Naughty Bear

In Naughty Bear, players take on the role of Naughty Bear, a bear driven to seek vengeance after the other bears don't invite him to the big birthday party. Scorned for the last time, Naughty Bear becomes hell bent on manipulating and terrorizing the blissful bears inhabiting the Island of Perfection.

Released: 25 June 2010
Platforms: PlayStation 3 Xbox 360
Genres: Action Beat 'em up Strategy Third-person shooter
Developers: —
Publishers: 505 Games
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: Third person
Themes: Action Horror Comedy
Country: Canada
Age ratings: ESRB T

About

Naughty Bear is a 2010 action-adventure video game developed by Canadian studio Artificial Mind and Movement and released by Italian publisher 505 Games for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and iOS. The game is set on the fictional Perfection Island in the 1980s, where sentient teddy bears live in harmony. Naughty Bear is a shabby teddy bear who is rude, which earns him disdain from other bears, and starts a vengeful rampage against them when he is shunned from a birthday party. The game received mixed reviews from critics.

›Story

Naughty Bear is the only bear on Perfection Island who is not invited to Daddles' birthday party. Naughty tries to be nice anyway and even crafted a gift for the occasion, hoping he and Daddles could become friends. When two other bears, Chubby and Giggles, see that Naughty has a present, they laugh at him. This makes Naughty sulk back to his house. He then decides to get revenge on the bears, going on a killing spree and punishing the various other inhabitants of Perfection Island and any outside help that comes to their aid.

The episodes that follow have Naughty deal with a variety of unusual events: fighting ninja bears to take out Mayor Chubby whose re-electoral promise is to kill off Naughty; battling the military to punish Cozy for using birds to spy on him; killing Nibbles for raising the Un-Ted; fighting his way through the Bear Emergency Action Response (BEAR) unit to kill oil baron Trembles for intending to kill Naughty and build an oil rig over his hut; and executing Fluffy for unknowingly threatening all existence while taking down his robot bear army.

In the seventh episode, a bear named Sunbeam makes contact with aliens. However, the aliens enslave the bears and take over the island. After killing the aliens and Sunbeam, Naughty Bear is congratulated by the other bears for his effort, and was even offered a cake. However, Daddles smashes the cake in Naughty's face, humiliating him in front of all the bears on the island as they all played him. Heartbroken, Naughty Bear goes back to his hut, but not before he destroys the cabin all the bears are in with an RPG.

Three additional episodes were released as downloadable content. In the first, Naughty is invited to a cake tasting party to be the guest of honour. But learning it to be a trap by Cop Gordon as he calls in the superhero Danger Bear and his X-Bear team, Naughty not only punishes Gordon, but also the X-Bears and Danger Bear's number one fan, Bubbles. In the second, Naughty punishes the crew of Captain Bear Beard and Giggles when they intend to dig up Naughty Bear's house for buried treasure.

In the last one, Naughty learns the bears enlisted Vampiricorn to do their dirty work. Due to him and his minions draining the stuffing of Unibear, the vampire bears are almost unstoppable as Naughty punishes both them and Stardust, who came up with the plan in the first place.

Keywords

serial killer
ninja
murder
robots
animal protagonist
insanity
achievements
traps
torture
high score
playstation trophies
ranking system

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Gameplay requires the player to lead the single-minded and sociopathic Naughty Bear on his personal quest to bring about violent revenge against his elitist teddy bear neighbors. Naughty Bear starts each level with a handful of weapons, a time limit and the goal of racking up as many "naughty points" as possible through the massacring of the local population. Points can be gained for both volume and creativity of the kills. Larger amounts of points can be gained through the fear-based multiplier system. Multipliers are earned through any act of "naughtiness", such as vandalism, having others witness executions, or engaging in episodes of extended physical or psychological torture.

Story

Set in the 1980s, Naughty Bear is the only bear on Perfection Island who is not invited to Daddles' birthday party. Naughty tries to be nice anyway and even crafts a gift for the occasion, hoping he and Daddles can become friends. When Chubby and Giggles see that Naughty has a present, they laugh at him. This makes Naughty sulk back to his house.

He then decides to get revenge on the bears, going on a killing spree and punishing the various other inhabitants of Perfection Island and any outside help that comes to their aid. His actions are influenced and commented on by an unseen British narrator with a demeanor reminiscent of a children's television show host.

Reception

The iOS version received "mixed or average" reviews, while the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions received "generally unfavorable reviews", according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.

The A.V. Club gave the Xbox 360 version a C−, saying, "Watching a psychologically tortured teddy bear blow his brains out is somewhat less hilarious than Naughty Bear seems to think. The “toys turned evil” trope is pretty warmed-over to begin with, so for the story of an ostracized teddy tormenting his cutesy brethren to succeed, it would need to do something more imaginative than nudge the boundaries of good taste. 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 Escapist gave the PS3 version a score of two stars out of five and said, "Despite quite competently capturing the feel of a slasher flick and possessing a solid sense of humor, Naughty Bear is repetitious and clunky, and constantly feels like it's working to keep you separated from the parts of the game that are genuinely fun - that is, the hunting down and murder of adorable stuffed animals."