Over 9 years ago a game called Conker’s Bad fur Day was released for the Nintendo 64, it was well known for it’s adult humor which took reference from popular movies from the time. When Naughty Bear was first announced many gamers thought that this would be the closest thing to Conker…boy were we wrong.
The gameplay of Naughty Bear is pretty simple, you are in an island full of teddy bears that hate you, you are naughty bear, a bear who is very…naughty. Your mission is to cause chaos in the island, you do that by killing the other bears. You can do that in a number of ways, using weapons like golf clubs, guns, machetes etc. You can also set traps like bear traps, or luring the other bears into sections of the island.
You can also scare the bears so hard that they will commit suicide. By doing all these things you score points, scoring points will allow you to go other parts of the island. Your high scores are uploaded to an online leaderboard where you can see how well you stack up against other players (arcade style). Depending how many points you score you get either a bronze/silver/gold trophy. These trophies unlock other missions you can do in the stage, some missions involve stealth, some are speed runs, others are get through the stage without getting touch which is pretty hard. Each stage has 5 different missions and the gameplay is very simple and it’s pretty fun for about a hour…
The first problem with the game is that all the levels have the SAME design. We are not talking same layout, all the missions have the same map, the only change is whether it’s night or day and the situation of the mission. This makes the game extremely repetitive, and gives the you the feeling that the developers were not trying at all.
The second problem is the controls, the camera is very sensitive and you can’t change the sensibility in the options panel. The camera sometimes will position itself in bad positions making hard for you not only to see your prey but to see your character, this makes the game very frustrating and makes you want to break the disc in half. Also there is not lock on feature, sometimes you will miss bear because of a sharp turn which makes the game very frustration.
Naughty Bear reminds me of Madworld, where you are trying to score a huge amount of points in order to advance. The main difference is that in Madworld you have hundreds of ways to kill someone, while in Naughty bear you have very few ways to do it, most of the time you will be beating the stuffing out of a bear in order to kill them. Some bears takes forever to kill, and all the weapons only have one type of swing.
If you want to hide from the bears you can hide in the bushes, while most bears will completely miss you, no matter how many bears are chasing you if you hide in the bushes they will act like you went invisible. Sometimes however bears go in the bushes to fight you, if there is suppose to be a stealth element in this game I can’t tell.
Every mission has the same objective, get X amount of points in order to advance, then kill X bear. Some missions will vary by having you scare the bears instead, but either way it gets repetive really fast. Every time you complete a mission you get a new hat for your bear. Each hat has different stats like strength, health, accuracy, etc. Inside the game I have noticed no difference what so ever, and judging by this game’s finesse I would not be surprised if it was lying.
If Naughty bear was an indie game or downloadable $5 title from Xbox live or PSN it would be an OK game, definitely nothing amazing but for $5 you can’t ask for much. But to slap $50 price on this game should be a crime. It’s a shame too because this game could have great potential if anybody put any effort in it. Stay away from this game your time and wallet will thank us for that.
