Naughty Bear

Did I hate the game….no, do I recommend the game…no. Would I like the developers to get there combined @#*& together and give us the game that all of us know could be created….you bet your naughty points I do!

As far as bears go, this is Pooh. [Sept 2010, p.103]

Naughty Bear isn't a bad game per se, and features some neat ideas, but is ultimately lacking in vision and variety.

Had Naughty Bear been a free or inexpensive indie game or XBLA title, and really taken its absurdist, twisted premise and wicked theme in a more extreme direction, we might praise it for being a hip, ironic commentary on videogame violence...or something. As it stands, Naughty Bear is overpriced and undercooked.

In closing it is hard to recommend Naughty Bear, as it's a missed opportunity spoiled by repetitive gameplay and rough controls, forgetting the painstaking bugs and the narrator that will make you want to mute the television permanently.

No one needs this game. Killing teddy bears with knives is neither a brilliant idea nor a sign for good taste. Except the many extras you can unlock in the game, there is no fun in running around and killing cute little teddy bears.

Naughty Bear works as a crazy idea, but not as a full-priced video game.

That burst of imagination never comes, so this thin game ends up trying to coast on a surfeit of charm it doesn't possess.

The game is like Manhunt, except with adorable teddy bears. Wait -- can you compel your victims to kill themselves in Manhunt? No? OK, maybe Naughty Bear's actions are slightly worse.

One may enjoy Naughty Bear for a while, but quickly enough, reality will catch up. The idea of a massacre starring adorable fluffy bears is undoubtedly a brilliant one, but it is poorly implemented here. Slow, imprecise, poised by narrow levels, and a to-soon to come lack of inspiration to continue driving the original idea further make it a concept that couldn't mature and blossom to become a good enough game.

Naughty bore more like. Yeah. [Sept 2010, p.88]

Naughty Bear sold itself to a lot of customers by pretending to be adult, gritty and brutal. In fact, it's childish, facile and more pointless than manning the phone-lines for the Rob Green retirement fund. Avoid at all costs, or at least wait until it's inevitably slashed in price if you're really desperate for some sledgehammer humour and cheap Gamerscore.

Wait ... this is a retail game? And you have to pay $50 for it? Unfortunately, in spite of a few good ideas, Naughty Bear is too sloppily executed, and too shallow to recommend -- especially as a "full" retail experience.

Naughty Bear strives to be tasteless and base, but in order for a game to truly pull that off it has to be funny, which Naughty Bear definitely isn't. The story is empty and the narration gets irritating very quickly. The gameplay is repetitive, the mission structure is absent, the graphics are lousy, and the whole experience is mired by a variety of technical shortcomings and bugs.

It's unacceptable these days to see the framerate just about crawl to a halt in every cut-scene shown between levels, and it's certainly unacceptable to charge full retail for what would barely pass muster as an XBL or PSN release.

A decent enough idea, but one bolted onto a mess of a game. Very naughty indeed. [Oct 2010, p.96]

The location feels claustrophobic, the camera system is atrocious and the act of torturing cuddly bears is simply not as enjoyable as it should be. The game suffers what I like to call "Fairytale Fights Syndrome" or "FFS" for short, where the idea is brilliant on paper, but fails miserably in execution.

I really wanted to like Naughty Bear, but there are too many faults that either disrupt the gameplay or are just too unbearable to ignore. The experience, unfortunately, bears no fruit.

What is most disappointing about Naughty Bear is that it had a good premise. This game could have been really awesome. Unfortunately this game was rushed out the door in an unfinished state.

It could have piqued interest and numbed the pain of the incredibly dull gameplay. In the end, Naughty Bear gives you the bear necessities, and very little else.

Mercifully short. [Issue#62,p.91]

Reprehensible on both qualitative and thematic levels, Naughty Bear is a downright disgraceful attempt at a game. [Issue#99, p.116]

Naughty Bear had all the ingredients to become a great game but somewhere things went wrong. The game has a great concept but will only keep you amused for about two hours. After that, you'll be hitting yourself on the head for buying this game at full price.

Fun for about an hour. It's not good, the virtually identical sections are hardly exciting, and there's a lot less variety in the mayhem than you might be led to believe, but it is an enjoyable, compulsive score-chaser. But it's deceptive. It lures you in with promises of something it never delivers.

Naughty Bear could've been cool, but it isn't. It's a bad game. You shouldn't play it.

The one good idea here is the premise, but it is almost like the developers didn't know how to spin it out into a decent game and instead have created a jumbled, repetitive mess.

Truly awful games, especially full-price retail releases, are thin on the ground these days. Sure, games can sometimes be far too generic or suffer from some iffy design decisions, but they're rarely as poor as Naughty Bear. How the game got released in this state is a mystery.

The game isn't very good, and can't even be considered a decent time waster. It fails to be enjoyable or fun to play, and despite trying incredibly hard, fails to give gamers a hook to keep coming back for more. I don't often wish for my time back after playing a video game, but Naughty Bear was easily one of the worst games I've ever played.

Easily the worst game I've played so far this year. Easily.

I simply wish the team had built a better game around the concept, or that someone had the foresight to release the game as a "budget" DLC title, instead of a $50 game.

Charging unsuspecting people money for this game - now that's naughty.