It's a bear necessity.

[The Curmudgeon]

One of the annoying things about this website is its lack of numbers. A few people take a day or two away from here and this is like a ghost town. Turns out, though, that it's, ahem, "exclusive" nature turns out to be an advantage.

Because we like to share interests and hobbies and whatnot, there are a number of "look out for this!" or "buy this!" threads, in which we talk about the latest CD/movie/game/whatever is floating our boat. Now, if there were 1000 people in here all doing the same thing, every recommendation would vanish from our minds as soon as we had closed the link.

Here, though, things stick in the mind more. Namely, this;



Naughty Bear, brought up a good few months ago by our resident fire-bringer, Trashcanman. He posted a trailer. It looked amazing.

Anyway, I bought it about a month ago and it's now head on with Batman: Arkham Asylum for the game that's taking up most of my time. And at first I wasn't sure I was going to like it. It just seemed like running around doing funny-once things to bears.

But beneath it's novelty surface lies a surprising amount of depth. Yes, you can just run around and cause carnage to the other bears (who really are loathsome little fuckers), but the real skill - and reward - lies in the little things. A message at the top right of the screen tells you what the other bears are seeing, so with a bit of skill you really can create your own little horror movie ending, where the heroine stumbles upon victim after victim (think the ending to Halloween).

"Cuddles finds a broken telephone. Cuddles finds a dead bear. Cuddles hears a smashing sound. Cuddles finds a destroyed car. Cuddles finds a dead bear..." So much so that they end up bashing their own heads in with a baseball bat in terror.

There's dozens of unlockable items, hidden stuff.. I think it got really unfairly overlooked in the press over the latest identical fucking FPS or driving game, when it's actually one of the most original games out there.

It should be at bargain price now (I got it second hand for five pounds), so it is certainly worth your time. If in any doubt, check this out..

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8iqMahvTA8

'nuff said.

[Benjamin Haines]

That looks awesome. Too bad it's not available for Wii.

[trashcanman]

SOLD! I know I was the one who brought up how awesome this game looked, but I ended up skipping on it (although it remained on my wishlist) after an insane number of reviews essentially declaring it the worst game ever (which happens too often with indie games who can't afford to "pay to play" on review sites) made me decide to await an imminent price drop that accompanies all poorly-reviewed games, which became a wait for an announced "gold" edition, which led into the very jam-packed latter half of this year full of must-play, can't-miss games. So on my Amazon wishlist Naughty Bear sits, as Skyrim continues to devour my free time as it has devoured most of the rest of humanity's for the last month. I'll probably buy it after Christmas if I can manage to clear a few weeks before the new Final Fantasy comes out, which is likely. Thanks for posting this, C. Now my doubts are assuaged and I can get excited again about playing this one.