By - Craig H.
I am not ashamed to say that Naughty Bear has been on my radar ever since the teddy bear massacre concept was first announced. Dreams of a Manhunt style game with lovable teddy bears was a very intriguing idea. But does Naughty Bear deliver on this twisted story like one hoped?
In Naughty Bear you play as a bear named “Naughty” who was not invited to another bear, Daddles, birthday party. You still want to be his friend and decide to surprise him with a birthday present anyway. But, before you can make it to the party, two other bears see your gift and laugh at you causing you to retreat back to your secluded teddy bear hut. After this unfortunate event, you decide that you have been picked on long enough and decide to seek revenge on all the mean teddy bears….by murdering them.
Naughty has a plethora of blunt and sharp objects to viciously kill other teddy bears with. Some of these objects include: machetes, sticks, hatchets, bats, and bear traps. Watching the kills for the first time does bring a smile to your face but you shortly realize that there is only one kill cinematic per weapon. After seeing Naughty beat another teddy bears head in with a bat 10 times it gets pretty old. One odd point to mention is the lack of stuffing when you kill the other teddy bears. One can only imagine that stabbing a teddy bear in the gut with a machete and then twisting to pull it out would cause some stuffing to come out.
Viscously murdering these mean teddy bears is not only done with handheld objects though. Naughty can inflict punishment with environmental kills as well. Tossing a teddy bear into a freezer, shoving a phone down ones throat and pushing them into a camp fire are just a few ways to dispose of unsuspecting teddy bears. Just like the object kill cinematics, each of the environmental kills has one cinematic that gets old fast.
The story mode is made up of 7 main story missions with several sub-missions that you can unlock. Each mission has the same goal, kill other teddy bears, but have different objectives to meet along the way. Some objectives include not getting hit, not hitting anyone (i.e. environmental kills/suicide kills only), and no one escapes. Each mission has 2 different areas with separate objectives. Once you finish the first set of objectives you must cross a bridge and proceed to finish the next set. Only problem is that there is no save point during the mission. So if you fail in the second set of objectives you have to replay the entire mission. In most cases this is not a deal breaker for a game. But, since the first set was so infuriating, the thought of having to do the entire mission again makes you want to chuck you controller at your TV. When you complete missions you are awarded a total score for your devious actions and awarded a medal. New missions remain locked until you garner enough trophies to proceed to the next level.
The game is at its best when you simply have to kill every teddy bear. Chasing around frantic teddy bears, while wielding a machete, is every bit as enjoyable as it sounds. But, when you have to be stealthy with your kills or avoid any damage the game becomes infuriating. The stealth is just terribly implemented and the one button dodge technique is just as bad. Basically, if you are discovered you are screwed. Also, the game has no lock-on feature. If another teddy bear starts to run away you have to chase them while flailing your weapon and hoping to connect on one of your swings. Inexplicably, in most cases, these frightened teddy bears will run right to an object that you can perform an environmental kill at. I guess they just want to die.
The presentation of Naughty Bear is fairly poor with characters clipping through objects, poor texture quality for the houses and foliage, and just an overall lack of polish. Only the cutscenes seem to have been given any type of attention. The game does have a very playful and colorful background but this only helps to highlight the overall poor quality. It’s much easier to hide low level textures in dark areas.
While the game is not broken it is just not fun to play. The characters clip through objects, the textures look bad, and the stealth is terrible. The game could have been a downloadable title, install size on the Xbox 360 HDD is a mere 756MB, and have certain indiscretions forgiven for a $10-$15 price point. Unmercifully killing teddy bears because you were not invited to a birthday party is fun at first but once you get past the initial shock value a bad game is found. As it stands at as a full retail release this game just cannot be recommended.
RATING: 4/10
