Enviro-Bear 2000

I maintain an eagle-like vigilance over all of PC gaming, as a matter of principle, so that no game might slip my notice unappraised.  Why do I not extend this watchfulness for console games, you might ask?  Perhaps you ask this while expelling half-chewed Chex Mix across the room in fanboy rage while you heap ill-formed profanities upon my name and call into question my parents' virtue.  Well you unwashed console peasant, it is because PC is, was, and always will be home to the greatest innovation and uniqueness in video games.  Case in point?  Enviro-Bear 2000.

BEHOLD THE MAJESTY!

Enviro-Bear 2000 is a charming, oddly simulationist affair where you play a bear in a sedan, trying to get enough food to fatten up and then park in a cave before winter comes.  And winter is always coming; the most lenient time limit is 5 minutes to stuff your bear face with fish and berries before shit gets real chilly real fast.  Let me tell you, if fictional properties could give endorsements to other fictional properties, House Stark would be all over some Enviro-Bear.

Eddard dies.

Listen, this is a really hard game to write about, for a couple reasons.  Firstly, it is a FREE GAME, and such I'd feel stupid doing a real review of it.  Just go download it and play it yourself: there is no excuse!  Secondly, going into the experience blind and fumbling with the controls and idiosyncrasies of the game is a tremendous part of the charm.  And I am ultimately hard pressed to think of a way to convince you to play this game better than showing you screenshots and shouting in all caps IT IS FREE.  Which is why I will continue to do just that!

Eternal praise to the Comically Poorly Animated Bear Arm!

To return to my earlier point, Enviro-Bear 2000 is so quintessentially PC gaming: it could not exist anywhere else.  You think anyone at Microsoft would for one millisecond even consider creating some space on XBLA for this kind of insane, absurdist beauty?  PC is creative anarchy; you don't need anyone's permission to put a game out there.  Go ahead and make a mad flash game about a bear driving a station wagon, and charge whatever you damn well please for it!  Or make it free (FREE!) for all the 1.5 billion of us on the Internet to enjoy.

Enviro-Bear 2000 can be downloaded by following this link.  A version for iPod, iPad, and Android is available for 99 cents, so you can take Enviro-Bear wherever you go.  Shock and endear co-workers and loved ones with your impeccable taste!  Guaranteed to be 1000% less insipid than Angry Birds!