Naughty Bear

Something I saw today at the pawn shop had my heart racing like it hasn't raced in quite some time. Behold!

A video game?
Of a scarred teddy bear that looks very pissed off?
Holding a huge knife?
With a terrified bear reflected in the dangerous blade?

WHAT?!

After my brain had processed all of these tantalizing tidbits of visual stimuli, my immediate response was "I need to buy this game! But, wait, I don't have an XBOX. I need to buy an XBOX!"

Instead, I decided to see if they had a version of it for Wii (as I already am the happy owner of one of this gaming system). Sadly, there is no Wii version of the game, but that may not be such a bad thing. The information I found on the game was less than stellar.

Apparently, people have called this game "boring" and "repetitious" and as "having no plot". It was berated with the shameful title of Worst Game of the Year and received very low marks from numerous gaming magazines, critics, and gamers.

But, my question, is how can this be? Not that I'm saying these hundreds, possibly thousands, of people are idiots and that they are dead wrong. Nor am I saying that they are neither sophisticated nor disciplined enough to discover the subtle ingenious sparks hidden throughout the game. But while reading the description of the game's various levels, I was left in awe at the staggering randomness. Here are some examples (thanks to our omniscient and omnipotent friend Wikipedia):

"The episodes that follow have Naughty deal with a variety of unusual events: fighting ninja bears to take out Mayor Chubby whose re-electoral promise is to kill off Naughty; battling the military to punish Cozy for using birds to spy on him; killing Nibbles for raising the Un-Ted; fighting his way through the Bear Emergency Action Response (BEAR) unit to kill oil baron Trembles for intending to kill Naughty and build an oil rig over his hut; and executing Fluffy for unknowingly threatening all existence while taking down his robot bear army.



In the seventh episode, a bear named Sunbeam makes contact with aliens. However, the aliens enslave the bears and take over the island. After killing the aliens and Sunbeam, Naughty Bear is congratulated by the other bears for his effort, and was even offered a cake. However, Daddles smashes the cake in Naughty's face, humiliating him in front of all the bears on the island as they all played him. Heartbroken, Naughty Bear goes back to his hut, but not before he destroys the cabin all the bears are in with an RPG."

There are few things in this world that I find as equally or more mesmerizing as what has just been described, but, then again, that's me.

Having said all this, I wanted to put in a shameless plug for my other blog. DEAD TEDDIES. Perfect segue, huh? Anyway, check it out at http://www.deadteddies.blogspot.com/. Maybe this is why I find this game so exciting, because my mind is linked to the mind of the creator of Naughty Bear in inexplicable and vague ways--which should not be confused with "not at all". But, of course, my poetry, crafting, and blog will get much better reviews than the game of my mind-friend.