Article
Naughty Bear
PS3 Review
You play the role of Naughty Bear, an outcast amongst all the other bears. While they're off having parties, you're sitting alone in your hut, not being invited and slowly nurturing a burning hatred for all things fluffy. Unlike most people, however, you don't just sit there and take it; you decide to go do something about it, in ever increasingly violent ways.
The first time you play the game, you'll probably go through the tutorial to get a feel for the controls. The tutorial guides you through the various different techniques of point scoring - all of which involve causing harm to bears, either through physical or mental means, or sabotaging equipment for future bear harm. The tutorial itself is quite simple, and gives you a good grasp of the mechanics of the game - now it's up to you and your imagination to torture some bears.
One of the highlights of the game is the cutscenes introducing each level. The narrator sounds just like you'd expect a children's TV presenter to sound, combined with the kind of script that suggests mental homes are where he holidays. There are 7 levels available, each with five missions in each, so a total of 35 missions of bear smashing fun awaits you. In some, you have to send all the bears insane, some are speed runs, some you're not allowed to even take one hit. Each one contains different enemies; from zombies, to robots, to ninjas, there's something for everyone.
The levels themselves are quite small, with two or three areas in each one, each one unlocked by reaching a points target in the previous area. How you go about getting those points is up to you. Early on in the game you'll need to stay in the bushes to stay hidden, but once you unlock certain costums you can walk freely among other bears without them getting suspicious. The key to racking up the points is sabotaging various items - sabotage a phone, for example, and once a bear is repairing it, sneak up behind him and press the L2 button to scare him a little. This will have a knock-on effect - any bears witnessing this will give you points, as will any bears who then see the bear you scared. Once you've scared a bear enough, he'll go insane - if you scare him once more after this, he'll go utterly crazy and kill himself.
Scaring isn't the only option available to you, however. You can also pick up a multitude of weapons, ranging from baseball bats to machetes, and beat them to death. Once they're beaten enough, you can use R2 for a weapon-specific ultra kill, which results in a more violent death than just continual beating. Additionally, instead of pressing L2 to scare when a bear is repairing a piece of sabotaged equipment, you can press R2 for a context-specific ultra kill - ramming a phone receiver through their mouths is a personal favourite.
But (and it's a pretty sizeable but), there are one or two noticable issues with the game. Number one is a freezing issue - on a number of occasions I've been playing and the game and console have locked up, requiring a hard reset. Normally it's not a problem, but once or twice it's happened just as I'm about to end a mission with a high score, and that's annoying. Also, and possibly related, there are occasional frame-rate issues where the game will lag a little, but it usually sorts itself out after a few seconds.
However, it's a fun little game that'll definitely keep you occupied for a while if you're into high scores - there are online leaderboards for each mission, and four score targets for each one (bronze, silver, gold and platinum), that will take some time to achieve then you have a tidy little game. If, on the other hand, you hold a deep, deep hatred of bears, this game is all you've dreamed of.
I'd recommend therapy, though.
Final score - 7/10
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Naughty Bear
Playstation 3
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