Conker: Live & Reloaded

"I was a major fan of the original and my feelings about this version are mixed"

First off I should make something clear, I bought the original version of this game for my N64 a week or two after it first came out. Conker's Bad Fur Day stands as one of my favorite games of all time, me and a friend of mine played every aspect of it into the ground including the old multiplayer. So realize that this review is written by a guy who had every stupid little detail about the original memorized. I'm not reviewing this as a new game or rating it against more recent titles, I'm reviewing it as a new edition of one of my favorite games and so the review will reflect that. Keep in mind I'll mention some things that might be considered small spoilers but this is a review afterall.

The first thing you'll probably notice about the game is that it's very pretty, it seems like the most work done on this new edition went into the graphics. The original was very pretty too, it had Dreamcast quality graphics, full voice acting for all the characters as well as facial animations all running on the N64 which was quite a feat. Live and Reloaded definitely lives up to the original in this department, all the characters who should have fur do have fur and the fur reacts to the environment changing it's appearance when it gets wet and so forth. Every aspect is hyper detailed and is the best looking stuff I've seen on the Xbox even. There are some really odd omissions though for instance the lasers and strobe lights are now absent from the Rock Solid club. Headshots no longer remove chunks of a character's head unless it's from a sniper rifle and even then it's more limited than it used to be, in the original the heads were made up of four different segments each of which could be taken off individually or as part of a group but in this version all that can happen is the top half gets blown off by sniper rounds in multi as far as I've witnessed. Overall the graphics have a somewhat different look about them, not quite as Looney Toons as the original instead opting for a more gritty art style. It could be just because things have more detail overall now but the look of several places and characters has been revamped.

Two words that weren't originally bleeped are now for whatever reason when they weren't in the original, it's pretty noticeable too since both appear several times. Other than that most of the audio seems to have been shipped directly from the original recordings albeit at a higher quality than appeared at on the N64. This isn't a bad thing though since it holds up very well, if it aint broke don't fix it right? There are some minor things like certain tracks have been remixed, the orchestral music that plays during the fight with TGMP is better now in my opinion, a second song has been added to Rock Solid's playlist and electric guitar has been added to the lavaboard chase. The game is full of what often seem like pointless omissions, additions and changes, some of which you'll like, some you'll be indifferent to and others you will hate which leads me to my next point:

Sometimes Greedo shoots first in this version if you catch my drift, there were several things that angered me. First thing I noticed is in the opening cutscene, in the original Conker was holding his milk in a clear cylindrical glass, in this version he's holding it in a gold colored opaque goblet. The reason I find this upsetting is it detracts from the gag that's going on right before your eyes, it's playing the opening music from A Clockwork Orange, Conker is sitting the same way and has the same expression as Alex from the same film, the glass completed it and the goblet takes away from it. Another thing that bothered me is that the Tediz now bleed red blood which makes no sense since they're supposed to be poorly built robots wrapped in soggy old teddy bears. I'd say the worst thing that's been done however is that Rare for whatever reason decided to absolutely cram all the areas in the game with utterly pointless enemies that weren't there before. They don't add anything, they aren't interesting, there's no reason for them being there and all they really do is just kind of get in your way from time to time. On the rare occasions they do get in your wayenough to warrant interacting with them the mechanics involved in defeating them are very clunky, easy and boring. Lastly two whole parts of the “IT'S WAR” chapter have gone completely missing and some parts have been changed signifigantly and one thing even added, if you've played the original you'll know what I mean when you get there. Conker also wears a totally bizarre outfit during the Spooky chapter now with no explanation of where he got it, you'll enter the level and he'll be wearing it and then when you leave he'll be back to dressing like normal. The It's War outfit has also been changed but it still makes sense and is overall better aside from the fact that Conker only has one SMG now which also carries over to his Vertex outfit. Overall what we have here is Conker's Bad Fur Day with a bunch of odd visual tweaks and much prettier graphics than that of the original.

The core gameplay mechanics have not been changed much and when they have we see both good and bad. For instance the third person shooting segments and the swimming segments are a lot more fluid now and benefit from new control schemes but the camera has a tendency to stay a lot closer to Conker than it did before which makes several things such as the lava board chase more difficult and not in a good way, also the tank controls are just plain broken and I don't think we needed to go into the third person shooter mode whenever Conker pulls out his melee weapon which for whatever reason is now a bat with nails through it instead of a frying pan.

The one really new thing in the game is the online multiplayer, the multiplayer modes, maps and mechanics from the first game are completely gone and replaced with something that's overall superior. However like the multiplayer in the original it suffers from some questionable weapon balancing and it has some new problems as well. Because of the class system introduced here there is a lot of cheap class whoring going on especially with the Demolisher and the Sneaker, Rare really should have put a cap on how many of each class you can have on a team because as it is there is way to much rocket whoring and camping going on because of these two classes. The game does not seem to support clans, the strategy and tactics that the class system screams for aren't happening because it's hard to assemble an able squad and keep them together. So you end up with all these specialists running around not communicating with each other in a big chaotic mess. Coupled with the fact that the camera is really too low and close to your character, gamertag icons obscure the action inexcusably often, characters seem to move too fast overall and there are simply far too many explosions all over the place all the time and the online play feels like wasted potential. It's still good and it's worth playing but it should have been better and it should have been more cerebral.

Anyway for the sake of the guys who haven't played the original I suppose I should try and break down what it actually plays like for you although I'd imagine that by now you've left since I haven't offered what you're probably looking for. The game is a cross between a platformer and a third person shooter with puzzles and other gameplay types included for variety. It's linear and doesn't involve much collection aside from that of money that you'll pick up along the way anyway. The second half of the game is much better than the first and it'll keep surprising you both in the way you accomplish your goals and in the places the story chooses to go. It holds up very well but certain things you've probably come to expect from games are absent, this is because it stays true to it's five year old N64 roots. The humor is a mixture of Monty Python and South Park for the most part. This is not a game you want to approach if you are easily offended or are not good at videogames, there is a lot of shock value humor and the game mechanics are unforgiving when you screw up. If you've never played Conker's Bad Fur Day then I strongly advise you to pick up either version, it's a fun game and very much worth playing. Considering how few good titles we've been seeing this summer it's a no brainer. If you have played the original however and don't intend to take the game on Live there really isn't any point to playing this version.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/01/05