Conker: Live and Reloaded Review

Multiplayer

The multiplayer in Conker: Live and Reloaded has been built from the ground up to take full advantage of Xbox Live and is just a great experience overall. It is a third-person-shooter featuring team-based deathmatch and objective matches that pit the lovable squirrels of the SHC against the evil Tediz. Basically, the game plays like team fortress classic except from a third-person view. It is your job to control points on the map or do standard capture the flag stuff, but there are also assault missions where one team plays defense and the other attacks that are quite fun. You can choose your class and each class has different weapons and abilities that are exclusive to them. You can also collect upgrades which give you new weapons and abilities. Balance is a bit of an issue as some classes have far better weapons than others at the outset, but the upgrades even everything out and make things fair.

It takes a little bit of getting used to in order to really enjoy the multiplayer to its fullest, but once you learn the nuances of the game and figure out how each class is meant to function, the game is really a lot of fun. There are vehicles and turrets and upgrades spread all over the place and you are always on the moving kicking butt and taking names. It has to be noted that the game gets better with the more people you have and full games on Xbox Live run fairly smoothly and are an absolute blast. The splitscreen play is also good – it is a little harder when you don’t have a full screen to look at, though – and you can insert bots to fill out the rosters and the experience is almost as good as playing online.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, Conker: Live and Reloaded is absolutely gorgeous and is one of the best looking Xbox games ever. The characters are all smoothly animated and are covered in great looking fur that makes you want to reach out and pet them. The game runs very smoothly 95% of the time in both single and multiplayer which is an accomplishment considering how great everything looks.

The sound is also very well done. All of the humor is portrayed through spoken dialogue and almost all of the voice acting is top notch. Some characters are a bit hard to hear thanks to heavy accents, but it is good overall. Sound effects for everything are right on the money and the music has a few memorable tunes.

All in all, this is a great looking and sounding game.

Bottom Line

Ever since Microsoft’s purchase of Rare a few years ago, everyone has been waiting for something to justify it. Conker: Live and Reloaded doesn’t quite give Xbox owners the “all clear” sign (and the stink eye to Nintendo fans …), that some might have hoped since it is just a port, but it is definitely a sign that the future for Rare games on Xbox 360 should be bright. Conker proves that Rare can still get the most out of a system’s performance and the completely new multiplayer mode shows that they can still put together some darn fine gameplay which gives me great hope for Kameo and Perfect Dark.

Conker: Live and Reloaded is a polished game that gives you a great multiplayer mode and a pretty good single-experience all for your $50 investment, so I think it is a pretty good value and is worth owning. If you haven’t already played the N64 version, then this is something you definitely need to experience. Give it a rental at least, but I think that most people will get enough out of the multiplayer to make it worth a purchase.