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Naughty Bear Panic in Paradise
PS3 & XBox 360 (Download Only)
Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise is the sequel to the poorly received
yet mildly popular Naughty Bear from 2010. Once again, you play as
Naughty, a teddy bear who hasn’t been invited to a party that all the
other teddy bears in town have been invited to. Instead of accepting the
fact that none of the bears like him, he decides to show them why they
hate him so much; by killing every single one of them. Panic in
Paradise is an attempt at a hybrid of a stealth and action game
which ends up being only a mediocre affair.
Gameplay
A
quick word to any parents that might be reading this; do not buy this
game for your children. Panic in Paradise has a strong emphasis
on violence, and despite the main character being a teddy bear the game
is extremely disturbing and morbid. I personally believe it was lucky to
be allowed classification.
The
game is broken up into 30-odd levels, the main goal of each level having
you kill a bear and all his friends. There are many ways you can go
about killing your victims; basically any item you see on the map (a
poorly implemented one at that) can be used, including BBQs, lawnmowers,
machetes, you name it! Each level includes side missions that
reward you if you kill teddy bears in certain ways, by either trapping
them before killing them or scaring them so much that they end up
committing suicide (an extremely charming game).
While the game gives you many ways to complete your objectives, it’s
rather poorly implemented. The stealth mechanic is a joke, merely
involving you running into a garden and becoming completely invisible to
others, regardless of whether they saw you run into the bush or not. The
side missions are also rather weak, with very vague descriptions leaving
you puzzled as to what you’re actually meant to be doing. The overall
gameplay has little variation between levels. While there are plenty of
items and costumes to collect that take forever to find, Panic in
Paradise becomes old quickly. There’s only so much murder one can
tolerate.
Graphics
Panic in Paradise suffers from low production values, with the
unpolished graphics being on par with those of the Playstation 2 or even
the Wii, just overly bland and unengaging. The wide range of death
animations is quite entertaining to watch; they still manage to look
brutal despite any blood being replaced with fluff. The games
frame-rate is a mixed bag as well, on some occasions it ran really slow
and jumpy, and at other times ridiculously smooth. The game has an
overall cheap feel to it, despite only being a downloadable game. Be
warned, the game also tends to crash a lot. And I mean a lot.
Audio
The
only voice work included in Panic in Paradise is the narrator who
encourages Naughty to do his deeds. He has a surprisingly cheery tone,
gleefully egging on Naughty to use different items to kill other teddy
bears and congratulating him on his efforts afterwards. It’s the darkest
of black humour and I really liked it, but I can’t imagine this being a
good influence on any children giving this game a go. The game is also
riddled with the screams and whimpers of your helpless victims, which
were convincing enough for me to feel bad for killing them. The chatter
between the bears is quite annoying though, with squeaks and mumbles
that feel really lazy. I think the game could’ve had a much better
personality if the bears could actually talk, it just feels a little
‘bear’-bones (sorry).
Final Thoughts
Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise is a step back from the first game,
with repetitive gameplay, a lack of humour and some dodgy presentation
and performance issues. It’s quite a meaty package if you manage to get
through it all, but there’s just not enough variation in what you’re
doing to justify a full play through. If you’re a person who likes
slaughtering innocent teddy bears however, be my guest. You may have
just found your game of the year. |
