Newbie: Naughty Bear (360)

If you go down to the woods today, you'd better go armed to the teeth. Because, if this bear sees you, he's liable to impale you with a knife, slap your head in with a baseball bat and shove a telephone in yer gob! That's basically Naughty Bear. To be as naughty as possible. But, there's a reason behind it all: Naughty wasn't invited to Daddles' birthday party, because he's been a naughty little git. So, he decides to anyway, with a present he made himself (probably an axe on a spring or something). But, when two bears laugh at him, he thinks enough is enough, and starts to go on a fluffy rampage.

I....have..had...enough of....YOOOOU!

Utilising a range of weapons, like a baseball bat, knife, axe or machine guns, Naughty Bear has to go around and kill the other bears, or at least, scare them into killing themselves. And that's where the fun comes in. You have the choice of setting traps, sabotaging various items so bears investigate and attempt repair (and thus, letting you get them), scaring them to doing something stupid or just going all out and slapping them silly. If you take the last option, and you slap them into submission, you get the choice to do an Ultra Kill, which, at the press of the Right Trigger, sees Naughty slaughter them maniacally (like shoving a stick into their eye, and setting them on fire). If a bear sees you do this, he will call in The Fuzz to come after you. You can sabotage the phone boxes, so they can't call for help, plus you can destroy cars and boats to stop them escaping. There is also an element of stealth as well, enabling you to scare them even more without being seen.

So, it sounds fun, but what is it like? Not bad, actually. Some stuff works really well (like the sabotaging items then hiding in cupboards, ready to scare the stuffing out your victim, but that only works occassionally. Either that or I'm doing something wrong, so i'll have to give it another go. Still, there's always scaring them to death, which does work, thankfully. It works even better if you sneak up behind a bear and then scaring them, with a very loud BOOOOOOO!, which is quite funny, especially the mouth animation. Only thing is, that it does get a bit boring after a while of doing the same thing over and over. The cut scenes are very choppy, even after the update, and are only smooth at certain points. Mind you, the graphics aren't too bad. Nice and colourful, and cartoony-ish. One other problem is the camera. It could have done with being brought back a bit, so you could see more, and this is apparent when in buildings, when the walls needed to go transparent.

Go ahead. Make my day....punk!

 The sounds and music are ok,. It's just a shame that there's not a deranged version of Teddy Bear's picnic used, as that could have worked well. It is quite funny when you hear Naughty scream BOO at another bear, and when another bear screams after being scared fluffless.
Controls-wise, you can't customise them. Which is the singlemost stupidest idea I've ever seen, as more often than not, you'll press the wrong button and do something else that you wasn't supposed to do.

All in all, it's not a bad game (well, not as bad as some reviews have made out), but it's not great either. There is some fun to be had, but only in short bursts. Just be prepared to have to learn the control layout first.