Conker: Live & Reloaded review

Amidst the baking heat of a London June weekend I had two places to seek solace. One was the bath full of ice-water that we returned to periodically to put our feet in, the other was the adventures of a foul-mouthed dipsomaniac squirrel called Conker.

I must admit to missing out on the delights of Conker the first time around, by the time of its release I'd sold my N64 and so have been able to enjoy the delights of the furry one's adventure without having all the jokes spoiled by familiarity.

Hungover

Conker: Live & Reloaded is the proverbial game of two halves, two very different halves. The single-player adventure is a fairly traditional platform romp with added humour, while taking the game online takes the game into a world of Deathmatch and capture the flag action.

The single player adventure begins with the titular hero phoning his girlfriend from the pub, telling a porkie-pie and going on to drink himself stupid with his friends. He finally emerges from the public house rather shaky on his feet and vomits onto the pavement. If you've not seen Conker in action before this is something of a rude awakening - the Disneyesque

Thus begins an adventure for Conker to get home despite being tired and wracked with a hangover. Meanwhile the Panther King is having trouble himself; a three-legged table keeps spilling his milk - provoking his anger and his mad scientist underling into action.

Speech bubbles

That's pretty much the plot in a nutshell - but from there it goes on a mad rampage through the madder minds at Rare. Conker's adventure takes him on a strange and surreal platform journey to battle with Scouse creatures, witness a very odd (but rather funny) poo-based Disney musical parody and the hilarity of the war with the Nazi teddies.

Yes it's all very silly, but if you're in the right frame of mind for such nonsense it can be very funny. Some of the humour is spoiled though by the use of character speech bubbles, which often give the funny dialogue away before the characters have spoken it. It would be of no consequence if the bubbles could be turned off - but alas they can't, and it does get in the way of comic timing.

However the games wry look at the world of gaming continues to amuse. Early jokes about the gameplay - such as the discussion of context-sensitive controls with a drunken scarecrow called Birdie and lines about whether the game is a straight port or not make for something of an anti-gaming satire that's more than a mere collection of cute creatures using Anglo Saxon cussing. And there's plenty of cussing going on - albeit of the bleeped, but very easy to understand, variety.

Tediz at war

The early part of the adventure is standard platform fare. Mostly carrying objects around to complete puzzles while engaging in some simplistic slapstick violence. The latter parts of the game give way to more action - with third-person shooting being the order of the day, which will warm you up nicely for the multiplayer components (more of which later).

The controls are pretty simple, though the puzzles aren't. So while the use of the B-button at the right place and time will make Conker perform the required task, it's not always easy to see what must be done. This is down to a rather fiddly camera which doesn't lend the action the best view at times and when switching to first-person is cumbersome and slow.

It’s odd though that the gameplay changes so much over the course of the adventure rather than being a little more varied across the whole game. As the adventure gives over from puzzle-based to a more shooter-orientated game later on it seems as though these two elements should have been more carefully blended at an earlier stage. All the best movie parodies appear later in the game, while the action is a little slow early on. Another problem is that it's often not remotely clear what has to be done, some of the puzzles give the player very little clue and one is left trying the B-button in many different places to see if it has an effect.

Bad fur day

One area where there's little scope for improvement is the matter of visuals. Conker is a gorgeous game without a doubt. From the colourful design and fur of our eponymous hero, to the wavering grass and beautiful-lit landscapes, this is a game that really shows off Rare's strong character design and flair for interesting and beautiful graphics.

There's as much humour in the look of the game as there is in the dialogue. Ah portly queen bee, for example, is a humorous piece of design - as is the advanced weaponry which rises menacingly from her hive. I particularly enjoyed the Tediz, the game's warlike race of bears which are perhaps the game's highlight.

Equally strong is the sound, the voice acting is great - despite too many jokes being spoiled by those aforementioned speech bubbles. Conker himself is a likeable if silly hero. But the real joy is the breadth of accents on show in the game. All too often Brit gamers are left with a variety of American accents in games - but here in Conker we get a wonderful range of eccentric and colourful British accents. It's not often one hears Scouse in a game, and it's funny for its appearance, delivery in addition to the actual script.

War online

But Conker is two games in one and the biggest addition to the game is the various Xbox Live modes. Essentially it's your standard class-based shooter. Fans of games such as Wolfenstein will recognise the gameplay - though perhaps not the colourful and wild setting. Teaming up as either the Tediz or the SHC (the cartoon creatures) - players battle it out on a variety of levels in assault, capture-the-flag and Deathmatch type levels.

At first glance it's a chaotic mess, with no clear idea what's going on or how to service for very long. It's not exactly a pickup and play game - and players really should familiarize themselves with the gameplay and levels using the bots before venturing out into the harsh world of Xbox Live.

With some practice under your belt you'll find an entertaining game. The classes are varied - the seeker, with its power of invisibility and sword is great fun to play. Yet there are some balancing issues which hamper gameplay. The sniper is hard to us, with too many shots being needed and no simple head-shot available, meanwhile a bazooka armed character can deal out death on a grand scale. With some practice though, the variety of weapons and vehicles on offer will entertain and it's just a shame there aren't more maps.

Staggering home

So here in Conker: Live & Reloaded we have a strange mixture of two games. Firstly a humorous platform adventure that develops into a third-person shooter later on. And secondly a third-person only class-based shooter. Both work pretty well as separate entities but is Conker worth your beer vouchers?

That's a tricky question. If you like the humour in the game then I'd say it's a worthwhile purchase - I enjoyed the single-player adventure despite problems with pacing and some of the puzzles. However I found the online game initially maddeningly chaotic until I got to grips with the surprising complexity of the gameplay on offer.

Perhaps it's best to finish with the news that there's little else on Xbox like Conker, certainly nothing that's made me laugh so much anyway. So if you've a hankering to play one of the best-looking games on the console, subscribe to Xbox Live and want to entertain those watching you play as well as yourself, then Conker is worth some of your time.