Wonderful ideas that are implemented poorly.
User Rating: 5.9 | Conker: Live & Reloaded XBOX
The single player has an irreverent story, and that’s a good thing. But it is not a good single player GAME. It is at heart an average platformer with a crappy camera and loose controls. Running around and jumping is not fun in this game. The fun parts come from the interactions with the wacky characters in the game, but even that gets ruined by the text bubbles that both block part of the scene and ruin the comic timing of the jokes. It feels like the game is full of spoilers right as you are watching the cut scenes, because the text bubbles display the conversation before the words are even said. Unfortunately there is no way to remove the text bubbles, so you will either have to not read the words that take up half the screen or continue to read the jokes before they are delivered. It would have made a better movie than game. The enemies are not fun to fight and most require you to run up and hit them and immediately run away as not to get hit by their unblockable counterattack. You have to hit each enemy 3 times only making it even more tedious. The boss battle are no more fun. [SPOILER] During a fight with a bull you have to bull fight him to have him run into bull’s eyes that pop up (this makes a cow come out for no logical reason). Then you have to make him hit another bull’s eye and get stuck in the wall. Then you mount him and ride him around where you have to charge into the cow to make her drink prune juice (this doesn’t make sense either). After the cow drinks prune juice then she craps onto a metal grate. You have to get on the bull again and charge the cow once more (making her explode for no reason). Then you have to repeat this two more times. Even writing all that out is less boring than playing through it. [/SPOILER]. So the Single Player is a mediocre platformer that has a funny story that gets ruined by text bubbles you can’t turn off. Now to the Multiplayer (the part that’s actually new). Multiplayer is full of great ideas like: Classes, a Variety of Weapons, Upgrades, Vehicles, Assault, Capture the Flag, Control Points, and best of all Nazi teddy bears and violent squirrels. Unfortunately none of these are implemented well. Classes aren’t balanced properly (I know that the ability to kill is not the only balancing factor, and yet the classes still don’t have distinguishing rolls). Each class in a game should have a specific duty to do. The best implementation I’ve seen on the Xbox is StarWars Battlefront where infantry lead charges, demolishers blow up vehicles and mine fields, snipers snipe, pilots pilot and heal, and the special units provide each army with a unique experience. I’ll go over each class in Conker and point out how they don’t do what they’re supposed to. Grunt: He should lead the charge with guns blazing, but since Conker has only a few units per side he doesn’t lead anything. He simple runs at enemies with his machine gun and health kit trying to not get killed. He has no roll in Conker other than cannon fodder. Sneeker: They are stealth experts and are vital in capture the flag and control point games. With the small size of the levels the sneekers are one of the best units to take. Demolishers: In other games with classes characters with bazookas are in charge of blowing up vehicles, but in Conker they can shoot vehicles; destroy bunkers; kill enemy units; and snipe. They would be slow and bad at close range if it they didn’t have the special ability to berserk making them faster and giving them a good close range attack. This class is far to good at far to many different things. Long Ranger: Sniping is not worth it unless you pick up an upgrade first to make it easier to get head shots. Head shots result in instant death, but all other shots do less than a 1/3 of an enemies making it too weak. To make things worse the sniper is the only class that has the gun move while zoomed in. It’s actually easier to snipe with a demolisher because you don’t have to aim very accurately to get a kill. Sky Jockey: Crap at ground fighting this leaves them with their only option, flying. This would be fine if the flying vehicles couldn’t be shot down by only 3 bazooka shots. Thermophile: The act as bad medics and have an unwieldy base weapon that often hurts friends as much as enemies. They don’t do anything any other class can’t do better, so they are simply bad medics with below average weaponry. To Sum the classes up: Chose either the Sneeker or the Demolisher if you want to be the most useful. Weapons aren’t any better. I’ll go by class… Grunt: Sturm21: Normal machine gun. Stupidly the designers desided to make it default to a 3 burst mode that nobody should use. After changing it to fully auto you can drill enemies with a stream of bullets. The dum dum rounds do a bit more damage to vehicles and bunkers. Hogster: This is the grunts upgrade. It’s a grenade launcher. The grenades take a bit to long to go off making this gun a bad version of the demolishers bazooka that can bounce around corners (but the bouncing only helps to make shots more inaccurate). Sneeker: Sabre: Get close and start wacking the shoot button until you cut the enemies head off. Dagger: More damage than the saber plus it has the option of being thrown as an instant kill weapon (with little gravity drop this make a fairly good mid-sniping weapon) Demolisher: Bazooka: Standard rounds can kill anything you can see with just splash damage. Fire and Forget rockets lock on and kill air units quickly. Guided missles let you have even more precision when firing. Strayfur: This is a minigun. It is flat out worse than the bazooka. Don’t bother with this weapon, but don’t worry the bazooka is still better than any upgraded weapon so who wouldn’t want to use it. Long Ranger: Widowmaker: A sniper rifle that is bad at sniping. You can switch to DU bullets so you can plink at vehicles with a weapon that is worse than any other for such a purpose. Krotch 45: A pistol. Of course! This is exactly what you should give a sniper, ugh. Sky Jockey: DP 500: Dual pistols. Cool but ineffective. No upgrade at all: They couldn’t even give them a vehicle repairing tool (besides the one you have to go across the map to get and can’t carry while using other stuff). Thermophile: Sinurator: A short range area of effect weapon that slowly does damage over time (though it is useful against vehicles and soldiers). So you have to get up close so you can make an inaccurate shot that probable won’t kill the guy that’s right next to you. How did this ever sound like a good idea. Fauster: A big laser that takes out vehicle really quickly and sucks at hurting people. Secondary weapons: Grenades: You don’t get enough but they are useful. Arc Weld: a vehicle repair gun. The sky jockey can use it after going and picking it up (why isn’t it an upgrade weapon). The demolisher can also use it for no reason besides making the demolisher even more useful. (doesn’t anyone else think some one called a demolisher probable shouldn’t be good at repairing things). Hacking Device: Makes the sneeker class even better. Yeah cuz they aren’t good enough already. Vehicles: Toad MK II: What’s the point? It doesn’t do anything useful. R-Hog: Making sneekers even faster… ugh. Tankus: Death all trads. Who else better to give it to than the already overpowered demolishers. Steed: Death from above. At least until a demolisher or any other class desides to bring you down. Mule52: A troop mover. Most troops can already get in their own fast vehicles or run on foot considering most levels aren’t very big. Except the Demolisher of course. I’m sure he’d love to be a passenger. Don’t worry if it gets shot a couple times. Just get those demolishers to repair the thing. Now on to the Levels. Beach Dead: D-Day with fuzzy creatures is funny (at first). The only strategy is to run forward and blow up the barricades. That’s it. That’s the whole level. This is one of the worst assault levels I’ve ever seen. There aren’t any alternate routes. The only class worth taking are the demolishers. To defend you need to be a demolisher and shoot missiles into a ditch filled with squirrels. This level is crap. Fortress Deux: This is a mediocre capture the flag level. There are 3 ways to get to the enemy flag, but one is obviously the best choice. Of the three options the longest route is from your bottom spawn out in the open to there bottom spawn then go up a ramp near their upper spawn (bad route, don’t go this way). Route 2 is from either spawn and you run to your left through their upper spawn point (bad route, don’t go this way). Route 3 is from your upper spawn point to the right and straight at the flag (this route is the shortest and has the least resistance, go this way). Don’t bother being any class but demolisher or sneeker. Castle Von Tedistien: Confusing as hell. You don’t know where to go or what to do, but after playing through it a dozen times you should relies where all the control points are. This level has a transition area (you enter a entrance way and “teleport” out the other side). Why the hell is there a transition area in such a small level. I’ve not played a single other xbox multiplayer game that loads you into a new area when going threw an entrance. This is a horrible, horrible level. BTW, sniping with bazookas is easy on this level. Three Towers: So linear it might as well be an assault level. A Bridge to Narrow: A simple, but good capture the flag level. This should be the minimum standard. Doon: a farley good assault level that ends in the worst way. Why is there a boss fight at the end of a multiplayer map. Overall still okay though. T.M.S. Spamano: Go get ball in the center and bring it to your goal. With no cover and basically one big hallway this level is filled with just lots and lots of shooting. Surprisingly this level is still some fun even with no strategic options at all. Ditch: Get center flag and put it in 1 of 4 towers. Claim all 4 towers to win. Simple, but bar far the best level. It allows for lots of strategy and teamwork. List of other complaints: -Why the hell do enemy and ally names remain on top of objects that are closer to you. This fills your screen with a ton of names that you can’t even shoot at. The names should be covered by terrain just like the players characters are. -Why are the controls so convoluted. The black and white buttons aren’t even used. Why not assign them to grenades and spray paint. Beyond that changing weapons is a pain in the arse. -Why have so many classes if your not going to build all the levels to use them? Why can’t I have a skyjockey in Dead Beach. Is it only because the designers are to stupid to figure out how to implement them. -Why not 4 player split screen? I don’t care about the frame rate. If it runs at 20fps while all 4 people play then so be it. I still want the option to play in a choppy game with my friends on my coach. -Why are there more options for live games than not. Why can’t I limit classes, or any of the other live options you can’t pick while playing splitscreen? -Who took out the old multiplayer maps? You put in a 10+hr single player campaign with new graphics and small changes, but couldn’t take those already graphically updated characters and put them in the old multiplayer levels. -The screen is to cluttered. I want my HUD to be half the size. I don’t want 3 lines of text about kills. -MAPS!!! Where are the damn maps?!? How am I supposed to figure out where to go if I don’t know what the levels look like. This game could have been good, but it is full of problems. It can still be good, but there are no mod communities on Xbox and the game box doesn’t content download (I know other games have had updates without this box highlighted, but those updates are small, and that small of an update can’t fix Conker). 
