Naughty Bear - Panic in Paradise

Tenlo Mon Oct 15, 2012 10:44 am

Developer: Behaviour Interactive

Publisher: 505 Games

Price: 1200MSP

If you go down to the tropical island woods today, you’re likely to find a multitude of mutilated corpses and general property destruction as Naughty Bear has made his return to Xbox via the Xbox Live Arcade.

For those who didn’t know Naughty Bear started off as a retail release back in 2010 and received mediocre reviews due to some glaring gameplay issues, although the concept of the idea was praised. Move forward two years and we’re presented with its XBLA sequel Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise. But has it learnt from its mistakes and improved.

The story is quite simple and explains that all the teddy bears have gone on holiday to Paradise Island but have purposefully not invited Naughty Bear. Naughty Bear finds this quite offensive and in typical behaviour heads off to Paradise Island to explain how upset he is by causing fatal bodily harm on as many bears as possible in a multitude of inventive ways.

Naughty Bear - Panic in Paradise August5

The gameplay consists of mixture of Metal Gear Solid meets Hitman as you’ll spend your time hiding in the woods before sneaking up on unsuspecting teddy bears, grabbing them by the throat and then using various weapons and environment objects to murder them violently. What makes this trickier is the various guard bears will attack you on sight and while to begin with the guards will just knock a little bit of health off, later levels will present you with ever tougher guards who can potentially cause huge amounts of damage with single hits usually killing you off.

This is where the other important aspect of the gameplay comes in, the disguises. These disguises have two main benefits – the first being if the correct disguise is worn then you can walk freely around without being spotted making it much easier to take out targets. The second is that every time you use a new costume item or weapon you will gain XP for using it. This XP is used to level up Naughty Bear making him a stronger, faster and a more deadly serial killer. The catch is once you’ve maxed out the XP on an item if you equip it you’ll get no more XP so the game encourages you to swap and change items regularly. Clothes can be obtained by dragging bears wearing them into the woods and killing them, while weapons are unlocked by picking them up and killing a bear with them. Unfortunately they then have to be bought in the in-game shop to use, which is a bit frustrating, but once you get the knack of the game money starts to roll in.

As you can imagine the weapons and environmental deaths are the crux of the game. A lot of fun at the start of a new level is walking around and figuring out what objects can be used to cause a painful death. Helpfully the first time you come across an environmental killing object the narrator pops up and mentions the item allowing you to know that this is death object rather than just scenery. The variety of deaths is quite huge as well and range from Lock, Stock-inspired car door deaths, impaling on cactus, being eaten by giant plants, turned into cookies, flushed down a toilet, having all the fluff sucked out of them or just plain beheaded by a machete there is literally a death for everyone. Best of all the game encourages you to try as many deaths as possible as repeated kills earn you fewer points every time.

Naughty Bear - Panic in Paradise August2

Another important aspect of the gameplay comes from making bears go insane! This is quite tricky to work out to start off with but when you realise that, like any good horror movie, to make your victims go crazy you need to leave corpses strewn all over the levels so that they can barely turn round the corner without seeing one. It adds a welcome element of strategy to the game and forces you to plan your killing spree with care. Often you’ll find one of your sub-objectives is making bears commit suicide and if you can scare them to the point of insanity and then grab them and scare them one more time you get the pleasure of watching a bear bash themselves to death with a stick or just see their head explode as the terror becomes too much. Although you get no points for these deaths it is certainly entertaining to do and you really feel like a serial killer from a horror movie when you’re chasing down one of these bears and they keep stumbling to the ground trying to get away from you!

Each time you complete a level you are awarded a score which decides on which trophy you receive. Extra points are awarded for completing sub-objectives as well as your main objective which involves killing a particular bear in a certain way, either by using a certain object or weapon or wearing a certain costume when killing them. These are usually quite inventive in their ideas and although sometimes the clues on how to complete these objectives can be vague they are never impossible to figure out with a little thought.

With a total of 36 levels over about 5-6 different themed stages there is a fair amount of content and to obtain the ultimate Platinum trophy will require both strategy and knowing the layout of each level to obtain maximum points (it often took me about 20 minutes a level when getting Platinum trophies so that’s 12 hours of gameplay just there).

Graphically the game is strong and suits the psychotic kids TV show feel of the game. My only bug bear is that on the dark levels it was often too dark to see anything clearly but a coloured halo highlights any abject you can use when nearby so I was still able to find things easy enough. The animations for the deaths are all quite humorous and while repeated viewings may become tedious, there is enough variety in murder that this never really occurs.

Naughty Bear - Panic in Paradise Robot_costume_-_big_boo

An important element of the audio comes down to the ever present Narrator. He seems inspired by the style of narrator you’d find on Bill and Ben or the Herbs (anyone under the age of 30 might want to look them up) and is probably just as twisted as Naughty Bear himself and often seems to egg on Naughty to commit more and more twisted acts of death. But he does bring a lot of extra humour to a title already filled with dark humour. The score consists of Kids TV themes with a creepy Halloween-esque feel and is a nice bonus and while it never intrudes onto the gameplay it adds a nice atmosphere to the title.

The Achievements will either be ones you love or you hate depending on what sort of gamer you are. A large quantity of these revolve around collecting and maxing out all the different costumes and weapons but by the time you finish the 36 levels you will probably have a large amount of these done. Slightly more challenging will be the obtaining Platinum trophies on every level. Originally this seemed quite daunting but once you get a feel for how the game works these are not too much of a challenge and with levels heavily populated by bears there are ample opportunities to obtain high scores easily on most levels.

I suppose whether you enjoy Naughty Bear or not depends on how you approach the game. At 1200 points the price is quite reasonable considering the size of the game and how many hours of gameplay it will give you to truly master the game and even then there is always the appeal of improving your current score on a level to climb further up the leaderboards (I personally was very chuffed to reach no 1 on a level against the other reviewers playing at the time!). With each level being self-enclosed this is a great game to pick up for short bursts and aim for the highest score possible. Although long sessions of this may get tedious, there is still an element of wanting to just wanting that little bit more violence that made it hard for me to put the game down, but then again maybe I’ve just got an inner Serial Killer trying to get out!!!

Overall 8/10

**minkey_monkey** Mon Oct 15, 2012 10:59 am

I didn't have much interest in the normal retail version after watching someone play it but your enthusiastic writing style may have convinced me to at least give the Demo a try Smile

Good writing as always sir.

I actually do really mean that and I'm not in anyway scared by your inner serial killer trying to get out Wink

I really did like your review Very Happy

just incase the above made it sound like I was pandering to your inner maniac lol

stubbymite Mon Oct 15, 2012 11:06 am

good review mate.

Not really my kind of game i played the retail version and really is not my style and to be fair this may be different.

The price seems kinda high but im guessing there is quite a bit to do in the game?

Anyway good reviewing as always mate

GrahamOfTheDead Mon Oct 15, 2012 11:10 am

Didn't really like the original game, but this looks like one to keep an eye on for when it goes on sale. Mustn't be swayed by the awesome Leatherface costume though! Was suckered into buying the original cos of the Freddy and Jason pre-order DLC.

Good work as ever!

Tenlo Mon Oct 15, 2012 11:34 am

You'll be pleased to know then Graham that there is DLC out for this already giving you a Leatherface costume and there are plans for a Fredd Kreuger DLC too!

Ba5sett Mon Oct 15, 2012 12:23 pm

Not sure this is my cup of tea but good review as always mate Very Happy

TreeMunky Mon Oct 15, 2012 1:18 pm

Bejesus! Ive never heard of Naughty Bear, thats some weird gaming idea. First off great review Tenlo. I'm going to download the demo, you raised an eyebrow with your Hitman reference, so Ive got to see what this is about.

Sh00t3rmcgavin2 Mon Oct 15, 2012 2:17 pm

Great review as always mate!

Guest Mon Oct 15, 2012 6:49 pm

Great writing mate. Not a game for me though

Muska25101847 Mon Oct 15, 2012 8:15 pm

IV played the demo of this and its much better than the retail copy

chrism1066 Mon Oct 15, 2012 10:28 pm

great review mate, as others have said not sure if i'll be getting it but you made it sound cool! Cool

TheTCD Mon Oct 15, 2012 10:34 pm

I tried the trial and it seemed a little awkward, but then it also seemed to barely explain the controls and focused merely on mechanics. I may grab it on a deal week, but for now it can wait.

I also really dislike the narrator. My god his voice...

Colne Crusader Mon Oct 15, 2012 11:28 pm

Super review Tenners! Made me sit up and take notice of this game! Sounds good!

Slayer1189 Mon Oct 15, 2012 11:53 pm

Great review, Like many others, the retail wasn't for me and I doubt i'll bother with this. Was hoping they really went a new direction with the XBLA game as the concept is pretty cool

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