Conker: Live & Reloaded: Hands-On

We go hands-on with a near-final build of Rare's astonishingly pretty Xbox rendition of Conker, to bring you our thoughts on the single-player remake. Is the $375m dream looking any better?

Rare must be one of the most fittingly names companies on the face of the earth; you can't fault it considering the quality of its games - and anyone who's played the original Conker's Bad Fur Day, would agree it's up there with the best of them.

It turned the N64 upside down with its brash, adult humor not seen from any of Nintendo's first or second party offerings at the time, and a standard for mature-themed platformers with its top notch production values.

But it's no secret that times have been very turbulent for Microsoft's most expensive games studio. And although Rare's Xbox 360 launch titles - Perfect Dark Zero and Kameo - could potentially rejuvenate the firm's reputation, it's up to Conker's latest outing to give current generation Xbox owners a Rare title worth buying.

It's been quite some time since we last had a look at Rare's potty-mouthed mascot and his spangly new re-imagining, Conker: Live and Reloaded. Last time, we had a look at the multiplayer Live side of things, but now we've had a lengthy hands-on with the Reloaded part, so how are things shaping up with the single player game? Good news first - it's certainly a stunning looker.

Everything now looks as you always imagined it should - very cartoonishly stylish with a Pixar-like helping of furry realism. Combine that with the excellent voice-over work (a whole bunch of amusingly stereotyped accents), and a script filled with movie pastiches and fantastic humour, and you'll soon see why the original is so loved.

The pant-wettingly hilarious crudity is back, although you'll find that everything is censored in this version - Microsoft decided to change the name from Live & Uncut to Live & Reloaded for a reason. Much like censored cuts like The Bleeping Osbournes however, the brilliant slapstick impact of it all remains unaffected.

Our only potential concern is whether or not this new Conker will really offer anything new over the original, aside from the obvious graphical improvements. During a slightly remixed intro, there's an early nod in the script to this being a remake, but from there on it seems little else has changed - including the slightly questionable camera and controls of the original. While some attempt has been made to enhance the camera control with a zoom function, a little further tweaking would help - but we're by no means talking about any disastrous problems here.

Although it's something of a missed opportunity to not have anything added to the single-player game, it's only really going to be a problem for hardcore (and perhaps slightly nostalgic) fans of the original; a new audience is still certain to lap this up, and there's still a couple of months to go before the game's scheduled summer release. Frankly though, the technical troubles of the original didn't have an overly negative impact on the Nintendo release - and minor niggles are unlikely to spoil Live and Reloaded's single-player outing either.

Besides, a big part of the appeal of Conker's single-player frolics was always the variety; a combination of gameplay types is on offer. It would just be that little bit more special to have something more added - particularly since Rare has seen fit to dumb down the game's difficulty to a noticeable degree.

And in any case, it kind of makes sense that the massively enhanced multi-player mode should be the game's main focus. The 16-player online carnage will include a ton of unlockable bonuses, and is looking like a strong contender to becoming a firm Xbox Live favourite. The only slight concern at this point is how easily you'll be able to tell the difference between enemy and friend in the heat of battle...

Meanwhile, there's a new, story led single-player campaign with bots, allowing players to practice your online fur fighting before dipping into the unforgiving land of Live, with both Old War and Future War levels available. Players choose from six different character classes, each having their own weapons and skills. Add some vehicles to the mix and it's a real blast!

There are still some minor niggles with the single-player game, but with the massively beefed up multiplayer shenanigans, this squirrel is looking like he could be kicking serious Tediz ass this second time around. And while a lot of Live and Reloaded is a bit of a concept rehash, it's still undoubtedly destined to be one of Xbox's final generation software highlights.

Stephen Rowley
Staff Writer, Kikizo Games

Video Coverage (Latest Videos & Video FAQ)
PLEASE DO NOT DIRECT LINK TO ANY MEDIA FILE ON KIKIZO
Description	Dur.	Size	Details
Conker Live and Reloaded E3 2004: Conference 'Terminator' themed trailer (640x480, 1Mbps)	1.43m	13.02 MB	WMV
Conker Live and Reloaded E3 2004: Direct feed gameplay (640x480, 1Mbps)	0.23m	2.95 MB	WMV
Conker Live and Reloaded E3 2004: Detailed showfloor gameplay demonstration (640x480, 1Mbps)	5.43m	43.51 MB	WMV