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Naughty Bear Review (X360)

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Naughty Bear Review (X360)505 Games
Naughty Bear made a positive impression on gamers in the months leading up to its release through a series of humorous videos showing cute cuddly stuffed bears knocking the fluff out of each other. It looked demented and fun. Now that we've finally got our hands on the final product, however, the game isn't nearly as interesting and funny as we had hoped. Instead, it suffers from bad controls, repetitive gameplay, so-so presentation, and a gimmick that wears out its welcome almost as soon as the game begins.
Game Details

  • Publisher: 505 Games
  • Developer: Artificial Mind & Movement
  • ESRB Rating: "T" for Teen
  • Genre: Third-Person-Action
  • Pros: Interesting concept; kills are kind of neat the first time
  • Cons: So-so graphics and sound; repetitive gameplay; bad controls; stops being funny after the first level or so

The premise behind Naughty Bear is that you play as a stuffed bear that the other stuffed bears don't like. This bear, Naughty, takes his revenge on the other bears by doing things like setting traps, sabotaging items so the other bears will get killed if they use them, or just plain stabbing, beating, and shooting them. Naughty can also scare the other bears and drive them crazy to the point they commit suicide.

Yes, this game is sick and twisted. If it were a game about humans, it would be "M" rated and someone would surely be on Fox News telling the world how terrible it is and how videogames are corrupting our children. Since it is about stuffed bears, though, I guess murder and suicide are okay. I'm not saying any of this is bad or shouldn't be in a videogame, it is just interesting how our standards can be so different based purely on aesthetics.

Gameplay

505 Games
While the concept is sort of humorous, the execution in terms of gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. The basics are that Naughty Bear is a third-person action game where you move around an environment and torture other bears. You can pick up weapons such as baseball bats, machetes, and other melee weapons, set traps, and even use guns. There are also items like BBQ grills and other everyday objects you can sabotage that will kill the other bears if they use them. By setting traps, killing other bears, and sometimes just jumping out and saying "Boo", you scare the other bears to the point that they get paranoid and commit suicide. Killing bears and doing naughty stuff in general earns you points. New levels unlock when you earn enough points, and the new levels offer different weapons, different types of bears to kill, and different objectives. Objectives include things like not physically hitting other bears, not getting hit by other bears, or making kills in specific ways.

The problem with all of this is that it is mostly pretty boring. There is no lock on, so attacking other bears consists of chasing them, hitting them a couple of times until they run off, and they chasing them down again. Repeat until they are dead. The camera constantly gets in the way and it is a struggle to actually see what you are doing. And the mission objectives, intended to give the game variety, mostly just cause frustration because some of them are harder than you'd think, and there is no checkpoint system so if you screw up you have to play an entire lengthy mission over again. Even worse, there are only a tiny handful of environments to play in. There are 7 episodes with multiple missions in each, and every single one of them takes place in the same locations. It just gets old after a while. On top of all of that, there is only one animation for each of the weapons, and after you see them once the game just isn't interesting anymore.

It has to be noted that there is quite a lot of content here with lots of levels and costumes to unlock. Unfortunately, the game's gimmick wears thin extremely quickly, so only masochists and achievement junkies will be crazy enough to see more than a few levels. Naughty Bear could have just as easily been a $10-15 XBLA game (it is only a little over 700MB to install to your Xbox 360 HDD, after all) with half as many levels and it would have made more sense. As a $50 retail release, Naughty Bear is just a ridiculously poor effort.

505 Games
Graphics

Graphically, Naughty Bear is merely okay looking. I kind of like the patchwork quilt quality of the menus, but the actual gameplay graphics are pretty lackluster. The environments are simple and lack detail, and the bears aren't nearly as fuzzy and cuddly as they probably should be since they have flat textures for "fur". Conker on the OG Xbox is fuzzier than these guys.

Sound

The sound is okay. The bears scream and mumble in a sort of Simlish-sounding language. A high point in the presentation is the crazy announcer who gets really excited when you do really bad things.

Bottom Line

Ultimately, Naughty Bear is pretty disappointing. Fans expecting the same over the top humor that was showcased in pre-release trailers simply aren't going to find it here. The game is just too shallow and poorly designed overall to be fun for very long. The concept is kind of cool, but the gimmick wears thin after the first couple of levels and everything after that is a chore. The promise of zombie bears and robot bears in later levels isn't enough to keep you playing since the gameplay is so darn boring and doesn't change much over the course of the game. Because of all of this, I can't recommend Naughty Bear for anything more than a desperation rental for some easy Gamerscore points.

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.

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