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Bang for your buck Boom Shoot goodness with at least 100% more Bears.
Bears in Space is a Retro FPS that combines both faced paced FPS gameplay mixed with Bullet Hell qualities and a large humorous tone. Created mostly by 3 people in the Unreal Engine 4, it follows the story of Maxwell Atoms as he's one day from retirement on a boring prison ship until they're attacked and in the chaos fused? with a talkative bear called Beartana or BT for short. From there they go on a absolute wacky, robot slaying, adventure all across over the place on a quest to get back to Earth. It's such a nothing plot but has so much rich heart and humor that you're just happy to be on the ride to see what's next!
Gameplay of Bears in Space follows a more linear style with having arenas for combat and platforming and miscellaneous segments between the arenas. The shooting is pretty solid a good variety of enemies with various attack patterns, movement options, and a absolutely absurd amount of weapons. Like there's so many weapons that you need 2 weapon wheels to even see all of them. They range form the workforce FPS weapons like Shotguns, and Rocket Launchers, to novelty weapons like a Anvil and Rubberband launcher, a almost useless Carp Spraybottle, and Basketcube Launchers to name a few. The amazing part, is that all of these weapons are useful in one way or another. While yes, the sheer amount does mean the game has a large weapons bloat, I think it does a decent job separating the workforce and novelty weapons. Like for example the Gamma Launcher which is basically your rocket launcher is more useful but the Tri-Shoot can be a replacement if you run out of ammo. As going the sheer variety of robots is insane even by Episode 3 you're still getting introduced to new robots that have different attack patterns along with the earlier ones. Futhermore all of these weapons are upgradeable, which are tracked by getting kills with each respective weapon that has a upgrade tree unless stated otherwise. While the upgrades are nice to make your early game weapons still useful, the grind to get them can be a bit long such as the one for the pistol.
Now the level design is one so notable it needs more elaboration. As stated earlier Bears in Space's levels for the most part are mostly linear hallways connected to arenas or set pieces with secrets spread out inbetween with a handful of exceptions. The difference of this compared to what you normally hear when a Retro FPS has linear level is the absolute sheer length of these levels. With few exceptions most of the levels can take 20+ minutes to beat and they're typically stuffed will with combat encounters, moments featuring humor, variety or both, or just normal secrets. Throughout these levels are a currency known as Vicbucks which you spend at Vic's. A robot who is more than glad to sell you new weapons, along with things like health, armor, and ammo refills as well as a really useful secret detector. You're also given a handful of Tool "Weapons" which effect either your movement options or affect the environment during platforming segments inbetween fights. It's a notable enough mechanic that you even have a weapon wheel for it. As for all the side modes to provide variety, they often take the form of idea adjacent to FPS gameplay, like becoming a Light Gun shooter, Basketball, or other minigames in the FPS style. Otherwise it's either themed arenas or simply jokes. It's a amazing blend that also helps that the humor is pretty consistent. Often making jokes at FPS game tropes, general pop culture references, and just humor that rarely becomes annoying through a full playthrough. There are also Trading Cards hidden around like these humorous secrets but they kinda are just there as a collectable rather than being something interesting.
As the story is really just an excuse to go on this wacky adventure, I'd rather take a look at the style. As Bears in Space has a wonderful Retro Spaceage-like style. From the colorful environments, to the design of the robots and weapons, the game absolutely nails it's visual style. Even for me who had to roll back on some of the fancier effects for performance the game still looks and runs mostly great! This is even more notable with how big the game is. As assets are reused very rarely, and when reused are often for a specific callback to a joke or fitting within a different level's theme. It can be jank at times but still consider that all of this was mostly made by just 3 people. The music also really well done, having a variety of themes for each level as well as music made during combat to really amp things up.
Overall, Bears in Space is an incredibly unique FPS game that's stuffed full with content. You can easily get around roughly 15~ hours on a normal playthrough and it's not that particularly hard to get 100% so you could easily get up to 20+. Really the most annoying parts about 100% is that, due to the way the levels are constructed, you have to rely on specific checkpoints when revisiting levels. Which can be tedious if you have a secret that's hidden between these warps. As other than general grind-ness for two other achievements, I'd highly recommend going for that 100% as you'll get to see everything the game has to offer. As a whole it's a great game that's easily worth the full price of 20$ for how much content you get, that is something I cannot say often for most games!