Review: Naughty Bear

Move over Monokuma! Sling your hook Freddy Fazbear! Go fuck yourself Pom Bears. The first evil teddy bear mascot I fell in love with is none other than the downtrodden, ragged old ursine with an excessively British voice in his head who tells him to kill - Naughty Bear!

Released in 2010 for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, Naughty Bear is an arcade-style, level based action game following the psychopathic revenge killing rampage carried out by the titular character, Naughty Bear himself. 

Bullied, mocked, shunned and generally treated as an outcast by the other colourful, silly and giggly teddy bears on Perfection Island - Naughty Bear is finally driven to exacting revenge on them when they didn't invite him to Daddles’ birthday party and proceeded to point and laugh at him when he brought along a gift for him. Throwing the gift into the fire, Naughty arms himself with guns, baseball bats, knives and bear traps and sets out to punish every bear he can find.

The core gameplay revolves around an arcade-scoring system in which you can build up score multipliers, ranging from x1 all the way to x100. Being “naughty” raises your multiplier and awards you points - and being sure to vary your tactics and not overuse certain weapons or acts will award you more and more points and eventually reward you with trophies - ranking bronze, silver, gold and platinum. 

Naughty acts include assaulting bears, killing bears, trapping bears, scaring bears, destroying special objects, smashing furniture and items and doing any of the previous with witnesses. And if you can “push a bear over the edge” and cause him to literally go insane and even commit suicide - you can earn huge amounts of points.

Methods of killing bears include using traps, bludgeoning weapons, sharp weapons, guns or using level items. Each awards varying amounts of points, which naturally decrease if you use the same method twice - and the frankly hilarious British narrator will shout out gleeful killing puns every time you manage to rip out a bear’s stuffing. Killing all of the bears in the level rewards you with “Total Defluffication!” and tons of points.

Each bear on the island is unique and has their own method of dealing with Naughty. Some will choose to barricade the doors and windows or hide inside cupboards. Some will call for help - causing a squad of police bears with handguns to show up and hunt you down. Braver bears will take up arms of their own and attempt to hunt you down. Upon finding sabotaged items, bears will attempt to repair them - leaving them vulnerable to special killing blows. 

As you progress through the game and earn more trophies, you can unlock new costumes - which allow you to start with a weapon or give you improved stats such as a larger health bar or faster running speed. Some costumes also allow you to wear a disguise and blend in with the bears - allowing you to be naughty in secret. 

Each stage has 5 trophies to earn - the basic stage and 4 other challenges. These include the killer challenge, in which you are tasked with killing every bear that shows up and not allowing any to escape - the insanity challenge, in which you have to drive all of the bears over the edge - the invisible challenge, which requires you use stealth and kill bears in secret - friendly challenge, which prohibits the use of weapons against bears - and the Top Hat Challenge, which is essentially a hard mode.

Each level introduces new classes of bears, who all have favoured weapons, behaviour and costumes. These include ninja bears, armed with katanas, military bears, armed with uzis and camouflage outfits, zombie bears, who have a ridiculous amount of health but run very slowly and alien bears, insanely fast beings who carry ray guns.

In addition to the base game levels, there are also 3 DLC level packs - one is pirate themed, one is superhero themed and one is vampire themed - all of which come with their own unique characters, weapons, costumes and world objects. Still not enough variety? The game also comes bundled with a bunch of achievements that challenge you to pull off certain creative or ironic kills, kills while wearing a specific costume or wielding a specific weapon.

Despite the colourful visuals, hilarious narrator and madcap antics Naughty Bear could get up to - the game is not without fault. The camera controls are often naughtier than Naughty Bear himself and can be difficult to control, often not allowing you to see the enemies quick enough, leading to several frustrating deaths. The arcade-style scoring system can also cause some levels to feel repetitive - as you hammer out the same strategies over and over in order to achieve the highest scores. 

The one-on-one combat is also rather heavy and clunky, causing some players to favour stealthy kills or using traps in order to whittle down the bears’ health. Gun controls were a little more reliable but only when your crosshair felt like playing along and would allow you to actually hit whatever you were aiming at. I also experienced frequent crashes, which were particularly annoying as they always seemed to happen in the loading sections when moving from area to area - more often than not, just as I was about to bank my points and finish the level with a platinum trophy…

However, these little niggles didn't personally put me off the game - and I managed to nab all of the platinum trophies eventually and unlocked all of the costumes and weapons - and being an achievement whore, I happily show off my 1250 gamerscore. It's the sheer nonsensical concept of Naughty Bear that keeps me coming back for more - the hundreds of different methods of causing havoc and the frankly hilarious execution animations mixed with the ridiculously upbeat and brilliantly British narrator. 

Killing teddy bears is oddly therapeutic and is a welcome change to the insipid Xbox shoot-em-ups or the blood-soaked hack n slash games - gutting a teddy bear and yanking out all of his stuffing is certainly more of a heart-warming spectacle than decapitating a zombie or headshotting a soldier. 

So I recommend Naughty Bear to any budding psychopaths who are tired of seeing their kills bleed and would rather watch cotton wool seep through the slashed stomach of everyone's favourite childhood toy. It's ideal for obsessive players who strive for best times and high scores and is also great fun for those who like to think outside the box and like to see more off-the-wall murder techniques such as throwing teddies into a mixing vat of birthday cake or suffocating them by forcing an emergency telephone down their fuzzy throat.

What Was Wrong With Brutal Legend?

For Christmas 2009, I received a shiny Xbox 360 and a stack of games - some pretty cool ones, some pretty average ones - and one I'd seen dancing about on the Internet a lot at the time, Brutal Legend.

I'm a massive fan of heavy metal - ever since I was a kid - I grew up listening to hard rock in my dad's car, 70s bands like Rainbow, ZZTop, Deep Purple and Whitesnake. When I discovered the joy of Limewire and Bearshare in my early teens, I discovered Slipknot, Cannibal Corpse and Rammstein - and then bought all of their albums - see, I rectified my piracy!

Heavy metal is still the soundtrack to my life - or any kind of metal, rock and punk to be fair - my wardrobe still consists of mainly band t-shirts and I still enjoy the odd headbanging session when I get the freedom to blast some music when I'm home alone.

Given this, it's no surprise that Brutal Legend appealed to me. Granted, I can't stand Jack Black - I like Tenacious D, but I cannot abide him as an “actor,” he grates on me something chronic.

From what I'd seen of Brutal Legend, it looked like a fun sandbox hack and slash based around heavy metal culture - with lots of cameos by awesome musicians, tons of references and homages and of course, a great soundtrack.

So imagine my disappointment as I gradually progressed through the game and all of the fun exploring at leisure and finding hidden collectables was buried under a mountain of God damn REAL TIME STRATEGY.

RTS is one of the genres that divides gamers - you either like them or they make you want to pull out your back molars with a pair of rusty pliers. Guess which side I'm on?

RTS bores me to tears - the only ones I can tolerate are tower defence style games, and even then I only really like the silly ones like Plants VS Zombies and South Park: Let's Go Tower Defence Play. And I'm not sure what it is that puts me off RTS games - I've given them a go multiple times throughout my life, starting early with the Asterix themed one on the PS1 - which at least had the deceny to break up the monotony with a handful of naff platforming sections. Jesus Christ; I still have flashbacks to the endless pouring of magic potions into Gaul and the constant deployment of cheaty scumbag Roman soldiers.

The main problem with Brutal Legend is that it hid it's RTS core from us. The trailers painted an image of explorative sandbox loveliness - it's like you went on a date with someone who claimed to hate One Direction but upon arriving to their place for “coffee,” it was served in mugs shaped like Harry Styles hair, then you were invited to a romp on their 1D bedsheets with a teeny bopper soundtrack.

The developers of Brutal Legend KNEW that if they blatantly told us it was an RTS, they'd immediately eliminate over half of their potential audience. So they tricked us, and we were starry eyed and stupid enough to fall for it. And I personally don't enjoy being tricked into doing things I'm uncomfortable with (see previous paragraph.)

If I ever figure out why RTS isn't for me, I'll let you know - but for the time being all you need to know is I don't like them and I DO like heavy metal inspired hack and slash sandboxes - or I would, if Brutal Legend had actually given me one...

How To Beat Dead Rising's "7 Day Survivor" Achievement

Every time I come across a list of the "hardest achievements EVAR", the "7 Day Survivor" achievement from Dead Rising always seems to be present. But why is that weird? Because I have it. I've managed to do the challenge TWICE, actually, just to prove that the first time I did it wasn't just a fluke.

At first glance, yes, the achievement is quite intimidating and does SOUND quite difficult - but it's not difficult, it's just time consuming.

Before I delve into the guide, I'll drop the bombshell - if you want this achievement, you will need to play Dead Rising's infinity mode for a total of FOURTEEN consecutive real-time hours, with no saves, no pauses, no breaks, no anything.

This might sound intimidating, but not as bad as it sounds. If you follow this guide, you will spend the vast majority of your time standing around in a safe area, simply keeping an eye on Frank's health. You will have time to eat, drink and take the occasional piss. If you are a responsible adult and have commitments like work, college, university etc. - you will need to get up early or go to bed late - find yourself a free fourteen hours somewhere.

Frank's health slowly depletes over time - thus, you need to constantly feed him. He will lose one block of health every 1 minute and 40 seconds - from a full health bar of 12 blocks, it will take approximately 18 minutes for Frank to be down to 1 block of health, and approximately 20 minutes to die. So I would say it is safe to leave him unattended for 15 minutes (in a safe area, of course) - giving you chance to eat, drink and piss.

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This probably goes without saying, but before you attempt this challenge - get Frank to level 50. This won't be hard, as you need to complete the original game and the overtime mode before you even unlock infinity mode - and you can grind levels while you're going for the...

Real Mega Buster - obviously. Attempt this challenge without this, and your balls are too big for your own good. Food items do not respawn once you've eaten them - so the only way to collect more is by killing psychopaths and survivors - most of which will die with two or three hits from the Real Mega Buster.

Find the magazines - you will need the three magazines that affect food and health, these are:

• One is located in the empty room next to Crislip's in North Plaza, where three survivors are locked up in story mode
• One is located in the bookshop The Sinister Read in the Entrance Plaza
• One is located in Sir Book-A-Lot in the Wonderland Plaza, where you found the "Japanese tourists" in story mode

Collect food - Food is obtained in two ways - found lying around the mall (which will NOT respawn), and dropped from survivors/psychopaths that randomly spawn and will continue to do so for as long as you play, even if you've previously defeated them. The boxes that people drop contain a mix of weapons and food - and these will disappear upon leaving an area - any food you leave behind will be lost. Thus, it is a better idea to pick up food from these boxes before you scavenge the food that's dotted around the mall - as long as you don't pick these up, they will stay there.

Find a safe spot - The safe spots I remember using the most are standing on top of the gazebo in the outdoor park area, locking myself in the back room of the cinema and hiding on top of the cardboard boxes in North Plaza - anywhere that's quiet, where the zombies cannot climb up to get you. You'll spend a lot of time hiding out and keeping Frank fed - you don't need to be dealing with zombies too.

Cook all of your food - you don't want your food to spoil, considering how bloody scarce it is; find a pizza or a steak? COOK IT. They don't spoil if they're cooked (of course they don't...), and thus will provide you with the maximum amount of healing potential.

WARNING - Do not ENTER or LEAVE the Food Court on DAY FOUR. The game will freeze, ruining EVERYTHING. I avoided the Food Court at all costs because of this - using alternative routes, such as the short-cut in the toilets.

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My strategy was this:

• Collect the books, Real Mega Buster, the katana and a combat knife or two
• Mooch around the mall, being careful not to get grabbed or attacked - finding psychos/survivors and filling my inventory with food
• Wait in a safe area, healing until I run of food
• Lather, rinse and repeat

There are many detailed guides on how much each food item heals and when and where the psychos/survivors spawn - but not to blow my own trumpet, I managed to complete this achievement the first time without any internet - my internet had gone down and I decided to have a crack at some achievements I didn't need an online guide for.

If I can do it, so can you. Go on, I believe in you. :)

Fable Anniversary's Pause Screen Suggestion

While playing Fable Anniversary, if the batteries in your Xbox controller die or a wired controller is unplugged, you will be greeted with this message:

This is why is love Fable; it's SO BRITISH. And it's not the sort of British most video games are - either taking the piss out of Britain or completely misinterpreting Britain. I know most Americans, when they think of the UK will think of LONDON and nothing else. A "British" accent is a London accent - which in itself is a misnomer, there are shitloads of boroughs (and for Americans, that is pronounced like "burrows") of London, all with their own unique accents and dialects. Most people from outside of the UK have no idea where I'm from, because my accent "doesn't sound British". 

In addition, if there's ever a level or world based on the UK, what do they use? Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham fucking Palace, the London Eye and Big Ben - London, London, London, London and London. I'm from the UK and I've never even BEEN to London! The closest thing to London I've visited is Essex - and if you don't live in the UK, you won't know where that is either. Ugh. 

Rant over, I think I shall take the pause screen's advice and treat myself to a cup of tea AND an apple.

I've just noticed how FUCKED that picture looks. The mug is one of those oversized ones and the apple is one of those mini kids' apples. Whoops. :)

Petty Victories: Fable Anniversary's Coin Golf & Hero Dolls

So, I pre-ordered Fable Anniversary like last July. It was due to be released in Europe on the 7th of February - I didn't get it until the 8th. RAGE. Zavvi.co.uk - get your shit together; when I pre-ordered Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits like 5 years ago, you sent me it the day BEFORE release day! And don't get me started on Play Asia; when I pre-ordered the U.S. version of Animal Crossing: Wild World, I got it like a whole two months before it came out here in the UK!

Anyway, with frequent distractions this week (i.e. Valentine's Day weekend alone with the fiancée and a chest infection earlier in the week), I've just finished it off, my play time clocking in at around 36 hours - but I did spend a lot of time pissing about, sneaking off with people to burn/shoot/kill them so I could buy out their houses, collecting everything and completing general sidequest shite.

To anyone who is an achievement whore and wants to add Fable Anniversary to their collection of 1000Gs - go for it, it's piss easy. Fable has always been an insultingly simple game, I've completed all 3 of them without ever actually DYING - but Fable II and III both have infuriating achievements that involve trading items online with other players - The Dollcatcher from Fable II and We Need Guns, Lots Of Guns from Fable III. I have neither. In both games, these little cunts of achievements are stopping me from getting the full 100%.

Gah, and in Fable II I even have a chicken suit! I've offered hundreds of people a trade: my chicken suit for the full collection of Hero dolls, but nobody wants to know. ¬_¬

So, Fable Anniversary has two missable achievements and one that requires the use of a device that can use SmartGlass - but the rest are all very easy to get. The only one that caused me to RAGE (again) was Fable Heroes. 

I don't like the pub games. (Yes, I DO have the XBLA title Fable II: Pub Games, but that was purely for bonus items and easy achievements) In order to get the full set of dolls, you need to beat scores at the pub games that are run by the tossers in the taverns, A.K.A. Gamemasters. Most of them are easy and can be made even easier with the use of the Slow Time spell - but one that FUCKED ME OFF no end was this pile of shite known as fucking COIN GOLF. 

(Yes, I know this is a screenshot from the original non-HD version, so shut up.)

Not only is it ridiculously BORING, awkward as fuck to control and is always played in a tavern which is filled to the brim with babbling fucktards who whoop and cheer simply because you're fucking sitting there - YOU HAVE TO PLAY IT TWICE. Once in Oakvale and once in Snowspire. 

Actually, the Snowspire's version isn't anywhere near as annoying. Every time I played, I only bet one coin - I didn't want to waste my money - and it was a good way to monitor how many times I needed to actually play the fucking thing. I did Snowspire's in about 30 attempts. Oakvale's took me over 100. 

Now I don't care if you can do it - judging by the reaction on various online forums, I'm not the only one who hates this fucking shite. It seems with the "HD Update" of Fable: The Lost Chapters, all Lionhead did was make the graphics a bit shinier. It's exactly the same as the original Fable, complete with the shitty 2004 controls and the unresponsive wank from your control and camera sticks. Of course, my case wasn't helped by the fact that my controller has a sticky left stick and tends to lock in place all the time - causing the coin to shoot off the table all the time without me even touching it... 

Regardless, when I did manage to get the last doll I needed, thus one of my last achievements - I took it upon myself to celebrate this small, petty victory:

A Rant About: Nexuiz

Let me tell you a story. 

I once saw a game called Nexuiz for sale on Xbox Live Arcade. It had been reduced to 200 Microsoft Points. I jumped at the chance to get a game so cheap. I didn't realise that Nexuiz is a shitty online sci-fi first-person-shooter that I hated. I'm not the biggest fan of online first-person-shooters, but some can be fun. Nexuiz consists of repetitive environments, bog-standard weaponry, retarded power-ups and frequent level sections that leave you bouncing around in the air from jump platform to jump platform. 

I played for an hour and was unfortunate enough to get 15G worth of achievements.
Why unfortunate? Because the publisher, THQ went out of business soon after its release, the game was delisted from Xbox Live Arcade and the online servers were shut down.

With the unfortunate events that have took place for well-known publishers THQ over the past few months, it's unsurprising to see their XBLA title, Nexuiz vanish from the Games Marketplace, especially after the servers for the game just recently felt the wrath of the shutdown-axe, too.

Nexuiz was recently part of a game publisher weekend deal that saw the game reduced from 800 MSP to 200 MSP. Many of you will have probably scooped the title up at the time, but if you didn't get around to starting the game, then the completion won't be coming your way anytime soon. Based around first-person online multiplayer madness, the server shutdown has rendered nine of the 12 achievements unobtainable. With no warning or notice to the servers being switched off, this is just the harsh way the cookie has crumbled for this particular THQ title. 

That is the quote provided to explain what happened.

So, if you have Nexuiz on your harddrive and have never played it - well done, you avoided this glitchy, broken and otherwise horrible game. Delete it and free up around 1000MB of space that can be used to store less shitty games.

If you are like me and have a few achievements - get used to the incomplete status. It has forever ruined your achievement completion percentage.

Car Boot Sale Treasure Hunting

The Sunday before last I went to Redcar boot sale with my fiancée, my dad and my gaming nana who plays Bejeweled. I've recently been getting back into some really retro games from the 80s and early 90s to distract myself from the horror that is the Xbox One. Seriously, try it - if you ever start feeling sad or disappointed about the Xbox One, break out your old SNES or original Game Boy and play some awesome retro stuff - all your troubles melt away. :D

Anyway, in addition to mooching online I thought it would be a good idea to have a trawl around the local car boot sales - for some reason there's like 10 different ones held every Sunday around the area where I live, so after casually mentioning it to my dad - he jumped to it. :D

Most of the stalls were just crap, old kids toys and baby clothes - but there were a handful of stands dedicated purely to video games and the odd table that had a small pile of games hidden amongst the old tat - so Shelly and I were competing to see who could spot the games on the stalls first. There was one dude who actually had a SNES for sale and a stack of cartridges of all kinds and we had a long discussion about my new NES. He said he buys wholesale lots on eBay for cheap then sells the stuff for a profit at the boot sales.

At first I didn't think I was going to come out with anything at all - but on the contrary. This is my haul for the day:

 

After I got home, Shelly and I decided to see if I got some good deals - so we searched eBay and Amazon, finding items in identical condition (i.e., boxed, cart only) - and this is what we found:

 

God Of War (PS2):

I paid £1. It's sold online for £5.

 

South Park: Chef's Luv Shack (N64):

I paid £4. It's sold online for £5.

 

Toki: Going Ape Spit (Mega Drive):

I paid £2. It's sold online for £7.

 

Kirby's Pinball Land (Game Boy):

I paid £3. It's sold online for £12.

 

Crash Bandicoot: Mind Over Mutant (Xbox 360):

I paid £3. It's sold online for £18.

 

Mario & Yoshi (Game Boy):

I paid £3. It's sold online for £3.

 

Mega Games 3 (Mega Drive):

I paid £3. It's sold online for £3.50.

 

With every game, I either paid the same or better. :D

Also, I plan to finish Crash Bandicoot: Mind Over Mutant, get the 1000G and then sell it onto CeX for £22 exchange value. PROFIT!

My Xbox 360 Emergency Kit

Nothing is worse than seeing a one-day only awesome Xbox sale on DLC or XBLA arcade games and not having any available Microsoft Points. Also, when you're between cash, waiting for pay day and suddenly that amazingly expensive DLC suddenly has like 99% off and you have NO cash to get it - every serious sale-surfer should invest in my new invention; the Xbox 360 Emergency Kit:

What no gamer should be without.


(Made simply using an old cardboard box, a plastic documents wallet, glue and some double-sided tape.)