Conker: Live and Reloaded

Written by Troy Matsumiya  on May 17, 2005

New Impressions: When cute cuddly animals attack!

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Way back in 2001 during the Nintendo 64's dying days, Rare released Conker's Bad Fur Day to glowing reviews but horrible sales. Why the contradiction? In trying to protect its family-oriented image, Nintendo conducted a very narrow marketing campaign targeted at older gamers; heck, they didn't even promote it in their own magazine for fear of exposing it to youngsters (and let's not mention the censorship they imposed on Rare by forcing them to cut things out of the game). Add in the fact that the N64 was basically a dead system at the time with the GameCube literally on the front doorstep, and you ended up with unit sales that didn't even reach six figures. Talk about a crying shame.

Fast forward four years to the dying days of the Xbox, with Rare getting ready to release another version of Conker. Will it be dщjр vu all over again?

The biggest misconception about Conker: Live and Reloaded is that it is simply an upgraded port of the original with multiplayer added on. Actually, it's the other way around; Rare spent most of their time working on and perfecting a completely new multiplayer game which just so happens to have an upgraded version of the original to go along with it. This is an important distinction since the single player is really only a small Ц albeit vital Ц part of the whole package.

Single Player

So who is Conker the squirrel? Despite his cute cuddly looks, he is the ultimate anti-hero Ц a Looney Tunes character gone bad. In fact, he makes Bender the robot from Futurama look like an angel; Conker drinks to excess, will do anything for financial profit, has a deliciously foul mouth, and is, shall we say, less than chivalrous with the ladies. Oh, and he's also pretty damn funny.

The single player campaign begins with Conker waking up in a strange place after an all-night bender. Sporting a massive hangover, Conker must find his way home while avoiding capture by the Panther King, who needs a red squirrel to prop up his wobbly three-legged table. Didn't Shakespeare write a play about this?

Along the way, Conker must solve puzzles, fight and pee on enemies, vomit every now and then, and spoof Saving Private Ryan, The Matrix, Dracula and other movies and pop culture phenomena. The game even spoofs other video games Ц including itself. The humor is pretty juvenile but hilariously over the top, with a heavy emphasis on gross bodily functions Ц especially poo. In fact, expect to deal with a lot of poo, ranging from rolling giant poo balls to cows with explosive diarrhea to fighting a giant singing pile of dumpage named (what else?) The Great Mighty Poo. Okay, so the humor won't win a Pulitzer, but it will still have you giggling like schoolboy.

The levels will be fairly open, allowing you to freely explore and encounter buddies like your girlfriend Berri, the appropriately named Jugga the buxom babe, Frankie the pitchfork, and Gregg the Grim Reaper. Using a variety of weapons like machineguns, swords, rocket launchers and a wide variety of vehicles, you will fight enemies including the aforementioned living pile of poo, zombies and the evil Tediz, who are Nazi-like teddy bears. And fittingly, enemies won't just keel over and die Ц rather, heads will explode in a bloody mist and guts will fly in glorious Mortal Kombat fashion. Hey, it's funny when you see Sub-Zero go out like that; now imagine the same thing happening to a teddy bear. And if you haven't figured it out by now, this game is definitely not for the kiddies.

Freed from Nintendo's creative shackles, Rare is adding back much of the stuff deemed too nasty for the Mario crowd. Despite that, don't expect a radical difference from the original; in fact, Rare is cutting or shortening many of the challenges to tighten up the gameplay. The bleeped out swearing still remains; in fact, there will be even more bleeping than before. Some people may cry censorship, but the added bleeping should actually make things funnier, in my opinion.

The simple context sensitive control scheme also returns. When a light bulb appears over Conker's head, pressing a button will make him pull out an appropriate weapon or tool, or perform a situation specific action.

The most noticeable difference from the original is the stunning graphics Ц just look at the fine detail in Conker's fur and you'll see what I mean. Just when you thought the Xbox reached its graphical limits with Halo 2 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Conker comes along to prove that developers can still squeeze some significant visual horsepower out of the platform. Little touches like how stray bullets put УholesФ in your TV and how water splashes and run down the screen add to the overall beauty of the game.

As fantastic as the single player upgrade is looking, Xbox gamers do not live on single player alone, and so Rare concentrated most of their efforts on the exciting new multiplayer mode Ц and the results are looking darn impressive.

Multiplayer

Killer squirrels and teddy bears running around in bloody 16 player battles over Xbox Live and System Link. Need we say more? Heck, the game even supports two-player split screen so offline gamers on a budget can still get in on the fun.

Multiplayer focuses heavily on team play and is split into two campaigns, Future War, which spoofs science fiction movies like The Terminator, and Old War, which parodies World War II movies like the aforementioned Saving Private Ryan. Each campaign is three missions long and will have unique weaponry, vehicles, story lines, and challenges for your team to overcome. You will start off as a buck private but as you progress through the campaigns, you will earn medals for your achievements and rise in rank Ц and as an added bonus, you will be able to unlock special items the higher your rank and medal count. What these special items are is still a secret, but new weapons or abilities would be a good guess.

In addition to the campaign mode, there will be at least seven other gametypes to choose from, including deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, co-operative (where you fight against bots), and even a mode called The Thing, where one person is the infected Thing and everyone has to figure out who it is.

Similar to shooters like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and the upcoming Rainbow Six: Lockdown, you will select a character from six different classes: Demolisher, the heavy weapons bazooka guy; Grunt, the balanced, general use class; Long Ranger, the sniper; Sneaker, the Sam Fisher stealth class who is only armed with a knife, but can turn invisible and fake death to fool enemies; Thermophile, the pyromaniacal flamethrower lover; and Sky Jockey, the only class capable of flying aircraft like the Mule 52 gunship, which has gunner and bomber positions and can carry several paratroopers to rain death from above. If you don't like your class, you will be able to change at any time (though will have to respawn).

When you spawn, you will grab a primary and secondary weapon off the shelf Ц though your selection will be restricted by your class Ц and can upgrade your weapons to add new abilities. For example, Demolishers can upgrade their dumb-fire bazooka and turn it into a guided missile launcher with a point-of-view camera, allowing you to steer the missile directly to your target. And don't worry about having to face a team of missile launching campers; the sniper rifle has a special vision mode that will allow you to УseeФ through walls and pinpoint exactly where your cowardly enemies are hiding.

You will also be able to deploy special weapons like land mines, the Skyguard automated anti-aircraft missile launcher, the Earthguard robotic turret, and the strategically important Gatemaker teleporter. You can also grab a parachute to safely jump from a high ledge, though your slow descent may make you an easy target.

To further add to the multiplayer mayhem, you will be able to drive a wide variety of vehicles such as jeeps, tanks, APCs, planes and helicopters, though you will be restricted to certain types based on your class. However, Rare didn't want to restrict our fun, so all classes will be able to operate at least two vehicles; and even if you are unable to drive a particular vehicle, you will still be able to hop in for a ride or to man turrets.

The same gorgeous graphics from the single player appear in multiplayer, right down to the pretty explosions and bloody deaths. Even when the action gets frantic on the screen, the game maintains a steady 30 FPS. Add in support for Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound and you've got the makings for one of the most enjoyable multiplayer experiences on the big black box.