Conker: Live and Reloaded

Most people don’t know but in 1999, Rare, at that time a primarily
Nintendo based developer, had released a little platform adveture game
starring a cute little squirrel for the GameBoy. The GameBoy you say?
Yup. Conker’s Pocket Tales pitted a plucky little woodland creature
against some very odd characters in an attempt to rescue his girlfriend
Berri. The game saw little success, but it didn’t keep the fuzzball
down. It was time for him to grow up.

Jump cut to 2001. Conker gets a new look, a new game and a new
vocabulary. Conker’s Bad Fur Day gives gamers one of the first mature
rated games, a platformer that features some of the most foul mouthed
dialogue, sexual references and violence ever found in a video game,
let alone one on a Nintendo system. It was an instant hit with adults.
The game was great and it wasn’t afraid to be balls out funny. The
developers spoofed dozens of movies and pop culture icons while at the
same time making jabs at themselves at frequent turns. Love it or hate
it, the game is unforgettable.

Now here in 2005, Conker has
been in hiding, but Rare has been promising a sequel. Back at E3, 2003,
Rare and Microsoft previewed a new title to show-goers: Conker: Live
and Uncut. The new title rehashed the old game with some spectacular
new graphics and online multiplayer. Rare has finally shot the game out
to stores, now titled Conker: Live and Reloaded to mostly mixed
reviews. We’re happy, but a bit disappointed.

Conker’s single
player game is a beautiful updated to 2001’s game. Conker is fuzzy to
the point where you can pick out bunches of hair and whiskers on his
tail and face. Likewise the liquid effects, from water to blood to to
frequent instances of poop, are detailed and fluid. The graphic, mostly
realtime, are easily the game’s best assett. Camera tricks, like focal
view (blurring the background, whille leaving foreground elements in
focus) are used frequently to reinforce the cinematic quality of the
story. Background and level design are done very well, often calling up
film references like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Matrix, Jurassic
Park, Dracula, Van Helsing, Evil Dead, Alien, Jaws and a slew of others.

Sound is done equally well, providing excellent digital sound
seperation. Bees buzz in the surround speakers whilst inside the giant
hive and the very walls of Shite Summit ooze and fart all around you.
Voice acting is top drawer with plenty of attitude. What we noticed
right off though was that the cussing hadn’t been removed, but much of
it was bleeped out. Even the captions were replaced with %$#@ symbols
where appropriate. We can’t figure out why. The Nintendo 64 version had
not been this way and we wanted to relive that experience. Still, you
get the idea of what is said enough to keep anyone with a sick sense of
humor and a sailor’s mouth laughing.

We would have liked to
see more added. Though a few things were moved and changed to seperate
it from it’s predecessor, it is largely identical. Even down to the
unforgiveable camera problems. Camera adjusting is sluggish and gets
caught behind walls or in corners way too often. So much so that if it
hadn’t have taken 3 years to release, I would say it wasn’t finished.

What really makes this a new game, and it’s primary selling point, is
the Live part of the title. Playing online presents gamers with 6
classes of either Evil Tediz or the SHC squirrel forces. Like Halo or
Battlefield, the idea is to work with your team to capture points, a
flag or simply kill everyone not on your team. Vehicles and turrets are
available to each team, depending on the map you play, and each map
spoofs a movie. One of the most impressive is the D-Day beach landing
from Saving Private Ryan. The two teams take turns (rounds) making
their way up the beach in order to reach capture points and eventually
kill the commander of the opposite team inside the fortress.

Mutiplayer, complete with voice communication, has immense potential to
be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it’s unbalanced and presents a gaping
opportunity for unfair play. Spawn camping becomes extremely
problematic since ammunition is unlimited and less-than-noble players
can quickly jump into airborne vehicles to hover over a spawn area,
continually blanketing it with bombs. This is especially frustrating
when you take into account that your stats in battle are persistant.
You can gain rank and unlock additional weaponse by racking up kills as
one particular class or another. Unless you know who you’re playing
with, theres a good chance of unfair gameplay. I can’t place full blame
on developers, since this is the players decision, but the same type of
problems isn’t found in other shooters like Halo 2 or UT2004.

If it not for the camera problems and a distinct censoring of language
despite the HUGE warning on the back cover, I could have forgiven the
multiplayer problems to give Conker: Live and Reloaded a perfect score.
I feel that Rare had ample opportunity to fix the problems that plagued
the original game and plenty of time to add a few things. It is
refreshing to see that multiplayer was not a simple afterthought like
other games of it’s ilk. Still, if you’re not an online game, the
single player game is completely worth a rental if not a permanent
place on your game shelf.