pleasure in a restaurant simulation expertise of some kind. You, a gray cat, get up in mattress to a bear in a chef’s outfit. Even the opening quarter-hour see you taking orders from prospects, passing them alongside to chef bear, after which delivering the dishes as they arrive out. You’re additionally launched to one of many major mechanics of Bear’s Restaurant: acquiring reminiscence shards from folks you encounter and utilizing these to dive into their reminiscences. Doing so performs a short cutscene that reveals a particular meals they could have loved. Not lengthy after, an necessary fact is revealed about everybody who enters the restaurant: they’ve all handed on and live within the afterlife.
Saying far more concerning the story can be doing a disservice to the sport, however suffice it to say the plot is an eccentric mixture of bittersweet and bizarre. You’ll finally encounter individuals who have been judged as going to heaven or hell, and the reminiscence shards you acquire find yourself granting the power to see how every character met their destiny. The themes of loss of life and what awaits us after we shuffle off this mortal coil permeate Bear’s Restaurant, however they are often at odds with the rudimentary presentation and its vivid pixelated colours. After rolling credit there’s a pleasant bit of additional content material to discover for those who’re so inclined, however the lack of any significant gameplay means it’s essential be fairly engaged within the story to need to see it by way of. The heaviness of sure story beats and the way in which they’re weaved in virtually unexpectedly could also be off placing to some gamers.
Bear’s Restaurant presents a novel expertise in that it’s each extra and fewer than what it seems to be. Its narrative delivers some poignant emotional moments, but it surely’s additionally interspersed with oddly darkish or fantastical components that undermine its real coronary heart. As a prequel to Fishing Paradiso, which Neal reviewed right here, it does at the very least introduce characters that carry over to that comply with up, however these on the lookout for one thing extra properly rounded and with extra pronounced gameplay components might need to skip the restaurant and go straight to paradise. When you’re up for a narrative concerning the afterlife, how folks get there, and the need to carry on to these we’ve misplaced, pull up a chair at Bear’s Restaurant.