So the game with one of the cleverest marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen is finally out. Naughty Bear seems to have everything that players who are into gore would love, but is this game worth your hard earned money, or just another dud?
The story is pretty simple, you are Naughty Bear and you live on Bear Island. The island is full of cute little bears that love nothing more than to throw parties and have picnics. However, Naughty Bear is not invited to any of these fun filled events…and he is pissed. Being psychotic as he is, Naughty Bear goes around killing his fellow bears using clever weapons and traps. The game is set up so the more complex the manner you kill the bears, the higher your point meter goes. The higher your point meter goes the weapons and areas you begin to open. In short, the game is Mad World with Bears.
Although the method of killing bears numbers more in the dozens than the hundreds, as the game would make you believe, it is clever. While some bears can be coerced into killing themselves by simply scaring them into a shaky, terrified mess, not all the bears are so easy to kill. Some will require elaborate traps and others will try to find ways to thwart your attacks all together. They will barricade themselves in houses, find ways to leave the island all together or find weapons of their own to hunt you down.
The games comedy and sense of satire is where it really shines, unfortunately that’s the only place it really shines. If you play for over an hour you’ll soon realize that you have done all there is to do on Bear Island. The kills tend to get very repetitive, and the island seems to get smaller and smaller when you realize that new areas opened to you are pretty much the same all around. Add to that the fact that the multiplayer element was tacked on as an afterthought causing the multiplayer matches to crash pretty regularly. The story is also non-existent. Granted, the game doesn’t try to sell itself as having a deep story but aside from the few objectives that you need to achieve for each kill, there simply is no real story here.
Bottom line, the game is entertaining for a while but tends to get boring fast. If you’re into outright gore and violence, Naughty Bear definitely has it but this game seems to be more of a rent than a purchase.
