The Final Word game review

Conker's Bad Fur Day -- Rare

R.I.P.
I pre-ordered this game. I couldn't get enough when watching the promotional material. This game looked awsome... revolutionary even... and it's from Rare following on the heals of Jet Force Gemini! How could this be a miss?

The moment I asked myself that question, I should have known the game was going to have something terribly wrong with it...

First off, hat's off to Nintendo for having the gumption to publish a title like this on the N64. There is no question about it, this is an adult game. Do not let kids play this because the game content is just wholly inappropriate for children. Second, a tip of the hat to Rare for just being completely warped.

Now... having said that... a kick between the legs goes to Rare for botching this game so badly. What's so bad you ask? The camera. The camera in this game is crap. You can't control it, and it is so in-the-way, poorly placed, that it makes solving parts of the game nearly impossible. For instance, there is the tower you have to climb at one point by jumping from hanging rope to hanging rope... because of the camera limitations, there are times where it is physically impossible to line up the camera so that you can see where to jump, or how to angle yourself to make the jump. I spent four days on trying to climb just one tower... that's about five jumps to climb. The camera movement makes my wife's motion sickness kick in and she got nauseous both watching and playing the game.

This makes me all the more mad because everything I've done in the game so far has been hilarious. To this day I still can't hear the word "context sensitive" without snickering. I really want to enjoy this game, and I really can't no matter how hard I try.

My other serious gripe is the graphics. Why are they so bad. To be honest, based on the poor game control, poor camera and terrible graphics, I almost think that Conker's Bad Fur Day is running on the very first implementation of their 3-D platform engine. An earlier version than even Banjo Kazooie. I'm guessing they did this game first and Nintendo told them they couldn't release it until they did some other titles and/or waited till later in the life of the platform. That's all I can figure. But why they didn't take all of those years to polish the game I don't know. Why doesn't it use the memory expansion? Why does the game control so stinking badly. Why? Why? Why? ...and I spent, what, $60 to be this frustrated? Why?

While I really wanted to be able to really give this game a positive review, based on the shear lack of playability alone, I can't. I can't even recommend it for the humor because it is just so painful to play that the poor control outweighs any other benefit, or entertainment value.

I have to say, flat out, that not only should everyone skip this game, but it should be quickly forgotten... and that sucks. Why? Because management types are going to look at this failure and say "See, adult games don't sell." When in reality they should be saying "See, poorly programmed games with crappy interfaces and abysmal camera control don't sell." I'm just glad Rare looks like their going down the toilet since this game was released. They deserve it. If for nothing else but for making it just that much harder for us to ever get real adult gaming content that is more than blood and gore fests.

(10/2002)