Conker's Bad Fur Day

"The closest I've ever come to losing bladder control while playing a game!"

First off, it should be stated that this a review for a MATURE game intended for a MATURE audience. This game has been criticized for it's foul content and sexual jokes. Apparently most people in this world are incapable of having fun, but that's another editorial entirely. So, without further adieu, on to the review.

PRESENTATION: 10/10

Abso-freakin-lutely hilarious. Everything from the file select screen inside the tavern to the characters themselves are overflowing with personality. The cutscenes are side-splittingly hilarious and the characters are as off the wall as the game is.

GRAPHICS: 10/10

My oh my, this is pretty. You get very nicely detailed models, gorgeous textures, and quite possibly the best animation in ANY game on ANY platform, without the slowdown that plagued other gorgeous games, such as Banjo-Tooie and Donkey Kong 64. And this is WITHOUT the RAM Expansion. It's pretty amazing in itself to pull of graphics this gorgeous without the pak, but to do so at a good framerate? Outstanding. Quite possibly Rare's best effort to date.

SOUND: 10/10

Like the graphics, the sound is equally impressive. The music is very humorously composed and the sound effects are funny and dead on. The kicker is it's in full surround sound. Despite the lack of a sound chip in the N64, Rare managed to make the clangy synth actually sound half-decent! Simply amazing. And the voices...oh my I've never seen so much voices in a game, especially a cart. And they're brilliant. These actors know their stuff and the conversations are off the wall and funny. The quality is impressive considering they're compressed to fit on the cart, which is actually 64MB, the biggest cart size out right now. Excellent job by Rare. Dwarfs everything out there for sound.

GAMEPLAY: 10/10

This game plays as good as it looks and sounds. The content is distasteful, the jokes are crude, and the laughs don't stop. One of the best things done for this game is the elimination of ''collecting'', or having each world contain 100 notes, 10 jiggies and 5 Jinjos, just for example ;) Instead, you must embark on numerous side quests to gain enough money to open up later areas. The game is set up so it's non-linear and completing side quests opens up others, so you always have a choice of what to do for more money. What makes these side quests so great? The situations Conker is thrown into are as off the wall as the characters, and then some. Everything from swimming in poo, to helping a bee ''pollinate'' a sun flower with ''stigmas you wouldn't believe'' (you can just imagine how suggestive this can be...), to the infamous ''Enter the Vertex'' level everyone's heard about, which is an incredible remake of the lobby shooting spree from The Matrix, complete with slow-motion kung fu and bullet dodging. I won't spoil anything, but it's scenes like this that push Conker's Bad Fur Day beyond the status of cool. Another excellent addition, taken right from the pages of Zelda 64, but used more here, is the ''Context Sensitive'' buttons, which are basically pads with a big ''B'' on them. As you've probably guessed, you stand on them and press B and they give you just what you need at that moment in time. These buttons add a wealth of gameplay scenarios to undertake and the experience is always different, instead of collecting items all the time. I also should mention that the multiplayer modes are great fun to play and, although not as engrossing as perhaps Goldeneye or Perfect Dark, help add replay value to the game. The scenarios are great fun. From a Normandy Beach scenario with the Frenchies (little grey squirrels) trying to make it up the beach to a truck waiting to take them to Paris, and the evil Tediz (Nazi-like teddy bears) trying to stop them with rocket launchers, huge machine guns and sniper rifles. The catch is, the Frenchies can get to a plunger in the middle of the field that, when pressed, causes all the Tediz to explode on the spot. The raptor scenario splits the players into two teams, Raptors and Ungas (cavemen). The raptors have to eat the Ungas and carry them back to the nest to feed them to their baby, and the Ungas have to steal the eggs from the Raptors nest and bring them back to their cave to eat. Among others are deathmatches, heist (a free-for-all weasel brawl while trying to steal a stash from the safe and bring it back to your safe), racing jetboards over two lava courses, total war (a team deathmatch with a catch-you can grab your enemies gas canister from their base and take it to the pump in the sewer below the two bases and pump nerve gas into your enemies base to kill them all unless they have gas masks), and plenty of deathmatch levels. Good multiplayer mayhem.

REPLAY VALUE: 8/10

The only part of the game that dips, in my opinion. The game is so much fun you can play through it again and again to find all the cash, or use the chapter function to relive a particularly funny scene. However, you can finish the game in about 15 hours or so. But it's so rewarding, I'd rather spend 15 hours with Conker than 50+ with an overrated RPG (coughFinalFantasyVIIIcough). The multiplayer does help quite a bit though.

OVERALL: 10/10

Quite simply, this is some of the most fun I've ever had with a video game. That being said, this isn't everyone's cup of tea. If you're unsure about it, give it a rent. It may surprise, if not shock you. But if you're a fan of mature gaming and crude jokes, and are 17 or older, pick this game up NOW. I guarantee you won't regret it!

''A bounce...ok...now THIS is what I call a platform game!''
-Conker the Squirrel

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/07/01, Updated 03/07/01