Guys, it's almost 2013. Moments before sitting down to write this review, I was playing Grand Theft Auto 3 on my phone while watching a dude skydive from space! Why any game that costs money would look the way Panic in Paradise does is beyond the scope of even my impressive intellect.It almost seems as though the devs' intent was to make something they could port to mobile devices; that's the only passable excuse I can think of for having environments this homely looking. Lighting effects are barely present, and the character models look like the sort of thing I would have rendered during my high school years while listening to Ace of Base on my brand new Sony Discman. Predictably, the only part of the visuals that manage to entertain in the slightest are the grizzly death animations, which are supposed to be the payout for offing your furry victims. Though they succeed at driving the game's sadistic tone, you can only disembowel so many bears before it becomes tiresome.
It's a bad sign when you're left wishing the whole game's atmosphere and art direction were as good as its loading screens'.
Still worse than the game's look is how joylessly it presents itself. If someone pitched me on a game where you're essentially the villain in a horror movie about teddy bears in paradise, I'd imagine it to have its tongue planted firmly in cheek while slathering on gobs of sardonic, black humor. Panic in Paradise doesn't really fail in doing this so much as it patently ignores the opportunity to do so.
Sure, there's an inherent comedy to the concept of a vicious killer who happens to be a harmless looking stuffed animal. But beyond that incidental bit of humor, Naughty Bear never so much as attempts to seem funny or even satirical. The narrator, who's presumably a voice inside Naughty's head, plays it disturbingly straight, enthusiastically telling you who to kill and why without even a hint of irony. Dark is good. I like dark. But I kinda draw the line at feeling like a murderous sociopath, which is more or less how the game's lack of levity, or context left me feeling.Probably the most disappointing thing about Panic in Paradise's general failure to launch, is how promising it is as a concept. It borrows elements from the stealth, action, and RPG genres, clumsily mashes them together, and tosses them into sand-box style levels with the goal of making the player feel like the scary monster from every horror movie ever made. As someone who loves all of those things, Naughty Bear could easily have hooked me if it weren't designed in such a haphazard way. Combat feels clumsy and stilted, mission objectives can be woefully unclear, and the stealth mechanics...I don't even know where to begin with the stealth mechanics.
You can only disembowel so many bears before it becomes tiresome.
While I get that the game's trying to pay homage to classic slasher film tropes, your prey generally exhibits sub-Friday the 13th levels of stupidity at all times. Unlike other stealth games where getting caught is a big deal, all you need to do is take a step into “the forest” (aka sections of grass that appear every few steps in most levels) and enemies will conveniently forget they ever saw you, despite the fact that you're still clearly standing right in front of them, bashing their skull in with a 2x4.“
And once you get your hands on a disguise, Naughty Bear starts feeling like you've activated a cheat code. Even if one bear sees you doing something that blows your cover, all the rest remain duped by your get up, no matter how much their buddy freaks out, points at you, and runs in terror. It's like playing Pac-Man with infinite power pellets, the only way you'd ever fail is if you wanted to.In fact, it's odd that stealth mechanics are included at all given how much Panic in Paradise rewards you for making a grand spectacle of the mental and physical anguish you inflict. See, merely defluffing your target in the specified manner is for amateurs. If you want to top the leader boards and be considered the naughtiest bear of them all (and really who doesn't?) you'll have to draw out each victims suffering for as long as possible while letting others witness it. There's even an entire Tony Hawk-esque scoring system which rewards you for things like driving bears insane, or making them watch their friends kill themselves. That's right kiddies! Not only is Naughty Bear a true murder simulator, it's a suicide simulator as well! It's like getting two feverish nightmares for the price of one! Yeah!
Whether you find that repulsive or entertaining, the system ends up being too easy to game. Grab a disguise, kill a few bears in a public place, drive a couple more crazy, then let them run about, and the hysteria cascades out of control pretty quickly while you sit there watching in plain sight. Just make the slightest effort, and you the rest is practically autopilot. If you're the person who played GTA just to see how many cops you could kill before getting caught, you might get a small kick out of this at first. But once you realize how kiddie-pool shallow the mechanics are, you start to see it for the cheap parlor trick it truly is.