Super Rude Bear Resurrection is going to make you die a lot. But unlike a lot of difficult games, that’s kind of the point. Developed by Alex Rose, not to be confused with Axl Rose, Super Rude Bear Resurrection is a platformer where the titular bear is whisked away from Modern London back to medieval times by a fairy to stop his nemesis the Wizard. In short, it’s like every side-scrolling game from the 80s and 90s… only this one lets you use the corpses of your fallen self to defeat the game’s multitudinous traps and pitfalls. Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. This is our Super Rude Bear Resurrection review.
There are no real enemies in Rude Bear, minus the bosses at the end of each main level. And even those you’re going to defeat by dodging and making them kill themselves with their own attacks. The enemy is your own ability to jump precisely, and of course, the barbs and jabs tossed at you verbally by the fairy. It’s a master class in design for platform games, because every jump, trap boss is carefully crafted with a way to defeat it without death – but at the same time death is your friend and the only tool outside of jumping you have to defeat the treacherous world.
Oh, you have your fairy friend, who can scout ahead for you and use his light to melt your corpses if you by chance make too many with repeated deaths and need to clear a few out to go on. Each death leaves behind a corpse of Rude Bear, and you can use those corpses to cover spikes, dull axes, and more. Yet, death in Rude Bear isn’t daunting. The game’s ultra-challenging, but Super Rude Bear Resurrection makes sure to place ample respawn points all over the levels. Conveniently even in most cases because the respawn points are usually right in front of the most deadly parts of levels.
The real genius in the game comes with the boss fights – each one has a weakness and you need to use that against them. Since death is part of the game, you don’t even have to worry about dying on a fight and starting over. The Steam Page claims that Super Rude Bear is a game anyone can beat, and that’s true. Death is just a speed-bump on the way to eventual victory, with the real question being how many deaths it’s going to take you to get there.
Because of the nature of Rude Bear, it’s a game uniquely positioned for streaming and speedruns – trying to see who can beat it with the least amount of deaths is bound to be a challenge. In fact, Alex Rose Games has gone ahead and put up $1,000 of their own money to the person who first beats it without dying. As of this writing, a week or so into the launch, it hasn’t yet happened.
Super Rude Bear Resurrection is one of the few games in which failure is part of the fun, and part of your success as the player. You’re meant to die, you’re meant to fail, as each failure can bring you closer to victory. It’s a game that requires skill and patience, but it’s also so ridiculous it doesn’t make you feel bad with repeated failure. It’s the most fun I’ve had sucking at a game since I first picked up a controller. If any of this strikes a chord with you, pick it up on Steam, PS4, or XB1. It’s well worth the dying.
NOTE: Our review was conducted on PS4 with a code provided by Alex Rose Games.