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.