POSTED 19/10/12


NAUGHTY BEAR: PANIC IN PARADISE

505 Games
PS3/PSN (also on Xbox 360/XBLA)

Nature versus nurture. It’s a complex, ongoing debate that we can’t be arsed looking into any deeper currently. Well, beyond questioning whether christening the newborn Naughty Bear something else, such as Happy Bear, Benign Bear or even Not Clinically Fucking Insane Bear, may have saved a whole world of fluff-stuffed hurt.

When we last tuned into channel Naughty Bear, we were horrified. Not at how exceedingly naughty he was, but how utterly shit the game he was plopped within was. We compared it to the worst C64 plop, which was rather mean on Commodore’s murky-brown genius box. So, how’s NB doing now he’s pissed off to paradise? Umm, would you believe he’s kinda hit PS1 vintage?

If you’ve not had the dubious displeasure, this is third-person slashventuring whereby a bear who’s been scorned by his peers wreaks lethal vengeance. He’ll literally knock the stuffing out of any foes via methods ranging from a simple bashing to feeding them to sharks, impaling upon cacti, barbecuing them or stuffing their stuffing into a mower. Much like a beary Agent 47, he has a target in each level to exterminate, before being able to shuffle onto the next hit of 36 on his list.

Some big problems from the original outing have been sorted, notably the waywayway-too-close camera, its abject skittishness, lack of depth and jitterbuggy animation. Yay team! But it’s still not fun – and it could and should be. The premise is totally sick, sure, but a capable game engine (and losing all the motherfucking interrupty screens whenever you start getting a spot of morbid flow happening) would help oodlesponentially.

What makes such a sweet bear turn so mean? We don’t know, but we’re off to cuddle our Teddy Boombah and tell him we love him right about now, just in case...

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