Thee premise behind Naughty Bear is actually solid. Let’s face it, Teddy Bears killing Teddy Bears sounds subversive and hilarious. What we get is a creepy, boring action game that is lifeless and poorly made. Nothing about this game is fun. If you are at all curious about this game as I was let me tell you to avoid it at all costs.
Reviewed on Xbox 360.
Story
The basic premise of the game is this: You play as a Teddy Bear called Naughty Bear, and live in a town of cuddly Teddy Bears. You are not quite as cuddly as the others so they treat you poorly, which makes you psychotic (you may have been psychotic anyway). Then a very upbeat Narrator eggs you on into killing all the other Teddy Bears in the town.
First of all, the Narrator is creepy. He could literally be a voice in Naughty Bear’s head (which thinking about now, would make more sense than not). So you’re playing as a schizophrenic Teddy Bear that gets huge multiplayer bonuses for killing other Bears in town.
The other bears in the first level simply didn’t invite you to a birthday party. You kill them and the rest of the game is them trying to retaliate against you for murdering everyone (several bears return from the dead at random from level to level), causing you to murder all the bears on the island. Let’s pretend they weren’t Teddy Bears. You are a Schizophrenic person murdering other people at random because you need mental help. It’s creepy.
Now I know what you’re thinking. “But Steve, it’s Teddy Bears, it’s meant to be goofy and tongue-in-cheek”. You’re correct. It’s supposed to be. But it’s not. There are no jokes or humor involved. Inherently smashing a Teddy Bear’s face in a car door is funny but there is no dialogue in the game except for The Narrator and all he ever does is basically say “Why don’t you go teach those Bears a lesson?” So there is no story at all beyond murder. There are a lot of terrible Teddy Bear puns. Those are hilarious right?
Gameplay
Where to begin. The level design is small and atrocious. There are basically two islands you explore, which are roughly the size of a Safe House in Left 4 Dead. There are invisible walls, buildings filled with breakable arcade machines and toilets and loading screens between the two islands.
You can hold two weapons, but can only use one of them at a time. You basically just approach a bear and button mash attack until the kill prompt appears then move on to the next bear. The final kills can be fun with stuffing spewing out of the bears, but the kills are repetitive and nothing you haven’t seen in better games.
The camera is atrocious. If a bear runs away from you while you’re attacking it, you’ve lost it. You have to stop, spin the camera to find the bear, then pursue. When you kill the bears and happen to be near a building, the kill sequence is hidden behind the building. The kill scenes are the main attraction (apparently) of this game and half the time the can be completely hidden because of a shoddy camera.
Even Ted from the movie Ted wouldn’t be OK with this.
Final Thoughts
This is a bad game. It’s worth mentioning the graphics are PS2 level bad. I always think the most important part of a review for a game is this: Is this game fun? The answer is no. It’s not even a “so bad it’s funny” good. I tried playing this with friends while drinking and it still wasn’t fun. This wasn’t just an Arcade game either this was a full priced release. The people making this game had to know it was broken. Maybe there were time constraints or budget issues, but the game is garbage.
This game is boring, bizarre and simply not fun. If you wanted to rent or were generally curious about this game, you’re not missing anything. Do yourself a favor and find something else to spend your time and money on.
