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Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Conker: Live and Reloaded

Conker: Live and Reloaded
by Dave Long
July 27, 2005

Conker is on Live and he spends a lot of time on the loading screen to get to a remake that probably didn't need to be remade.

Reviewed for XBOX.

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GamerDad Seal Of Approval - Adult.  Click to learn more about our review seal. Remakes of older games are always a difficult proposition. If you change too much, you end up alienating those people who enjoyed the first game and just want to see a modern update of one of their favorite titles. If you don't change enough, that same group along with everyone else will often wonder why you didn't add more to the game and "fix" a lot more of the original's problems. With that in mind, it's amazing anything ends up being redone for a modern console because you just can't seem to please anyone with the end result unless you get everything perfect.

For Conker: Live and Reloaded, Rare hasn't changed much of the original's gameplay. The Nintendo 64 original receives a graphical facelift, brand new voice acting and takes multiplayer online. There is a new ranking system for multiplayer that provides you with the chance to unlock some goodies, but the game modes all play a lot like a deathmatch game and really don't add anything new other than freely available opponents at any time of day or night. The single player game is essentially the same as it was the first time around. The biggest problem is that time hasn't been kind to the concept Conker was built upon.


When this game was first released on Nintendo 64, a cussing, boozing main character was a novel idea, especially since it was a squirrel. Nearly every action-platform game up to that time was based on cute and cuddly characters. Those that involved a lot of gunplay were serious games that avoided any association with old-school platform games. In the five years since then, many games have pushed the limits of M-rated gameplay. Character action games have become less popular and a cussing, boozing squirrel just isn't all that funny or even "edgy" anymore. The dialogue in particular is very juvenile and poorly written so that it doesn't hold up well next to many modern games. Combine that with voice acting that's hard to understand thanks to British voice actors thick with an accent and you need the subtitles just to know what anyone's saying removing more of the game's potential for humor.

Conker's single-player adventure contains platform action, puzzling and shooting segments. It's all mildly entertaining because of its absurdity, but wears thin quickly. It also features plenty of load time. If you like the idea of blood splatters on the screen from whacking things with a baseball bat, you'll be right at home in Conker. Combat is poor though since you whack once, back up to avoid the counter, step forward and whack again, repeat. Different set piece fights appear with different mechanics and the game adds third-person shooter-style gameplay later on. There's certainly some variety but if the story and comedy aren't your bag, the gameplay's five-year-old feel isn't going to grab you either. Conker moves sluggishly sometimes and you've got to wrestle with the camera throughout all the run and jump sections. Here's where the game shows its roots during the days when no one could get a camera to just be in the right place at the right time without user intervention.

So single-player hasn't held up that well. Multiplayer is the featured part of this game but it doesn't fare much better. The graphics are still amazing but you can't see anything half the time. Gameplay in multiplayer is all shooter-based in a third person perspective and figuring out what to shoot at and whether or not you hit it is nearly impossible a lot of the time. If your character isn't obstructing your view, the targeting reticle's big ugly mug is helping you to miss. There's no audible cue that you struck a bad guy and people move very quickly making it hard to draw a bead on anyone. There are only a few player classes that are worth playing because they have a huge advantage over all the others. The game does run smoothly online at least and it's fun to play the "D-Day" level a few times, but your time is better spent elsewhere for military-style shooter thrills. The setting and characters really don't add much in the way of comedy or entertainment value to what is ultimately just standard shooting action online.


That's what makes this game so frustrating. The entire time you're playing, you can't help but think Rare has wasted a lot of time bringing Conker to Xbox. Conker's Bad Fur Day for N64 was released so late in the system's life that it's hard to know just how successful it was. It didn't sell all that well then and most folks figured it was due to the system winding down. It's ironic that the remake of this same game will end up as the second to last Xbox game from Microsoft's internal development studios. Back when the original came out, it was something unique. Now it just seems like a waste of time. Time that could've been spent on something a lot more exciting for Xbox fans to hold onto as the next generation dawns this fall. There are plenty of similar deathmatch-style online games for the system and this game doesn't stand among the best of them. It's not a bad game, but it is a #@!&-ing bummer.

Click to learn more about GamerDad's Kid Factor review section. This game is not for children, period. What's odd though is that much of the humor and situations are definitely things that only kids or early teens would find funny. Singing poop, the cussing, the dialogue, much of it doesn't work for adults. However it does make Conker into one of those games your little brother wants to play but really shouldn't. It's a mixed message. For mid-teens, a lot of the humor is probably ok and they're certainly not going to be bothered by bloody teddy bears and animals. It's such a strange juxtaposition of artistic and game styles that it's hard to believe no politician has ever latched onto this game as an advertisement of mature content for kids. That's probably because it has a hard time finding an audience. The "cool" crowd doesn't want to be seen playing a game with cussing squirrels (or any squirrels for that matter) while the younger audience can't play the game at all due to the content and rating.

Expect to find some kids playing this game though. In online play, there were definitely some voices on Xbox Live that couldn't have been more than 13-years old. This is the kind of game kids can slip by their parents without too much trouble because even though it has big warnings on the box about its mature rated content, a quick glance at that box would only reveal a squirrel in an army helmet as the subject matter. There is a huge amount of violence, sex and cursing throughout the game in both single and multiplayer, some of which is actually bleeped out until you finish it one time. That does make it a little funnier, a lot like the bleeped out cursing repair robot from Metal Arms, but doesn't make it any easier to recommend for anyone who's not over 17 because there's still a lot that goes unbleeped and the situations are still adult oriented.

Conker: Live and Reloaded is certainly unique in offering cute blood-soaked characters and ultra-violence, but it's also still not for kids.

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Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Conker: Live and Reloaded
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Game Info:
Platform(s):
XBOX

ESRB rating:
M - Mature

Score:


Genre:
Action Platform

Developer:
Rare

Publisher:
Microsoft
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