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Naughty Bear Review

Posted on 30. Aug, 2010 by Freak_c in Games, News, Reviews

Where do I begin with Naughty Bear? This has been one of the strangest games that I have played in a long long time. I am usually a fan of dark and twisted things and a bigger fan for game developers trying new things. Naughty Bear attempts something new, but unfortunately it doesn’t achieve it very well.

The game has a simple idea that sounds exciting and unique but when placed into practice it falls flat on it’s face. You play as Naughty Bear, a bear driven to seek murderous vengeance after the other bears don’t invite him to the big birthday party. You then set out on manipulating and terrorizing the other blissful bears inhabiting the Island of Perfection. The more havoc you create on these bears using an array of weapons, objects and scare tactics, grants you naughty points.

At first you will laugh at some of the ways you can scare or kill these bears using a variety of ways that is entirely up to you. Scaring a bear enough will send them into a breaking point state. Once in this state you can either choose to kill the bear or to scare them over the edge and they will kill themselves with an animation. You can sabotage items through the world, set traps to catch bears. The quicker and more creative ways that you perform these acts will earn your multiplier to increase, giving you a high score.

The points and score unlock bridges which get you to other parts of the island and to other bears and there parties for you to continue on your psychological and murderous destructive path. This sounds pretty cool and twisted but unfortunately the way that it is all executed is terrible.

From terrible graphics, frame issues, plenty of repetition and poor controls, knocks this game down on it’s naughty face. While running around the island you will battle with the camera constantly. There is no lock on system with the weapons you pick up so you will find yourself chasing the bears around the island beating them and then running away as others come to harass you. Rinse and Repeat this for basically the entire game!

Escaping enemies either get winded in seconds, trip, or inexplicably stop at camp-fires to warm their hands. When sending them over the edge as mentioned before, treats you to an animation, which drops the frame rate to almost a stand still with some of them and you soon realise that these animations are repeated way too often.

As for the graphics, they look like a game that was a launch title for the PS2. I’m sure the art direction went for a look of simple and fun animations, but perhaps it’s just me but with a game like this you would like to see some details of the bears in their demise. This, I’m sure could still have been accomplished with keeping the graphics simple. The levels are empty, with no real design or purpose other than having a few houses here and there and items to sabotage.

There was a multiplayer section of for the game but I don’t think enough people are playing this game online and if they were I couldn’t find any games. And to be honest I didn’t really want to play this online, if the single player wasn’t too great I don’t think that the multiplayer could save this game.

Conclusion
Naughty Bear could’ve been cool, but it isn’t. There is plenty of room for improvements in the game. It has the idea and potential to be something, it just needs to execute the idea better. If you are curious then I would recommend this game only as a rental or a cruel gift for someone.

4/10

Tags: naughty bear, Review