Scoot Gets Naughty

My review of Naughty Bear.

You're standing all alone in a log cabin. All of your friends have long since disappeared and you've been hearing strange noises from outside. You wander into the kitchen to see the fridge door ajar... What do you do? Well, if you're one of the cute teddy bear inhabitants of Perfection Island, it would definitely not be a good idea to investigate further unless you want to be shoved inside and turned into a popsicle.

Naughty Bear is one of the stranger releases i've seen this year. The flow of the game is simple enough. Scare and kill enough bears in an area to earn a sufficient amount of points to move to the next area. Rinse and repeat until you get to the last area of a chapter where you have to eliminate a certain teddy (thoughtfully marked by the target wearing a special hat). While the gameplay may appear odd, it works well with what is quickly discovered to be the real point of the game. Over the top, extremely brutal and absolutely hilarious methods of dispatching your prey. As Naughty you will have an array of weapons (ranging from sticks and cricket bats to revolvers and katanas) with which to beat, maim and generally injure your fellow bears with, plus a range of environmental items (such as the previously mentioned fridge, barbecue, toilet and the ever popular, car door).

The idea is that you are thrown into an area with a group of bears and given a point limit. How you reach that point limit is up to you, however scaring bears means more points in the long run when compared to killing them straight out. So you could sneak around in the bushes, wait till no-one is looking, run up and sabotage the phone or the fuse box, then when someone goes to fix it, sneak up behind them and scream BOO. Alternatively you could smash them head first into the fuse box and electrocute them instead (bringing about the question, how can you electrocute someone with a fuse box that was broken?). Not liking the stealth approach? Run up and smash out some windows, then go to town on a poor bystander with your weapon of choice until they attempt to limp away to safety.

One of my favourite things about Naughty Bear is the AI. Each bear has it's own unique personality and reacts accordingly. Some bears will run for the nearest car or boat to make an escape at the first sign of trouble, some will run for a phone and call in the fuzz (seriously, the police in Naughty Bear are referred to as 'The Fuzz'). Others will brandish weapons and go looking for you or if spooked enough, run inside and barricade the doors. Likewise not all bears will attempt to fix sabotaged objects when they see them, so your entire strategy can change depending on what bears you are faced with and how they respond.

Naughty Bear was most definitely made on a budget though and this becomes apparent when you notice all the environments being re-used each chapter and the fact there isn't any damage models for the bears, but i think if this game DID give you the option of cutting off limbs and appendages, we wouldn't be seeing it in Australia because the violence is already insane and if it wasn't cute bears impaling themselves on machetes, we'd probably be cringing at the site of this game.

What i found interesting is that while the game is highly repetitive (environments re-used and each weapon / object only has one kill method) you don't really get sick of the game very fast, because there always seems to be a different approach to each mission and each chapter is complemented by a series of challenges. The challenges range from insanity challenges (send all bears insane without killing them) to stealth challenges (take out all bears without being seen). These challenges also tend to drastically ramp up the difficulty of the game at spots with some challenges just being a case of walking around and beating the stuffing out of everything you see and other's being a case of hide and seek where the slightest wrong move could fail you.

Despite being ridiculously violent and clearly an adult game however, the audio and particularly the narrator makes the entire game feel like some sick and twisted children's show, but ultimately just makes the entire experience even more entertaining. Each different kill results in the narrator yelling out some ridiculous phrase and taking out all the bears in an area results in the narrator proudly boasting "TOTAL DEFLUFFICATION... You defluffed them all."

The only real problems with Naughty Bear are the fact every chapter is basically just a re-arrangement of the last and the gameplay can be a bit odd at first and can really only be learned by trial and error. Reading the manual explains how things work, but you don't really know until you're in the game exactly how everything will react, so it's really something you've just got to throw yourself into and learn as you go.

Visuals 6/10 - Animations are fantastic but the game isn't great in terms of character models and locations

Audio 8/10 - The narrator is entertaining and the whole soundtrack vastly contrasts the gameplay, which just seems to make it even better.

Gameplay 6/10 - Gameplay is a bit odd and very basic. I would have liked to see them come up with more interesting challenges (drown all bears in a toilet perhaps)

Overall 6/10 - I absolutely loved the game, but can still see that it is very limited and isn't for everyone. Great if you and your mates want something to laugh about, but not enough depth to really last.

[A reminder that you can check out all my reviews in a flashier form over at West Gamers]