Featured Content

Conker: Live and Reloaded (Xbox)

• Developer:
• Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
• Genre:
• Official Website: http://www.rareware.com
• Score: 5 of 5: Purchase

The anticipation for this game was immense. I had played Conker's Bad Fur Day on the N64 for hours upon hours, but my only real experience with it was the multiplayer (the Beach level was absolutely amazing). I had played the single-player campaign only for about an hour and decided the game was more fun on the multiplayer end, so I never really finished the campaign. Well, apparently, I missed out on some really fun stuff, and I had plans to eventually play the game and found out my chance would be renewed with Conker: Live and Reloaded without even having to dust off the N64.

It's no secret that this game is strictly a multiplayer game. Not only does Conker: Live and Reloaded not try to hide that fact, but its default option when you turn on the game is Xbox Live. With that being said, let's first dive into the single-player campaign and the world of Conker, a tiny, furry, loveable, hungover little squirrel. The campaign is again called Conker's Bad Fur Day, and it is almost an exact port from the N64 version, with a ton of improvements. The first and most noticeable change is the graphics, which are sharper, clearer, and definitely cleaner than the N64 game. Also, because the game is an 'exact port' of its N64 counterpart, there are tons of jokes and references. For example, at the very beginning, you use the same exact strategy to defeat the Gargoyle, but it doesn't work. Conker looks at the screen and says, 'Hey, they promised me that this would be an exact port!' Conker also wears different costumes depending on the level he's in, which is something that the original game did, but to a much lesser extent (and I know this because I used my Bad Fur Day 64 guide to beat Live and Reloaded). One thing that Live did was censor all curse words, but since Potty Mouth is one of the unlockable features, I'm not complaining.

Bad Fur Day is one of the most unique games I've ever played. Story-wise, it's utterly ridiculous (in a terribly great, ingenious, and hilarious way). The fabled Panther King is drinking milk from his chalice, and when he puts the chalice down on his throneside table, it topples due to a missing leg, and he gets very angry, threatening his servants with duct tape if they don't fix the problem. The solution: a red squirrel can fill the gap between the floor and the broken leg. Conker (who is coincidentally a red squirrel), meanwhile, has had too much to drink and wanders home the wrong way, beginning a sequence of horribly odd events-the oddest of which deals with Conker battling the Great Mighty Poo, a boss made entirely out of crap whose dialogue is nothing but opera singing (you can't say that about too many games, can you?). Conker also collects cash along the way to his goal of becoming a millionaire. Your health bar is six chocolate pieces (health?!), and when you lose all of your lives, you are treated with a different cutscene depending where you are in the game. Since the game automatically saves itself at checkpoints, viewing the cutscene is the only reason you have 'lives' to begin with. The first cutscene with Gregg the Grim Reaper is arguably one of the most classic cutscenes in any game to date. Sound ridiculous? Of course it does, and that's the game's appeal.

Until you actually play it. For a platforming game, it sure does get annoying fast. The campaign was filled with too much aggravation for me to even remotely enjoy playing because parts that should have taken me five minutes lasted as long as two days. Prime examples of this are the horrid hover board race (I still shudder at the thought of this), the dumb tank scene, and running out of the base in the war scene with the timer running down. Why is it so annoying? Well, you control the camera, and in games where you control the camera, it goes almost nowhere you want it to. The controls are a tiny bit shoddy, too, but that's something you have to get used to from scene to scene. The game doesn't really ever get easier until the Heist chapter, but since that's the last chapter of the game, it's a little late for that.

So why buy Conker: Live and Reloaded? Multiplayer! All of the levels and game types from the original Bad Fur Day are gone, to be replaced by newer, fresher, and bigger levels and game types. More conventional to newer multiplayer games, you choose your side (SHC, the good squirrels or the Tediz, the bad teddy bears) and your class (like sniper, machine gunner, samurai, flamethrower, or bazooka). Then you play games that can be traditional death matches, capture the flag, spawn point captures, etc. Your Xbox Live stats are kept, like your kill number, headshot number, and number of General kills, and when those numbers reach certain heights, you are rewarded with upgrades. You can also practice against computer-controlled 'dumbots,' and the default names of said dumbots are downright hilarious. There's nothing else to it that no other game hasn't offered before. It's a mixture of third-person and first-person shooters with ridiculous themes, and if you like very odd humor, then this is your game.

Overall, Conker: Live and Reloaded is definitely worth buying, just for the multiplayer, but if you are more patient than I am, try out the single-player campaign. The story is hilarious, and the cutscenes are extremely weird; but the craziest part is that once you play the game long enough, the events start to seem... normal. Tons of movie references, other video game references, but most of all, gross and raunchy humor are the reasons this game is rated Mature.

Aug 24, 2005 | 0 comments
Matt Karam