Oh Conker, I remember you fondly. You first appeared in Conker’s Bad Fur
Day as Nintendo desperately tried to shed its “kiddie” image in the waning
days of the N64, bringing drunken prattle and endless poop jokes to a genre
mired in sticky, gooey sweetness. Together we fought dung beetles and giant
animate piles of poo, but my fondest memory of you was our first introduction
at E3 back in 2000. It was there that Nintendo shoved a free beer in my hand
(or two, or, oh who was counting anyway…) and sat me in front of the funniest
Saving Private Ryan spoof that I’ve seen to this very day. There was just
something magical about watching a Higgens boat full of cute, fuzzy squirrels
in little army uniforms hit the beach and get mowed down by fascist teddy
bears. That kind of irreverent creativity does not come along often enough,
which is why it is good to see you back again, as cute and as drunk as ever.
How could you not love a game with armed-to-the-teeth squirrels and teddy
bears on its cover, with a large warning slapped across the front that the
game is most assuredly not for children…?
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| Our hero! |
Conker: Live & Reloaded has a bit of a dual personality, not unlike our
friend Conker who can be both surly, drunk Conker and clever, sober Conker. On
the one hand you have a remake of the original game – with cutting-edge Xbox
graphics of course – which is for the most part a port true to the original.
On the other you have a third-person multiplayer shooter, complete with
soldier classes, a variety of maps, and 16 player mayhem. Well, two games in
one gets you two reviews in one, but you’ll still need to buy your own beer.
First off, if you played Bad Fur Day the remake will be very familiar to
you. There’s very little which is different from the game so playing it will
be stroll (or stagger) down memory lane for you. Of course you do get the
benefit of the updated graphics which make full use of the Xbox’s power.
Conker looks far more lifelike than in his first outing – in fact, this time
he actually has fur that you can see, making him appropriately fuzzy and
therefore 3.2 times as cute as before. The environments are also sharper and
more colorful than before, to the point where this is probably one of the best
looking platformers available on the Xbox today.
OK, so you never played Bad Fur Day and you hate those reviews that just
compare a game to a bunch of other games that you’ve never played. Well, don’t
worry; I’m going to tell you what it’s all about. The rest of you can just let
your eyes gloss over and skim ahead until you see the words “PAY ATTENTION
NOW”. OK, off with you. Start skimming.
Alright, you’re still with us so you’re new to this whole Conker thing.
You’ve probably figured out by now that Conker is a squirrel. Well, Conker
lives in a world where fuzzy woodland critters go on benders at the local bar,
poo sings opera, advice is dispatched by a scarecrow that has “freed his mind”
at least once too often, and a panther king needs a squirrel to replace a
table leg so that his milk won’t spill. Conker’s bad fur day begins when he
tries to stumble home to his aerobics-obsessed girlfriend Berri after an
all-nighter at a bar with the boys. Well before you know it, Conker has
trouble finding his way home, Berri is kidnapped, and that panther is making
trouble for our furry little friend. Yep, Conker is in for one bad fur day.
Those are the basics of the situation, but what follows is less coherent story
and more steam of consciousness strangeness. Conker is truly a platformer for
the Aqua Teen Hunger Force generation.
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