Naughty Bear is about as ridiculous a video game as you will ever play in your life.
Itís gratuitously violent, itís absurdly irreverent and if you ask most critics, theyíll
tell you itís also...a complete catastrophe.
And you know what?
Maybe theyíre right.
Maybe Naughty Bear does represent game design at its most hollow.
Maybe it is a mess of a product that lacks polish and premise and purpose, but all I
can say is while I was playing Naughty Bear, Iím pretty sureóno, in fact, Iím certainóI
was having a good time.
Naughty Bear was released to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 back in 2010.
It was originally sold at the retail price of $50, and I think thatís what was most
difficult for the critics to swallow when the game debuted.
Admittedly, it does feel like a downloadable title more than a retail release, but of course,
I have the benefit of looking at Naughty Bear retrospectively...and with a much cheaper
price tag.
Is the game worth $50?
No, they were right about that.
But if you can look at this game without the steep price to consider, you find itís a
lot more fun than itís given credit for.
Naughty Bear is essentially the stuffed animal Manhunt hugs at bedtime.
You play as Naughty Bear, a devious teddy who is really excited about his friend Daddlesí
birthday party.
Heís even made a present for the birthday bear, but...well...
And so Naughty does.
The idea is you have to basically kill everyone, but you want to be as creative as possible
while doing so.
Sure, you can just run up to other teddy bears and stab them in the head repeatedly, but
you can get a lot more points if you mess with them first.
So for example, you might sneak into a house and cause a toilet to leak.
This might cause a bear to come check on that toilet, at which point you come out of hiding
and murder them in the most, uh...grizzly ways imaginable.
Obviously, the
crux of the game is the contrast between its characters and its premise.
Naughty Bearís whole schtick is the hilarity of watching a teddy bear endure some of the
most heinous crap gaming has to offer.
Case in point, if another bear sees you killing his friend, he vomits in horror, runs for
his life, goes insane from the torment and, if you do things rights, stabs himself in
the chest so as to end it already.
Actually, that was close to the response most critics had toward this game, and again, they
were right in a lot of ways.
The graphics have a nice style, but they are lacking in a technical senseóclipping, slowdown,
etcetera.
The missions are also repetitive, and the stealth element isnít as fully realized as
it could be, therefore leading to lots of mindless hack and slash.
In short, this game couldíve and shouldíve been better.
Even so, I still think Naughty Bear is a really fun parody.
I think that might have something to do with the demented minds that spawned it.
The game was developed by the team over at Artificial Mind and Movement, now known as
Behaviour Interactive.
Theyíre the same studio that created WET, a stylish third-person shooter that most reviewers
slammed...but I liked.
Itís the same team that did Voltron: Defenders of the Universe, a game that a lot of critics
hated...but I had fun with.
The funny thing is my verdicts donít often fall far from the consensus, but Naughty Bear
makes yet a third game from Behavior Interactive thatódespite its ample flawsóI think does
more than enough to warrant your attention.
Itís far from a masterpiece, but itís funny, itís different and you are, after all, murdering
teddy bears.