Conker: Live & Reloaded Rare Retrospective

A game of two halves, each with enough content to constitute a full game in itself, Conker: Live & Reloaded is Rare’s first major foray into Xbox LIVE territory. And a seriously full-blooded venture it is too.

The heart of the game, playable via LIVE, system link or on a single Xbox amidst both human and AI-controlled friends and enemies, charts the bitter clash between the Tediz forces and Squirrel High Command against the backdrop of two distinct settings: Old War and Future War. Accessible through a time machine in the basement of familiar watering hole The Cock and Plucker, these two scenarios bracket the war that was ongoing throughout the game’s predecessor, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, with Old War soldiers slugging it out on WWII-style battlegrounds while Future War volunteers carry on the conflict through the time streams.

With six selectable character classes for each side in each timezone, there’s a choice for every style of play. For instance, the Demolisher lugs massive assault weapons around on his shoulder while the Sneeker aims for kills by stealth. Sky Jockeys, Thermophiles, Long Rangers and no-nonsense Grunts also have their own skill sets, weapons and importance in your fighting team. As the war rages on you’ll find that the availability of secondary weapons, destructive gadgets and controllable vehicles also proves handy.

Sequential campaign missions and deathmatches are both part of the finished package, selectable at will to suit the number and attitude of players per game. High-performance soldiers can expect to earn medals, climb through the ranks and ultimately unlock all sorts of new features, so even if the lives of your stuffed squad members mean nothing to you, there’s still a lot worth playing for.

Team-based action aside, the remaining part of the game is the extensive single-player mode, which long-time fans (and other persons of considerable taste) may recognise as Conker’s original Bad Fur Day, given a drastic audiovisual makeover in its journey forward a generation from the N64. All the old favourites are there, from Berri to Birdy, Gregg to Franky and a whole load of Tediz, and in its shiny new guise it’s an essential play for veterans and newcomers alike. It’s jam-packed with swearing and crudeness, of course, but there’s some top-tier gameplay in there too.

Overall, the two complementary halves of the Conker: Live & Reloaded experience make it a bargain deal, and seeing as we’ve worked ourselves to borderline insanity putting the whole thing together, we think you ought to ruddy well buy it if you’ve any interest at all in hectic third-person shooter madness or top-tier sweary platforming action. Launch date was June 21st 2005, so get yourself down to the nearest stockist and grab a copy. Don’t argue – we’ve got Sinurators.