Review for Bear With Me page 3
Episode Three
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.”
A biblical quote may not seem all that relevant to a screwball detective point-and-click comedy, but its sentiment is something that Bear With Me’s third episode replicates quite well. In this satisfying conclusion to the three-part series, you’ll follow Amber, the precocious but haunted little girl, and her world-weary detective companion, Ted, as they search for her brother Flint and the final meaning behind why Paper City seems to be set ablaze with fires and tragedy. The puzzling at times takes a back seat to the story, and some objectives can be quite opaque, but many are well-integrated and the witty dialogue, hilarious comedy, and multilayered story are a delight.
Because this is episode three, you’re dropped into the middle of the action: Ted and Amber have been split up in their search for Flint and are now trying to find each other. Fortunately, this installment has a “previously on” introduction that does a good job of recapping the story so far. It was nice to have this background told altogether in one segment, and it provides a decent overview of how all the many characters you’ve met in the first two episodes are connected, something that felt quite disjointed previously.
Paper City still looms large, bright and sparkling in the harbor, presented as before in the same black and white cartoon style with a smattering of color. As this final episode begins, we discover Amber attempting to find clues about her missing brother in Tigren’s ransacked voodoo lair. Tigren, one-time flame of the city’s kingpin and card shark – an actual shark named King – has disappeared, but her abandoned room holds clues to Amber’s next steps.
Just as in episodes past, Amber starts up her witty banter as she makes observations, only to have the rhythm interrupted this time as she painfully remembers that Ted isn’t there with her. You’ll be without the dynamic chemistry of the two characters for much of the game as they spend it separately trying to reunite. As Amber makes her way out of Tigren’s room, the point of view shifts to Ted.
Ted becomes nostalgic as he searches for Amber. Additional cut scenes provide some background: Finally we learn a bit more about Amber’s parents, Margaret and Thomas. They married and had a son, Flint. Flint was Ted’s first friend, and, of course, sometime later, Amber came along. In between flashbacks, Ted visits Westpaw Casino again, only to find that it has become the scene of a crime. Detective doggies and mice cops loiter about the building, and Ted must use his powers of persuasion to get information about where Amber could be.
The story moves back and forth between Amber exploring places, such as King’s gorgeous Mediterranean-style mansion by the sea, and Ted following her just a few footsteps behind. During this cat-and-mouse… uh, teddy bear-and-little girl game, we discover more about the dark secrets that Paper City is hiding. Characters you thought were ominous may have had a change of heart and are now out to help Amber, and those who might have seemed on your side, suddenly aren’t, though it’s not entirely clear why these switches have happened.
This outing also introduces you to a number of new characters, including Jameson (wink, wink) the Irish octopus bartender. He’s there to pour drinks while Ted pours out his angst. Blabbermouth Sam, Paper City’s top news hound, wears his hat slung low on his brow, covering his eyes. He’s heard all the stories going around and helps Ted out in a pinch. Hammerhead Sharky the “cabbie” drives his taxi, or rather his rubber ducky boat around the harbor. Locke, the stern Chief of Police, served with Ted in the great Pillow War of ‘38.
There are old familiar characters too, like Brian – or is that Ben, the officer whose name Ted can never remember – who helps Ted navigate the nefarious Paper City police organization. Betty, the wise-cracking waitress from episode one, works her “womanly” wiles on a desk sergeant so that Ted can interrogate CBG – yes, CBG is back and as crazy as ever, with his straightjacket and seagull obsession.
It’s not just the character interactions that are humorous, either. Many items reward your curiosity with entertaining observations or even dialogue, and this episode is absolutely stuffed full of funny sight gags: When Ted hops off a stool, he’s so short you just see the tufts of his ears as he walks out of the bar. Firetrucks have wind-up keys in them. Reef King Island looks, from a distance, like an actual shark fin slicing through the water. A “motivational” poster in a customer service purgatory area has the saying: “Just give up, kitty." And the meta commentary and gags still abound. In your inventory you have matches you can click on to hear: “These were criminally under used in the last episode.” A boom mic falls into a random scene, reminding you that you’re not watching something real.
But wait, there’s more! Pop culture references also abound. If anything, there are even more of them in this episode than the earlier outings. Here’s just a sampling: There’s a plaque with the tail end of the “Orca” fishing boat in King’s house, and Ted observes in a nod to the movie Jaws: “I guess they didn’t get the bigger boat.” Spot a rug on the floor, and Amber notes, “Maybe I should tell Lebowski it’s here.” Even timely remarks occur, such as “Down here, George, you’ll float too,” a nod to the Stephen King horror movie IT which was recently in theaters. In an evidence room, there’s a plethora of references to other video games, like a gas mask that recalls a hero in Overwatch (“I’m a one-man apocalypse”), a Pokémon catcher, a Super Mario Brothers mushroom, and more. Even the game menu screen has a delightful homage to the famous Edward Hopper painting, “Nighthawks,” with Ted sitting alone at a diner with his back to us.
Even with all its comedic touches, as the story takes a turn for the dark, so too does the scenery. You’ll have more settings to explore in episode three, as Amber finds herself moving out of the comforting confines of Paper City and into the surreal. Forests are filled with naked trees that weep blood. The ground is littered with the crowns of teeth sprouting from the dirt. In an operating room, doctors with white surgical masks and glowing eyes float against a blood-red background. A little girl doll lays tiny and alone in a hospital bed. Tigren’s secret voodoo room is dark with a smattering of Day of the Dead skulls and a large ouroboros adorning a wall.
Hints of this more mature narrative are in the music as well. The opening has a little girl singing against a carousel-type background. Much like the story itself, it has a veneer of childhood happiness and innocence, but there is something off-key and twisted beneath.
The voice acting is the same, with some truly stellar performances from Amber, though some characters are clearly voiced by the same actor. As the tale takes its darker turn, Amber exudes grief, confusion, and poignancy in her voice. At one time, as she ascends an elevator, the crackling voices of her parents come through an invisible speaker, adding to the unreality of the moment.
With such a strong storyline and acting, the puzzles could have been treated like an afterthought. But while there are some misses, there are other puzzles that actually pull you deeper into the story in an organic way. Some obstacles are of the inventory variety, whether locating slides for a Lantern Magicka that will help give you some background, or using momentum and the tools at hand to break open a hidden entrance. But others will have you taking notes and making drawings to figure out. In one of the first challenges, I had to pay close attention to the current room and make note of clues I found in order to decrypt the first of many locked doors.
Not all of the puzzles are fun, though. Not too far into the game, I came across one of the more frustrating tasks. Even after collecting a series of keys that were clearly needed for a complicated lock, I found no real clues that would help me determine how to use them, and I had to resort to brute trial-and-error to get the lock to open. The game is very linear, so there was no chance to work on some other puzzle or explore elsewhere in the meantime. I had to solve this puzzle before progressing. More clues or context would have been much appreciated, and could easily have been incorporated into the investigation. (Perhaps such clues do exist, but if so I never did find them.) There’s also a maze puzzle at the end which has hints to the directions you should take, but they were too cryptic for me to figure out, so again, I had to simply guess my way through the labyrinth, eventually making my way out.
I was most impressed with one of the final dialogue puzzles, in which you have to gather information from a series of interactions and use the details you’ve gleaned to answer subsequent questions to get past someone blocking your progress. It sounds straightforward, but the way the puzzle is constructed helped me slowly piece together the missing pieces of Amber’s history, and I found the sequence a terrific blend of puzzling and revealing storytelling.
When Ted makes it to King’s mansion, he sees that things have gone wrong, very wrong – dead stuffed animals with fluff flung about the room wrong. The story begins to unspool from here, and details begin to emerge about the Mill fire and other fires that have been ruining everything in the city. All I’ll say about it is a warning not to get too attached to any particular character.
In general, the story is nicely paced as it switches between our two heroes, although there are a few bits of narrative hand-waving. There’s a time when Ted needs a key from Officer Brian to an evidence room and . . . Brian just gives the key to him, no puzzle, no discussion. Why lock the evidence room if there isn’t any challenge to opening it?
Fortunately there aren’t many such moments, but a clue soon leads you to the east Paper City tunnel – the tunnel that Flint used to escape way back in episode one. Who’s Flint? Ah yes, Amber’s brother. The person this whole three-episode story was ostensibly about finding. As Ted makes his way into the tunnel, you’ll think he’s gone back to the beginning, and he has, in a sense. But it’s a beginning that will start to make you question everything you’ve been through up until now. Ted eventually makes his way to Amber, and it’s at this point that the story takes an even deeper, much darker turn. The narrative from here on out really is Amber’s story, just as all of the characters had been hinting at all along: the fire, the mysterious red man, everything was always about her. Further plot developments from the last act cannot be shared here without spoilers, but I found the turn to a more melancholic take on a child’s pain and memories to be a wonderful tying-up of so many story threads.
Ultimately, the connection of all previous events and how they are woven into Amber’s life story is beautifully done, a really nice melding of comedy and pathos. As I played through this final episode of Bear With Me, which took me nearly four hours to complete, I found myself remembering the details from the two previous installments, which in hindsight added welcome depth to what could have been just a light-hearted detective whodunit. While the series conclusion puts away childish things to a degree, it still has a glorious sense of wonder, humor, friendship and love that blends quite nicely with meaningful puzzles and exploration. Don’t be put off by the slow start, the toys and the silly jokes and games; you’ll find a much richer and deeper tale here if you do as the title suggests and bear with it until the highly satisfying end.
