(Note: Yup, Live and Reloaded, not the original Bad Fur Day)
(Extra note: I avoided any plot-points, but this review is still a little more spoiler-heavy than my previous ones; read at your own risk)
How can anyone see this and not think it's awesome?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 5th best game of all time, Conker: Live and Reloaded.
Yeah, you heard me: 5th best game of all time, whatcha got?
Conker: Live and Reloaded is a remake of the N64-classic Conker's Bad Fur Day, with the most significant change being the multiplayer-mode. You might therefore ask why I'm reviewing the remake and not the original. The answer is simple:
There's a lot more folks out there with an Xbox than folks with a Nintendo 64.
Anyway, let's get right into it.
The opening:
I'd just like to make a short note here, and say that I really liked the opening of this game.
A really tight close-up of an angry Conker sitting on the throne with some really great music playing in the background, then having the camera slowly pull back as the music gets more dramatic. It's reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange, and any game that's reminiscent of that masterpiece of cinema is already an excellent game in my book.
Writing:
In my Serious Sam review [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.183145-James-reviews-Serious-Sam] I mentioned that that game was part of a very elite club of games where the games their story had very little depth but where the writing is still excellent. Well, if Serious Sam was a member of that club, then Conker would be club-president, secretary and treasurer. The story starts out simple enough: Our hero, Conker the squirrel, gets drunk, wanders off into the night and wakes up hungover the following morning. He then has to make his way home again. Sounds simple enough, right? But before Conker can do so, he gets wrapped up in an abundance of hilarious adventures.
The keyword there is hilarious, because the entire game (with the the exception of the opening and the ending) is jam-packed with jokes and parodies. Seriously, name any given succesfull movie ever made, and there's a parody of it in here somewhere, along with a slew of original material which quite frankly is beyond pretty much any other videogame-humor I've ever heard. To give you an idea of what I mean, here're a few examples of the kind of insane stuff Conker meets over the course of the game:
-A three-foot tall Cockney/Australian grim reaper called Greg.
-A perfect replication of the Normandy-landings scene from Saving Private Ryan, except the Americans are
replaced by an army of grey squirrels and the Nazi's are replaced by an evil race of psychotic teddybears.
-A hoverboard race against a bunch of prehistoric cavemen that takes place inside a volcano.
-A thirty-foot tall opera-singing turd-monster.
-A hilarious fourth-wall breaking sequence where the game intentionally
"locks up" and Conker blackmails one of the game's programmers.
-A bourgois, British, brass-bollocked boiler.
-A deliciously macabre (and highly scatological) scene where you get a bunch of cows to drink large amounts of prune juice
so they start getting the screamin squits and a group of helpful dung-beetles can make you a nice ball of poo.
-Not to mention the best Matrix-parody ever.
"Cue ROFLMAO in 3...2...1..."
As you can see, Conker is not afraid to take the piss out of itself and thank fuck for that.
The game blatantly refuses to take itself seriously and it's because of this that it's so awesome. I laughed pretty much from start to finish when I first played it and even today I'm still laughing as I play.
The only exceptions to this are the highly stylish opening (see above) and the fucking brilliant ending (see below).
The game is also not afraid to use swears, and it uses them so much that they're actually bleeped. That's the one disappointing change between Live And Reloaded and Bad Fur Day: In the original, it was all uncensored, but here it is. This usually isn't a problem but the one moment where it is, is the Sloprano song, where it just sort of brings down the spirit of the whole thing.
Graphics:
In terms of sheer visual quality Conker is excellent. One of the finest-looking games of the original Xbox. The design is also rather excellent, and by "excellent" I specifically mean "varied". The game takes us from a mountain made entirely out of poo, past a haunted mansion, into a neanderthal nightclub, through a hellish doom-fortress and even into space! The environments are huge and colourful and really rather beautiful. The enemy designs are also rather nice what with the imps wearing spiky armor, teddibears in full army-atire, cavemen with foot-long mohawks and zombies running all over the place.
The multiplayer (which is completely different from the single-player, see further down) takes a somewhat different approach: more gritty and realistic. This actually works really immersively, as it helps reinforce the more dark and action-oriented feel of the multiplayer. Unlike the almost cartoon-like look of the single-player, the multiplayer has a very clearly defined war-feel to it, and it really shows through in the huge
and realistic environments and weapons.
Sound:
The voice-acting is really, really good in this game and there's a huge number of actors unlike in certain other games (Morrowind, I'm looking in your direction). Conker himself, in particular, is really well-portrayed and has a huge amount of personality to him.
The music is also really good, and there's (again) an abundance of variety.
There's happy, quirky tunes for the hubworld, heroic and mournful trumpets during the war-chapter, a scatological opera (known affectionately as The Sloprano) and a really moving and powerful piece for the credits. The music is a little less notable in the multiplayer but still top-notch, so no problems there.
The sound effects are also all fine, from the gutteral belching of a mouse that's stuffed to the breaking-point with cheese to the satisfying *SPLOTCH* of a zombie's brain disintegrating thanks to your shotgun. Really, no complaints here in the slightest.
I triple-dog-dare you to name a single more bad-ass squirrel in the history of anything.
Gameplay (Single-player):
The game is essentially an old-school third-person adventure-platformer.
You run, jump, swim and hit things with a baseball-bat, but you can also frequently find large B's on the ground.
These are context-sensitive zones, where pressing B allows Conker to do things he normally couldn't, such as transforming into an anvil, throw knives, hypnotize enemies, get drunk or pull out a bazooka.
Throughout the first half or so of the game, you're busy trying to collect cash, in order to pay some mysterious stranger. You do this by clearing obstacles, doing others a favor, hauling stuff from point A to point B and generally speaking just doing the adevnture-platformer equivalent of an everyday's work. Your health-bar is actually a chocolate-bar with six pieces, which can be restored by collecting anti-gravity chocolate which is scattered about each level.
Boss-fights are nice and varied but they all basically follow the same pattern:
Dodgde enemy attack, make them drop their guard, then hit their weak point. Repeat 3 times, then garnish with bacon.
At the seventh chapter, however, the platforming takes a step back (though it hardly disappears) and the game becomes a zombie-shooter.
Then in the eight chapter, it becomes a war-shooter. Like I said, the platforming is still there, but the game takes a sharp turn from semi-friendly (though very much so adult) platformer to third-person shooter. You might think that this sounds bloody mad and completely unnatural but you'd be surprised by how smooth the transition is.
Occasionally the game will break things up by doing something completely different, such as the aforementioned hoverboard race but overal, the gameplay is solid, and I've yet to find any problems with it.
Multiplayer:
Heads up, this is a big one.
The multiplayer of Conker: Live and Reloaded is completely different from the one in Bad Fur Day and is intended to be semi-prequel/sequel to the events in the story-mode. The multiplayer is a class-based team-oriented third-person shooter, kind of like what Team Fortress 2 would be if it were third- instead of first-person. There are 2 factions: The good SHC and the evil Teddiz, which can also be seen in the single-player.
The six different classes from left to right:
The Demolisher, the Thermophile, the Grunt, the Sky Jockey, the Sneeker, and the Long Ranger.
Each class has a basic set of weapons and tools, which they can expand by picking up Power-Up orbs that scattered about each level and which you drop when you die. For example, the primary weapon of the Demolisher is a bazooka but by picking up an orb he also gets a minigun. Grenades come in various sizes and shapes, but each class can only carry certain types and only one of each. This makes their usage a lot more strategic than in say Halo or Serious Sam 2, where you basically trip over the bloody things. Each class also has tools and skills besides killing, such as enemy-disguises, medguns or repairing-devices for vehicles.
There are 8 different maps, each with a specific purpose for either team.
For instance, in the first level the SHC have to break through three barricades and kill the leader of the Tediz before he can shoot down their ship with his giant gun of Doom. The Tediz their goal is to hold off the SHC long enough for the gun to fire. Another level follows a similar progression, with one side on the offense and one on the defense. Then there are also territory-control and capture-the-flag levels, which provide a nice bit of variety.
There's also vehicles and supporting equipment like mines and turrets, so Conker is definetly a very varied game.
I'm fairly sure that the Xbox-live community is dead by now but you can also play by means of system link and plain old ordinary local multiplayer so no worries there. And of course, Conker also has bots in the multiplayer so you can enjoy it even if you're all by your lonesome (unlike in Serious Sam or Halo).
My one true complaint about the multiplayer is that it's not exactly balanced. Depending on the level, class and the side you're on, you can get serious advantages over others. For instance, if you're playing as an SHC Long Ranger in the first level, you can take out the first and third blockades simply by staying far away from the fray and sniping from a distance. And in a later level, where you also have to destroy certain barricades, using an upgraded Thermophile is basically a guarantee for quickly tearing the bloody things down. Of course, it's hard to balance this sort of thing evenly for all the levels but it's not exactly fair.
Still, perhaps one can see this as a challenge:
Rather than taking the safe route and going with classes well-suited for the level, you challenge yourself by taking a more dangerous approach. This does sound vaguely like an excuse however, and that's probably because it is. Balance is the one real problem of the multiplayer
All in all, the multiplayer is basically a game in it's own right, and I reckon you'll be spending just as much time there (if not more) then you will in single-player. And you'll enjoy every second of it.
The TMS Spamono, one of the bloodiest levels in the multiplayer-campaign.
Playtime/Replay Value:
The single-player is pretty long (it's an adventure-game, so it kind of has to be) and the genius of the writing will ensure that you'll be coming back many a great time. The multiplayer is also great fun, particularly if you've got a few mates about, and is varied enough to ensure many more hours of playtime. Conker: Live and Reloaded is the kind of game that provides entertainment for months, if not years, to come.
The only thing criticism I can think of for the game is the fact that after the first playthrough, you know all the puzzles etc, so it loses a bit of the challenge. But that's an inherent problem of adventure-games as a whole, so I don't hold it against it.
The ending:
Warning: I'll be discussing the feel and the effects of the ending, so I won't give away any of the story.
But if you're the kind of person who simply cannot stand spoilers, better scroll down to the conclusion.
The reason that the ending gets it's own section here is remarkably simple: It's the best ending of all time.
And yes, I'm dead serious when I say that.
You see, in the final part of the game, a rather drastic tragedy happens which breaks with the usual humour of the rest of the game.
After the most difficult and terrorising boss-fight in the entire game, however, there is a faint moment in which it looks like things still might work out anyway. An oppurtunity appears for Conker to set straight everything that went wrong. He uses that oppurtunity to defeat the final boss, but then forgets to restore things back to the way they were. When he realizes this, he desperately tries to get that oppurtunity back, but it's too late, and it's gone forever.
The reason that this scene is so powerful is because that little interlude, that little moment where things look bright again, is false.
After saddening you already through the actual tragedy, the game then proceeds to dangle your last chance before your eyes before snatching it away again forever. It gives you just a little hope to stand on again, and then tears it down, causing you to fall further than the tragedy alone ever could. It toys with your emotions: down, then up, then down again.
And then there is just the character of Conker in that scene.
You see: in a sense, he got everything he wanted. In a way, he got everything he ever wished for and then some. By the end he has it all: money, servants, land, power. But only now that he has it does he realize how shallow it all is, and what he lost to get it.
The twin effect of those two factors, make this the only game-ending at which I ever cried.
Yeah, that's right. I cried the first time I played this. And I don't care, because you would do the same.
Conclusion:
Need I still say it?
This is one of the best games of all time, and if you have an Xbox then you owe it to yourself to check it out.
I guarantee that you won't regret it.
(Extra note: I avoided any plot-points, but this review is still a little more spoiler-heavy than my previous ones; read at your own risk)
How can anyone see this and not think it's awesome?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 5th best game of all time, Conker: Live and Reloaded.
Yeah, you heard me: 5th best game of all time, whatcha got?
Conker: Live and Reloaded is a remake of the N64-classic Conker's Bad Fur Day, with the most significant change being the multiplayer-mode. You might therefore ask why I'm reviewing the remake and not the original. The answer is simple:
There's a lot more folks out there with an Xbox than folks with a Nintendo 64.
Anyway, let's get right into it.
The opening:
I'd just like to make a short note here, and say that I really liked the opening of this game.
A really tight close-up of an angry Conker sitting on the throne with some really great music playing in the background, then having the camera slowly pull back as the music gets more dramatic. It's reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange, and any game that's reminiscent of that masterpiece of cinema is already an excellent game in my book.
Writing:
In my Serious Sam review [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.183145-James-reviews-Serious-Sam] I mentioned that that game was part of a very elite club of games where the games their story had very little depth but where the writing is still excellent. Well, if Serious Sam was a member of that club, then Conker would be club-president, secretary and treasurer. The story starts out simple enough: Our hero, Conker the squirrel, gets drunk, wanders off into the night and wakes up hungover the following morning. He then has to make his way home again. Sounds simple enough, right? But before Conker can do so, he gets wrapped up in an abundance of hilarious adventures.
The keyword there is hilarious, because the entire game (with the the exception of the opening and the ending) is jam-packed with jokes and parodies. Seriously, name any given succesfull movie ever made, and there's a parody of it in here somewhere, along with a slew of original material which quite frankly is beyond pretty much any other videogame-humor I've ever heard. To give you an idea of what I mean, here're a few examples of the kind of insane stuff Conker meets over the course of the game:
-A three-foot tall Cockney/Australian grim reaper called Greg.
-A perfect replication of the Normandy-landings scene from Saving Private Ryan, except the Americans are
replaced by an army of grey squirrels and the Nazi's are replaced by an evil race of psychotic teddybears.
-A hoverboard race against a bunch of prehistoric cavemen that takes place inside a volcano.
-A thirty-foot tall opera-singing turd-monster.
-A hilarious fourth-wall breaking sequence where the game intentionally
"locks up" and Conker blackmails one of the game's programmers.
-A bourgois, British, brass-bollocked boiler.
-A deliciously macabre (and highly scatological) scene where you get a bunch of cows to drink large amounts of prune juice
so they start getting the screamin squits and a group of helpful dung-beetles can make you a nice ball of poo.
-Not to mention the best Matrix-parody ever.
"Cue ROFLMAO in 3...2...1..."
As you can see, Conker is not afraid to take the piss out of itself and thank fuck for that.
The game blatantly refuses to take itself seriously and it's because of this that it's so awesome. I laughed pretty much from start to finish when I first played it and even today I'm still laughing as I play.
The only exceptions to this are the highly stylish opening (see above) and the fucking brilliant ending (see below).
The game is also not afraid to use swears, and it uses them so much that they're actually bleeped. That's the one disappointing change between Live And Reloaded and Bad Fur Day: In the original, it was all uncensored, but here it is. This usually isn't a problem but the one moment where it is, is the Sloprano song, where it just sort of brings down the spirit of the whole thing.
Graphics:
In terms of sheer visual quality Conker is excellent. One of the finest-looking games of the original Xbox. The design is also rather excellent, and by "excellent" I specifically mean "varied". The game takes us from a mountain made entirely out of poo, past a haunted mansion, into a neanderthal nightclub, through a hellish doom-fortress and even into space! The environments are huge and colourful and really rather beautiful. The enemy designs are also rather nice what with the imps wearing spiky armor, teddibears in full army-atire, cavemen with foot-long mohawks and zombies running all over the place.
The multiplayer (which is completely different from the single-player, see further down) takes a somewhat different approach: more gritty and realistic. This actually works really immersively, as it helps reinforce the more dark and action-oriented feel of the multiplayer. Unlike the almost cartoon-like look of the single-player, the multiplayer has a very clearly defined war-feel to it, and it really shows through in the huge
and realistic environments and weapons.
Sound:
The voice-acting is really, really good in this game and there's a huge number of actors unlike in certain other games (Morrowind, I'm looking in your direction). Conker himself, in particular, is really well-portrayed and has a huge amount of personality to him.
The music is also really good, and there's (again) an abundance of variety.
There's happy, quirky tunes for the hubworld, heroic and mournful trumpets during the war-chapter, a scatological opera (known affectionately as The Sloprano) and a really moving and powerful piece for the credits. The music is a little less notable in the multiplayer but still top-notch, so no problems there.
The sound effects are also all fine, from the gutteral belching of a mouse that's stuffed to the breaking-point with cheese to the satisfying *SPLOTCH* of a zombie's brain disintegrating thanks to your shotgun. Really, no complaints here in the slightest.
I triple-dog-dare you to name a single more bad-ass squirrel in the history of anything.
Gameplay (Single-player):
The game is essentially an old-school third-person adventure-platformer.
You run, jump, swim and hit things with a baseball-bat, but you can also frequently find large B's on the ground.
These are context-sensitive zones, where pressing B allows Conker to do things he normally couldn't, such as transforming into an anvil, throw knives, hypnotize enemies, get drunk or pull out a bazooka.
Throughout the first half or so of the game, you're busy trying to collect cash, in order to pay some mysterious stranger. You do this by clearing obstacles, doing others a favor, hauling stuff from point A to point B and generally speaking just doing the adevnture-platformer equivalent of an everyday's work. Your health-bar is actually a chocolate-bar with six pieces, which can be restored by collecting anti-gravity chocolate which is scattered about each level.
Boss-fights are nice and varied but they all basically follow the same pattern:
Dodgde enemy attack, make them drop their guard, then hit their weak point. Repeat 3 times, then garnish with bacon.
At the seventh chapter, however, the platforming takes a step back (though it hardly disappears) and the game becomes a zombie-shooter.
Then in the eight chapter, it becomes a war-shooter. Like I said, the platforming is still there, but the game takes a sharp turn from semi-friendly (though very much so adult) platformer to third-person shooter. You might think that this sounds bloody mad and completely unnatural but you'd be surprised by how smooth the transition is.
Occasionally the game will break things up by doing something completely different, such as the aforementioned hoverboard race but overal, the gameplay is solid, and I've yet to find any problems with it.
Multiplayer:
Heads up, this is a big one.
The multiplayer of Conker: Live and Reloaded is completely different from the one in Bad Fur Day and is intended to be semi-prequel/sequel to the events in the story-mode. The multiplayer is a class-based team-oriented third-person shooter, kind of like what Team Fortress 2 would be if it were third- instead of first-person. There are 2 factions: The good SHC and the evil Teddiz, which can also be seen in the single-player.
The six different classes from left to right:
The Demolisher, the Thermophile, the Grunt, the Sky Jockey, the Sneeker, and the Long Ranger.
Each class has a basic set of weapons and tools, which they can expand by picking up Power-Up orbs that scattered about each level and which you drop when you die. For example, the primary weapon of the Demolisher is a bazooka but by picking up an orb he also gets a minigun. Grenades come in various sizes and shapes, but each class can only carry certain types and only one of each. This makes their usage a lot more strategic than in say Halo or Serious Sam 2, where you basically trip over the bloody things. Each class also has tools and skills besides killing, such as enemy-disguises, medguns or repairing-devices for vehicles.
There are 8 different maps, each with a specific purpose for either team.
For instance, in the first level the SHC have to break through three barricades and kill the leader of the Tediz before he can shoot down their ship with his giant gun of Doom. The Tediz their goal is to hold off the SHC long enough for the gun to fire. Another level follows a similar progression, with one side on the offense and one on the defense. Then there are also territory-control and capture-the-flag levels, which provide a nice bit of variety.
There's also vehicles and supporting equipment like mines and turrets, so Conker is definetly a very varied game.
I'm fairly sure that the Xbox-live community is dead by now but you can also play by means of system link and plain old ordinary local multiplayer so no worries there. And of course, Conker also has bots in the multiplayer so you can enjoy it even if you're all by your lonesome (unlike in Serious Sam or Halo).
My one true complaint about the multiplayer is that it's not exactly balanced. Depending on the level, class and the side you're on, you can get serious advantages over others. For instance, if you're playing as an SHC Long Ranger in the first level, you can take out the first and third blockades simply by staying far away from the fray and sniping from a distance. And in a later level, where you also have to destroy certain barricades, using an upgraded Thermophile is basically a guarantee for quickly tearing the bloody things down. Of course, it's hard to balance this sort of thing evenly for all the levels but it's not exactly fair.
Still, perhaps one can see this as a challenge:
Rather than taking the safe route and going with classes well-suited for the level, you challenge yourself by taking a more dangerous approach. This does sound vaguely like an excuse however, and that's probably because it is. Balance is the one real problem of the multiplayer
All in all, the multiplayer is basically a game in it's own right, and I reckon you'll be spending just as much time there (if not more) then you will in single-player. And you'll enjoy every second of it.
The TMS Spamono, one of the bloodiest levels in the multiplayer-campaign.
Playtime/Replay Value:
The single-player is pretty long (it's an adventure-game, so it kind of has to be) and the genius of the writing will ensure that you'll be coming back many a great time. The multiplayer is also great fun, particularly if you've got a few mates about, and is varied enough to ensure many more hours of playtime. Conker: Live and Reloaded is the kind of game that provides entertainment for months, if not years, to come.
The only thing criticism I can think of for the game is the fact that after the first playthrough, you know all the puzzles etc, so it loses a bit of the challenge. But that's an inherent problem of adventure-games as a whole, so I don't hold it against it.
The ending:
Warning: I'll be discussing the feel and the effects of the ending, so I won't give away any of the story.
But if you're the kind of person who simply cannot stand spoilers, better scroll down to the conclusion.
The reason that the ending gets it's own section here is remarkably simple: It's the best ending of all time.
And yes, I'm dead serious when I say that.
You see, in the final part of the game, a rather drastic tragedy happens which breaks with the usual humour of the rest of the game.
After the most difficult and terrorising boss-fight in the entire game, however, there is a faint moment in which it looks like things still might work out anyway. An oppurtunity appears for Conker to set straight everything that went wrong. He uses that oppurtunity to defeat the final boss, but then forgets to restore things back to the way they were. When he realizes this, he desperately tries to get that oppurtunity back, but it's too late, and it's gone forever.
The reason that this scene is so powerful is because that little interlude, that little moment where things look bright again, is false.
After saddening you already through the actual tragedy, the game then proceeds to dangle your last chance before your eyes before snatching it away again forever. It gives you just a little hope to stand on again, and then tears it down, causing you to fall further than the tragedy alone ever could. It toys with your emotions: down, then up, then down again.
And then there is just the character of Conker in that scene.
You see: in a sense, he got everything he wanted. In a way, he got everything he ever wished for and then some. By the end he has it all: money, servants, land, power. But only now that he has it does he realize how shallow it all is, and what he lost to get it.
The twin effect of those two factors, make this the only game-ending at which I ever cried.
Yeah, that's right. I cried the first time I played this. And I don't care, because you would do the same.
Conclusion:
Need I still say it?
This is one of the best games of all time, and if you have an Xbox then you owe it to yourself to check it out.
I guarantee that you won't regret it.
