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The other half of Live & Reloaded's package is an all-new multiplayer game, featuring team-based battles of objective-based and deathmatch varieties. Sorry Bad Fur Day fans, the old game's multiplayer is nonexistent here. But the good news is that this new multiplayer functionality is quite good, though it does have a few qualifiers that make it so. When you first get into a multiplayer match, you'll begin by choosing a side--either the cute, cuddly good guy squirrels (known as the SHC), or the evil Tediz. You then choose a character class. There are several to choose from, and each class has a nice roster of unique abilities and weapons. Slower-moving demolitionists carry big bazookas; the fast and nimble sneaker character can stealth herself (but can only carry melee weapons); and then there's the squarely in the middle grunt, who carries a machine gun and works best as an all-around character. Snipers, sky jockeys, and thermophiles make up the rest of the class list. Figuring out what kind of character suits your playing style is key in getting the most out of Conker's multiplayer experience, as is playing out that role fairly strictly, since deviation from your character's primary role leads to a lot of quick and ugly death. Well, to be honest, you'll experience a lot of quick and ugly death in the early goings of the multiplayer, regardless of how well you play a specific class, and this is simply because the mode takes some getting used to. You'll undoubtedly spend a fair amount of time just trying to figure out the nuances of your character's alternate weapons, as well as the five different types of vehicles you can drive. The vehicles are kind of a pain early on, simply because they don't handle intuitively. Once you get a handle on them, bringing death upon your opponents via a tank or an airborne vehicle can be an immensely satisfying experience. It also doesn't help that the objective-based maps can be pretty perplexing the first few times you try them out. The heads-up display doesn't do much to let you know exactly what you ought to be doing, so it'll take some trial and error to really figure out how the whole thing is supposed to work. The basic objectives for each map usually just revolve around securing specific checkpoints scattered about a map, or the usual capture the flag kind of stuff. The maps themselves are rarely all that big, though most of them feature at least a few unique aspects. The first map in the game, Beach Dead, is basically the whole D-Day scene from the Saving Private Ryan spoof in the single-player game but with more-specific objectives. Another map takes place in and around a castle occupied by the Tediz. A vast precipice separates the good guys from the Tediz, and a pair of cable cars goes back and forth, taking members from each side to the opposing territory. While these little nuances are neat, they don't change that the maps are fairly run-of-the-mill across the board, without a lot of space or uniqueness to them. They do the job, but there definitely feels like there could have been more added to each and every one of them. There are a couple of other issues with the multiplayer that prevent it from being brilliant. For one, the controls can be a little weird in certain respects. It's tough to gauge when you're actually hitting an enemy, so you tend to have to be a little more careful than perhaps you'd like to be with your shots in order to play effectively (unless of course you're the demolitionist). Which segues nicely into another problem, namely that certain character classes just aren't balanced as well as they could be. Demolitionists feel too powerful, for instance. Despite the fact that it takes them the longest to reload, it's still too easy for them to just run around, killing everyone in one hit and without too much hassle. On the flip side, snipers and grunts tend to get blown away the easiest, simply because grunts' weaponry just isn't that powerful or accurate. Snipers have to be extremely accurate with their shots in order to work effectively, which can be tough with the loose reticle movement. The good news for the less-powerful classes (and for all classes, really) is that there are weapon upgrades you can get, and they do quite a bit to counteract the initial balancing problems. It's just too bad that the default weaponry isn't always as great as it could be. It also bears mention that this game is really designed for a lot of people to play at once, and so in smaller matches, it doesn't fare well. If you can get a good-sized group of people together to play online, and that group of people knows how to play the game at least reasonably well, you're probably going to have a very good time with Conker's multiplayer. The action can be extremely satisfying when played well, and terribly underwhelming when played poorly. It's unfortunate that this isn't the kind of gameplay that you can just immediately get into and enjoy no matter who you're playing with or against. But under the right circumstances, it's great. It should be noted that there is also two-player split-screen play with bots, system link play, and single-player versions of all the multiplayer missions (again, with bots). But really, the Xbox Live play is really where it's at, as the split-screen play has some frame rate problems, and the bot artificial intelligence isn't exactly brilliant. The stand-out star of the Conker package is its graphics. Hands-down, this is one of the best-looking Xbox games ever made. This is most true in the single-player game, but the multiplayer looks phenomenal too. Take one up-close look at Conker's character model, either in-game or during a cutscene, and the level of detail on everything is just phenomenal. His fur looks touchable and smooth, he animates without a hint of jerkiness or unnatural movement, and everything surrounding him looks nearly as good. The environments are beautifully crafted, and the various enemies and side characters are almost always extremely detailed themselves. And even with all this detail, the frame rate is pretty much a constant, and it's only slightly choppy in the most intense areas. In the multiplayer modes, the level of detail isn't quite as high, but it still looks wonderful. Even with all the explosions and what not going off all over the place, it still runs smoothly and only rarely gets choppy. This game is simply a pleasure to look at in every single way, and it easily takes the title of the best-looking platformer around. In order for Conker to work as a comedic game, the voice acting would have to be at least pretty good, and it most definitely is. Of course, this is pretty much the exact same dialogue from the original game, so if you played the original, you'd already know that. Conker's still got the same goofy voice, and all the other characters have appropriately weird inflections. The dialogue itself puts a little too much emphasis for its own good on the weirdness of each character, as it can occasionally be hard to really understand what the characters are saying and it interrupts the comedic timing a bit. But overall, the dialogue is great and profusely foul. Granted, all the swearing is bleeped, but in a way, it just makes it funnier. The rest of the audio, namely the music and sound effects, is cool. Some of the tunes on the soundtrack are quite catchy, and all the sound effects fit perfectly into the scope of the game. Did Conker's Bad Fur Day really need a remake? Probably not. It was a fantastic game for its time, but it probably could have gone on existing purely as an N64 title, or it could've gotten a proper sequel and done just fine for itself. However, a remake was made, and for what it is, it's absolutely worth playing. Those who never tried Bad Fur Day aren't likely to ever pick up the N64 version, so this remake serves as a great way to bring a new generation of players into the bawdy world of Conker. And as for those who already played Bad Fur Day and aren't necessarily sold on the notion of playing through a prettier version of a 10-hour game they've already completed, the multiplayer component, despite a few gaffes, is certainly worth checking out. In the end, Conker: Live & Reloaded definitely has some quirks and even a few legitimate problems, but the whole of the experience is a great one. Xbox owners would do well to give it a go. |
| QUOTE (Knives101 @ Jul 14 2005, 01:06 AM) |
| :huh: then whats the point of playing it if you can't "accidentally" deck your partner off a ledge? :P |
