Game Reviews

If your friends were having a party and you weren’t invited, how would you react? Would you a.) brush it off as absent mindedness? b.) be a little offended and ask them why? Or c.) decide to go on a murderous rampage destroying everything in your path? For the titular Naughty Bear, this is never a decision he needs ask himself. It is c.) every time. Every. Single. Time.

From the team at Artificial Mind and Movement, the folks behind WET, MySims Racing and a wealth of big name title ports, such as Iron Man, Dante’s Inferno and Mercenaries 2, comes this, their latest original IP. Going into the game, I have to admit, I was a little apprehensive, as you can see from their track record, the developer’s pedigree isn’t particularly a good one. While WET, for example, was visually quite interesting, it was a boring game to play, the central bullet time mechanic sucked any potential fun from the title, severely hampering the pace of the game, and the transfer of Mercs 2 to PS2 was rough to say the least…

Playing as a curious blend of Manhunt’s stealth, State Of Emergency’s visceral violence and Canis Canem Edit’s dark humour, the team really do seem to have struck out for that Rockstar feel in terms of game play and tone. Aesthetically however the title could not be more diametrically opposed, a cuter-than-cute, brightly coloured world of teddy bears, helium balloons and scrumptious looking cake. Through this duality of elements comes the unique premise of Naughty Bear, doing for stealth action what Battlefield Heroes does for WWII military history.

The premise is simple, go into an area, lay low, kill or scare silly every bear in that said area with a variety of weaponry and in-game objects (for high scoring contextual ultra-kills / ultra-scares), meet certain requirements, move on to the next, repeat. It’s a very safe structure that’s livened up by genuinely funny introductory cut scenes and an unsettlingly happy narrator.