You know, I’m brave enough to admit it. I actually sympathised with the character of Naughty Bear. At some point in everyone’s lives, I think we’ll ended up not been invited to an event when all of your friends did. When this happened to us, most of us probably just went up to our rooms and sulked but not Naughty. Naughty gets even.

Naughty decides that he has had enough of his Teddy Bear friends and decides to wipe them off the face of Perfection Island via any means possible. In terms of the storyline for Naughty Bear. That’s about it, but do you really need anymore. What cutscenes there are, are suitably stylised like a early morning childrens show with none of the bears talking and the narrator talking to Naughty directly.

The game itself is broken down into 7 episodes each with 5 chapters in them.  The first chapter plays out part of the story as Naughty hunts down a particular bear and his friends that upset him and kills them. The remaining chapters allow you to repeat this process but with different rules in place ie Not being seen, Not being hit, or only killing Bears with environmental hazards.  However the storyline and missions are just there to allow you to build up Naughty Points.

Naughty Points are obtained by killing Bears and destroying objects in-game. You receive more points by varying your kill methods or by scaring Bears and the higher your points get, the better medal you receive at the end to progress to the next chapter. Later chapters are unlocked based on amount and type of medals you have.

This is where most of the fun lies in Naughty Bear. I laughed pretty sadistically when I snuck up on a bear who was warming his hands by the fire and pushed him into it. This was followed by his friend getting scared by the noise and coming out to find out what’s happened. He found the body and freaked out. This allowed me to sneak up behind him with a baseball bat, spin him around and beat the stuffing out of him. Points galore. On another occasion, I snuck around a corner and gave one of them a fright causing him to run off scared. He ran into a previously placed bear-trap and was stuck. While trying to pull himself free, I came around behind him and snapped his neck before slipping back into the shadows. It was like Tenchu with Teddy Bears. But as strange as it sounds, killing them isn’t the best method for points. Making them kill them themselves is way naughtier. If you have scared a bear too much, he will end himself in a over the top way. Watching them commit Seppuku rather than put up with the torment can score you massive points. If your connected to the Playstation Network, then the highest online score is put up at the top of the screen to give you an idea of what you need to beat.

This is also where Naughty Bear falls down as a game. With a set number of weapons to use and with a limited number of areas to hunt in, the game gets samey pretty quickly. The extra chapters in each episode don’t really add anything and some can be particually annoying (ie not being hit) All the kills are canned animations which get boring pretty quickly and you can struggle to carry onto the later levels. However until you exhaust all your kill options, the game can remain pretty fun.

Then again, if you love mindless slaughter of innocent Teddy’s then you will have hours of fun.