You know when you get excited for a new bag of jellybeans? The kind with an assortment of flavors? Well Naughty Bear is kind of like that bag of jellybeans, but instead of having a delicious bag of goodies with a few bad things in it, you open up this bag of jellybeans and someone has taken all of your favorite flavors out and replaced them with human excrement. I may or may not have eaten a bag of jelly beans before writing this review.
Anyway, lets continue with far less jellybean similes.
Naughty Bear (PS3, Xbox 360 [reviewed])
Developer: A2M
Publisher: 505 Games
Released: June 29, 2010
MSRP: $49.99
Just to set up the premise for you, Naughty Bear is a story about a stuffed bear who has been shunned by his fellow stuffed bears. To get back at them he is extremely Naughty and will usually murder everyone. That’s really the story, no I do not take drugs.
At first I was enjoying the games unique style of gameplay but that delusion quickly turned into resentment for the game had somehow managed to trick me for the first hour or so into thinking it wasn’t a bad game. Like getting a candy apple with razor blades inside I quickly realized that I had been tricked. At least this time I didn’t have to go to the hospital. The problem arose when my mouth started bleeding…. I mean… the problem arose when I began breaking down what was happening on the screen. My brain must have kicked in and started processing things again because I have no idea what made me think this was ever fun. After seeing the same animation for the 5th time I stopped laughing. After getting to the 3rd stage and realizing that this area the size of a tutorial level was indeed the entire game, I stopped exploring, and after trying to do the broken sneaking mission for the 10th time I was rushed to the hospital for a severe loss of blood. No wait, that was from the candy apple incident. After doing the sneaking mission for the 10th time I was getting pissed off.
Somehow these developers had taken a wonderful idea, almost an ingenious idea and destroyed any hope it ever had of being a decent game. Naughty Bear, which should only be referred to by reviewers as “The Fucking Disaster Experiment,” should only be played by those who care to see how a great idea can be raped.
“The Fucking Disaster Experiment” fails in its gameplay for many reasons. First off, the camera programmer must have been getting a blow job from a prostitute while writing code because in the year 2010, yes it’s 2010 if you haven’t been keeping track, in the year 2010 any competent programmer can design a camera system that fucking works. You can forgive that it’s a little bit jerky when you’re running around, but every single death animation is tarnished by bad camera placement. When entering into one of the 3 small rooms in the game your camera will have seizures until you find an exit. To me there’s only one reason this could of happened. The programmer was being slob jobbed while doing his work. Luckily they got a two for one deal on the prostitute that also prevented them from making a game with some decent combat mechanics. I say this because the combat mechanics obviously suffered from the same problems. The sex fest bender the developers went on must have caused them to run out of money because X is apparently the only button they could afford to pay the programmer to successfully program. Well I should take that back. Someone did sober up long enough to put in a scare and kill button because they actually work. After spamming the X button until the retarded AI is close enough to death, you can press the right trigger and be treated to a short animation in which you kill the cute cuddly bear in a comical manner. If you choose to scare them after ensnaring them in a trap you can actually drive them insane and watch as they lose their minds and kill themselves.
Giving them a copy of this game, also may have sufficed.
I actually feel genuine sorrow for the sound designer. Somehow this guy managed to stay sober, and do a decent job with the sound while the programmers were doing coke off of a strippers ass. The sound guys put in some great music to present the titles cuteness, while also preserving the ominous overtone. They even hired a great guy to do the voice over work. If you kill enough bears with the broken combat system the English voice actor rewards you with a funny remark like “Supreme Defluffication” or by shouting “It’s Naughty Time” when you pick up the right power up. The only thing that made the game bearable…oh shit did I just make that pun, fucking kill me now… the only thing that makes the game tolerable is the excitement the announcer has, the sound effects like the squeaks the bears make, and the music playing while you murder these innocent imaginary creatures.
Another group who won’t be finding out they have an STD in 3 months are the graphic designers. Probably the people who had the original idea, the graphic designers did a great job presenting the character “Naughty Bear” in “The Fucking Disaster Experiment,” as well as creating the homes and objects you’ll see in the extremely small level. The level of detail in the game isn’t anything to write home about, but for the subject matter being presented, the low level of detail works. I did find that the animations suffered from many of the same problems the camera did, aka not looking right, and sometimes just being broken all together. We’ll just assume that was because the animator overdosed half-way through the game’s creation process and was only able to make 80% of the animations look awesome, while telling someone else to handle all the broken things. At least the intro cut scenes all look great which helps trick you into thinking there’s more there than just a great idea here that’s been fondled by 5 rich business men who left it a scarred shell. That means the animator must have done something right.
Multiplayer is a lot like a party you don’t want to be at. The people take forever to show up and when they do it still ends with you being molested by your uncle. At least this time the party never starts because no one can figure out what the ready button does. It has all the same problems as the single player except it’s somehow managed to be less fun. There’s 4 great modes you won’t be able to play with anyone because it’s either too laggy, or because everyone playing this game is a fucking moron and can’t figure out how to start a match. I didn’t think it would be possible, but somehow multiplayer manged to let me down even more.
I honestly wanted “The Fucking Disaster Experiment” to succeed but it’s shortcomings in the programming department prevent it from becoming anything more than a game we’ll all look back on and feel sad feelings for. We’ll feel sad because it could of been great, and instead we all had to play whatever this was supposed to be. This is a disaster that I hope someone will be able to make a functional game out of someday as we sure as hell didn’t get it this time.
Score: 4.0 — Below Average
Related Posts
Posted by: Destin
Posted on: July 18, 2010
Destin has a penchant for video games and sarcasm. He's written for ScrewAttack, Destructoid, and GoNintendo, but has also produced episodes of the Video Game Vault series for Gametrailers, and created, produced, and edited every episode of The Armory on IGN. To put it mildly, he knows his shit. 
You have to Login