Conker's occasionally wonked gameplay brings down the best Xbox platformer to date.
You will frequently find the gameplay in Conker rarely stays to one idea. It's a nice touch that the gameplay is different, but the problem is, a lot of areas the game is pretty broken. When you have to shake your head in frustration from something that is entirely not your fault, something's wrong. There will be instances in boss battles where you'll get attacked once, never have a chance to stand up, and you will die without ever being able to control Conker. Also, you are supposed to be chased by a mine, and blow him up somewhere... the mine gets stuck in the wall, and when you come back to the mine, it blows up because you get close to it, it really will take dumb luck to not die in some situations, which is a little sad to say. Another question; why does Conker not take damage from bullets, but loses 3 health bars from falling mere feet? The otherwise poor camera angle helps no one at all, it rarely gives you a good idea of how high up you are, a real good perspective of the area, or anything of the sort. Minus the camera, Conker features very responsive controls, again, not without fault in some areas, while driving the tank there is a good second response lag when moving the reticule vertically, and the controls while swimming are horrendous. Another complaint about Conker's gameplay is during the beginning of the game it will be quite often to find yourself with no idea of where to go, there are no hints, and somewhere entirely irrelevant things are what you have to do. The game isn't completely linear, but there are games that need to be linear, this is one of them. Thankfully about halfway through the game, it becomes linear so not more ridiculous running around until you figure out some mundane task to move on to the next chapter.
This game contain the most colorful environments, beautiful character models, and just above all some of the best graphics you're gonna find on the Xbox to date. It's really quite amazing at the detail of fur that Conker has. The ripple water effects are very nice, and the water/blood/gun effects that appear on the screen are a nice touch.
Conker also sports a very fitting soundtrack, one that immediately caught my attention, and always fits the bill. The voice-overs are top notch, and never seem out of place. One moment of the games soundtrack that clearly sticks out is the boss theme for the Great Mighty Poo, that was a hilarious touch, and really gave the game something to remember.
Conker's single player offering sports about 10-12 hour duration, but as said the focus from Rare was the multiplayer. The multiplayer has been redone entirely, and a multiplayer that takes the gun aspects of the single-player. A mission based, squad based, multiplayer offering that really is a lot of fun. It has a nice learning curve to understand all the character types, and what exactly is the objective of what's going on. The game seems similar to that of Return to Castle: Wolfenstein in terms of its squad-based multiplayer. The multiplayer offering definitely could last those who bother to understand it, all the way up to the 360 launch, but most probably won't learn everything and just go back to Halo 2, which is a shame. Apart from some odd gameplay elements, Conker is a refreshing addition to anyones Xbox collection, highly recommendable, and finally, we have a great platformer in our library.