Okay, let me start this review by giving out some historical context for Battle Bears:
Battle Bears was originally a series intended for iPhone and mobile devices, and it was extremely popular during the late 2000's to early 2010's. This included games such as Battle Bears -1 (Yes, that's actually the name of the game), Battle Bears: Zero, Battle Bears: Zombies, Battle Bears: Blast, and Battle Bears: Gold (which is a multiplayer game similar to Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch) However, the series' popularity began to fade into obscurity, and every game that was on the Apple Appstore, except for Battle Bears: Zombies, and Battle Bears: Gold was removed. So if you're wondering as to why this game looks blocky and looks like it came off of a Nintendo 64 cartridge, that's why.
Now, as for my opinion on this port:
When I found out Battle Bears -1 and Battle Bears: Zombies was ported to PC through Steam, I was excited, because the iPhone version of Battle Bears: Zombies is kinda broken, and Battle Bears -1 no longer exists on the Appstore, and I loved these games when I was a kid. Now, Battle Bears -1 on Steam is surprisingly good; they optimized it for PC, there's graphic settings, and the gameplay is just as fun as it was playing on the phone; it honestly feels like I'm playing a game that was made for PC. As for Battle Bears: Zombies, this unfortunately a horrible port and it's an insult to what made Battle Bears so good in the first place.
While Battle Bears -1 actually felt like it was remade for PC, this feels like I'm playing on an iPhone emulator or something. Here's a list of things wrong with this port:
1. The controls suck. The controls purely rely on the mouse, the only time you need the keyboard is for switching weapons and manual reloading. Also, Oliver, the character you play as, turns very slowly, which makes it hard to keep track of all sides on the battlefield. It would be nice if we could turn quickly like we could in the iPhone version.
2. The game glitches from time to time. I don't know if it's just me, but I ran into several glitches while I played through the whole campaign. The most notable one is when using the Slingshot, which shoots black jelly beans that cause the enemies to inflate like a balloon and explode, but in this port the inflation effect is broken and instead the models just distort, and there's not even a sound when they explode. Other glitches include Oliver's weapons going invisible for no inexplicable reason, or the sounds of the enemies dying keep playing on a loop, and sometimes the enemies get stuck in the ground or get stuck in place.
3. There are no graphics settings. You are not able to change the resolution, which is bad because I like to have my games set at a specific resolution. Don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna be too heavy on this, because this game was originally an iPhone game, so it makes sense that has a default resolution that can't be changed, but the option would've been nice. Battle Bears -1 has it, so why not this?
4. There's no quit button. I have to alt-tab to quit the game every time I'm done playing.
5. The cutscenes look ugly. Like I said before, this game was originally an iPhone game, so putting the cutscenes on a big, HD screen makes them not look good, but take a look at this game's trailer on the Steam page, the cutscenes look great! They look like they were actually remastered for this port, but when you play the game, it's just the cutscenes from the iPhone version. Even the tutorial video was taken directly from the iPhone version, and that version does not have mouse or keyboard controls!
All-in-all, this is a seriously rushed port, and because of that there is bound to be problems. I really do hope SkyVu is able to improve this version of Battle Bears: Zombies via updates, and maybe even port the rest of the Battle Bears series to Steam someday. Battle Bears is a series that has serious potential, and I don't want to see this series die, even if the fandom has severely shrunk down...
