Game Review: Teddy Gangs (Nintendo Switch)

One of the drawbacks to the modern consoles opening their doors up to indie developers to release their games with very few hurdles, is a lot more crap seeps through the filters. While the marketplace of the Switch is hardly reminiscent of the hellish pits of Steam, it is staggering that games like Teddy Gangs have been able to clog up the drains.

Harsh? I’m just getting started.

If Teddy Gangs was a free to play game, I’d still call it rubbish. Barely a game at all, it’s staggering how little there is to it. Those envisioning mass brawls of fluffy bears, stuffing and fur flying around as you go bursting into a melee, are in for a shock. Instead Teddy Gangs puts you in control of a random teddy bear and drops you in a small location (of which there are a grand total of 2) where you are then tasked with fighting off as many bears as possible to reach a high score.

Do this until your health is eventually depleted and that’s it. I’m not joking, that is literally all you do. However, to make things worse, it doesn’t even do this well.

Combat is hilariously basic, just a bunch of punches all done by pressing one button. There’s no in depth fighting here, just hammer the right trigger until the bear you’re fighting is down. Talking of which…the AI is inept and any damage they do to you often comes when you just get tired of pressing the trigger button over and over again.

Occasionally a couple might come at you at once, the only time the game difficulty actually increases but for the most part, you’ll be beating up individual bears at a time. They die incredibly quickly and regardless of their different outfits, they all behave in exactly the same fashion.

On my very first attempt I managed to beat 56 bears and the only reason I died was because I got bored and wanted go see what happens once I lost.

The answer is nothing. You set a new record now try again.

If that wasn’t bad enough, as stated above, the game appears to only have 2 ‘maps’ and they’re tiny and basic looking. There’s no interactivity. You can’t pick up items or weapons to use although you can move certain things about by running into them. Whoop-de-do.

I imagine like me, most people will get bored, set a score and just turn it off. Followed by deleting it from their Switch and having some serious buyers remorse.