The Digest: If someone said that Naughty Bear was a full retail game, I would have called them crazy — until I saw the physical disc. The game clearly deserves to have a home in the Marketplace because of its sub-par graphics and poorly executed storyline. Yet, even if this was an arcade game, I probably still wouldn’t recommend it.

THE FACT SHEET

RELEASE DATE: June 30, 2010
PUBLISHER: 505 Games
DEVELOPER: Artificial Mind and Movement
ESRB RATING: “T” for Teen
GENRE: Action Arcade

PRODUCT OVERVIEW:
Naughty Bear is a grisly psychopath slicing a path of manipulation and terror across a cartoon world of otherwise blissful teddy bears on the Island of Perfection. The other bears have gotten away with blaming Naughty Bear for everything that has gone wrong on the island—until now. Naughty Bear tells the tale of one demented teddy bear’s ruthless efforts to torment and harass the inhabitants of the Island of Perfection. Gamers will engage in sadistic scuffles with hapless stuffed animals from all corners of the toy box, waging psychological warfare on unsuspecting victims. Hell-bent on exacting revenge against everything cute and fluffy.

PRODUCT FEATURES:

• Saturday Morning Storyline Gone Wrong
• Wreak Havoc on the Teddy Bears’ Picnic
• An Entire Island of Mischief to Unlock
• You’ll Never Tire of Being Naughty
• Boast to the other Bears
• Find All the Locked Away Fun

Ripping the head off of a bear is surprisingly satisfactory. Nothing compares to the screams of the bears as they run in terror from your ‘boo’. As you can guess from the title of the game, Naughty Bear is a completely different dynamic than the popular FPSs overcrowding the market. Therefore it seems to provide a respite from other games due to its irregular genre. But the game falls quite short of pleasing the average user. After nearly 10 minutes of game play, the game starts to repeat itself and become a dull, boring experience. The awkward camera angles and poorly designed graphics also add to the dull experience.

Don’t less this picture fool you, the game is actually pretty dull

Naughty Bear prides itself of being different. But the whole purpose of the game only provides a feeling of euphoria and fun for the first ten minutes of a gaming session because it simply becomes boring. Unless you are a depraved teenager or innocent child, this game cannot provide the joy that Mass Effect or Call of Duty does because  the game fails to meet the expectations of a grown adult with its unpolished game play. The game tries to be tasteless in its actions, which is why it was created, but it is nearly unplayable because of its lackluster graphics and texture errors. You have to ask yourself, “Why should I purchase an unpolished game when I can play a full HD game that all of my friends have?”

Despite the poor performance the game provides, I still found joy in killing the other bears for the first few minutes because it was something new. Too many game studios are spending time developing shooters because of the success games like Battlefield Bad Company, Call of Duty, and Halo have created. There are barely any new ideas in the market now and I applaud 505 Games for taking this new approach. But it is kind of ridiculous; whoever thought of this storyline clearly has something wrong with them because it is a talking teddy bear that kills…. Anyways, they took a giant risk in creating this game, and did not succeed. They attempted to be tasteless with a narrator  who shouts “Annihilation” and “It’s Naughty Time!” but it simply becomes too repetitive because of his limited vocabulary and the insensible play.

Killing other bears for not inviting you to a party quite simply sounds like an Indie/Arcade game and not a full retail game. It is too hard to make intuitive levels that keep drawing you in because it is impossible to relate to the story thus the game is going to be repetitive. Also, there are no emotions that can possibly be felt because your character is a psychopath and is mad the whole time. Simply, the game is destined to fail as a full retail game because of the lack of ideas (Plus, it is only 800mb compared to major titles that are 6GB+.) And when it is poorly animated, it is a game that you won’t miss.

Yet, Naughty Bear appears to succeed in its goal. It appears to be marketed directly towards teenagers who have nothing else to do other than play video games. It is rated “T” and features a $50 price tag for smaller budgets. They also threw in a gimmicky multiplayer that happens to be exactly the story line with one or two different game modes (that are unexplained until you play for a few minutes.)

The entire gameplay for multiplayer is user controlled – by the host who creates the game. You can jump into a lobby, but only 4 people can play at once. As soon as one bear leaves the multiplayer game, the entire game is over. Plus, the gameplay modes are barely explained. You can start a game that appears to be first one to 25 kills, but never get any kills because you didn’t kill the enemies with the ‘Golden Gun.’ The multiplayer also features the glitch-filled animation and points are just as limited in the single player.

The game prides itself on the point system, which rewards you for breaking anything and everything. Simply by smashing a present into a toilet, you receive a few thousand points – which seems to be a lot – until you realize that it costs 100,000,000 to purchase a costume. The only real way to get hundreds of thousands of points is to pick up a 100x multiplier and scare everyone into jumping off the side of a cliff. As you can notice by the picture above, he only has 25 points but has been holding the cake for 1:35.

Conclusion:  Naughty Bear was a game that had potential and was poorly executed. It should have never been developed as a full retail game because it is too limited for its graphics engine and is impossible to develop new levels for (even though DLC is supposedly coming out.) You’ll find yourself having fun for a few minutes, then having to play a new game. If you want a game that you can keep playing for hours straight, don’t buy this game – unless you’re a kid who could care less about its polish and wants to kill teddy bears for no obvious reason.

Single Player: 4/10 | Multi-Player: 3/10

Special thanks to 505 Games for providing us with a copy of the game for review.