No Naughty Bear for me

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closeOriginally posted on 2 years 12 days. This blog is no longer being updated - you should come check out my new blog: Too Short To Be A Storm Trooper


I’m really not that easily offended.

I mean I’ve gotten grouchier about the moral decay of society as I’ve gotten older but I’m not too old to remember when I reveled in moral decay and I’ve turned out reasonably well balanced. So I’m not outraged in the least about the PS3 game Naughty Bear but I do know that it’s not for me.

First of all before I go into my old man rant about moral decay the game itself is nothing to write home about.  It’s repetitive and the graphics are not up to scratch.  It’s not a great game from a playing point of view and the one note ongoing joke about the psychotic teddy bear named Naughty Bear gets tedious almost immediately.

I mean naming a teddy bear Naughty Bear really only sets him up of one of two career paths, erotic entertainer or mass murderer.  The game focuses on the mass murder aspect thankfully.

So the gameplay is average at best, which was probably my biggest reason for trading the bugger as soon as I got the chance. But I also was a bit disturbed by the whole thing.  You’re rewarded for torturing and terrifying other bears, when you kill them it’s repetitive but still very violent. There are voices in his head telling him to punish the other bears and overall the children’s television set is just plain creepy.

There is no way that this would have made it past the censors if it wasn’t teddy bears.  The disconnect from humans is one thing but the overall disturbing behaviour being encouraged is still there.  People complained about Rockstar’s Bully and I honestly think Naughty Bear is much worse.  Don’t get me wrong I’m quite the fan of violence in video games I just found something off-putting around this game which I’m very sure is the intent!

Of course horror fans will enjoy the game for a couple of giggles for maybe five minutes before they get bored with the kill moves.  I used to be a big horror fan and twenty years ago I would have loved this apart from the gameplay.  I think twenty years ago I would have found this hilarious until the gameplay sucked out my will to live.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

10 thoughts on “No Naughty Bear for me”

  2. I’ve played a lot of controversial games, but seriously, that looks awful. Because in my mind, in this kind of thing, the person doing things like that has to have some kind of player-understandable justification.

    Like in the aforementioned Bully (which despite the controversy, wasn’t that violent all things considered), the protagonist is actually doing something which is beneficial to the institution in question, since he is battling the bullies which the staff at Bullworth Academy won’t acknowledge.

    • There’s the very thinly put together story that the other bears are mean to Naughty Bear and the voices inside his head are telling him to punish them… Thing is I expect after you slaughtered the first party and killed the main bear then that really should be the end of that, which of course it isn’t.

      So the only real reason to do it is that it’s funny, but of course after 30 secs this loses even that.

      Did you finish Bully? I never did and was wondering if the ending pays off?

  3. It’s just not right for teddy bears to pick on other teddy bears … everyone knows that soft toys are one big happy family.

    • It’s the kind of funny that you get from drawing a quick pen sketch of a teddy bear chasing another dressed as Jason with a chainsaw. Hardly enough to base a whole game on.

      Of course if the game play itself was any good it might have been a whole other story.