IGN gives xbox Conker remake an 8.1

[if76]

IGN.com (http://www.ign.com) posted a review (http://xbox.ign.com/articles/626/626725p1.html) of Conker: Live and Reloaded deciding to throw bias to the wind and giving the assignment to someone who was in love with the N64 original.

I really, really, really wanted to love Conker: Live & Reloaded. I've been dying for this game for more than a year, both for the single-player and the multiplayer. Ultimately, I still think the single-player is a unique and awesome experience. The multiplayer is a very solid concept with some good and some bland maps (but too few all around).

In the time it took Rare to remake one old (overrated) game, a normal company would have made two new games.

[Savok]

Lets hope they've made the first half of the game halfway intelligent this time.

[bobbler]

Worst case it is the same game (graphic upgrade) that people loved on N64 -- It will give people who missed out on it a good chance of playing a gem of a game. I think a lot of their score had to do with the fact that they have seen the game already, so they were expecting a lot of new stuff -- people who missed out on the first one won't have any such expectations.

I might have to rent it just for old times sake -- to see what has changed and what new stuff they added.

[KDups]

Actually he said he'd still score the single player game a 9, it's the multiplayer that let him down and dragged the score down (RTFR). Which makes sense since they hyped up the multiplayer to ridiculous levels.

And talk about throwing bias to the wind...

[Borys]

Anybody who hasn't played this on N64 should pick this up on Xbox ASAP. One of the best platformers ever made, right behind Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie (Tooie was shitty) and Klonoa. Funny, challenging and long. Has a kick-ass soundtrack but that's RARE's standard.

And if IGN gives it a 8.1 how will Gamespot rate it?

[Dirty Harry]

Anybody who hasn't played this on N64 should pick this up on Xbox ASAP. One of the best platformers ever made, right behind Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie (Tooie was shitty) and Klonoa. Funny, challenging and long. Has a kick-ass soundtrack but that's RARE's standard.

And if IGN gives it a 8.1 how will Gamespot rate it?
9.1 is what i think they would rate it or even 8.6 or 8.7.

[Kelegacy]

Gamespot will give it what it deserves. i dont think they go onto IGN's site and read their reviews before posting one of their own. I'm a person who missed the first Conker game, but I'll give this one a quick play, maybe. I played a bit of the N64 one, about a half hour, but it seemed like great fun.

[Paranoia]

It's good news for me. I never played Conker since I never owned N64. 8.1 ain't bad considering its a remake.

[Furious Wang]

This review is bullshit.

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

The guy goes on and on about how the single player game is "great but not as great as the N64 version".

What justification does he give for this reasoning?

"They made some of the hard parts easier."

Come on now. That's just foolishness.

They drastically improve the graphics, tighten up the controls, and smooth out the gameplay but somehow the original version is still better. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Ever. And I've heard some pretty dumb things. Like this quote for instance:

"No, my obvious point was education doesn't make a person intelligence."

Second,

Why in the fuck does this guy claim the single player is 9.1, then bring the score down a full point because he doesn't like the multiplayer? That's fucking piss poor reviewing right there.

A good multiplayer experience should always bring the score of a game up, but a bad one should never bring the score down.

Why? Because then you simply cannot justify giving higher scores to single player only games. Shouldn't a game with poor multiplayer be ranked higher than a game with no multiplayer at all? Or at least equal?

Disclosure: I am no Conker fanboy. I tried and hated both the N64 version and the Xbox demo and won't be buying this game regardless of the reviews. I just think Mr. Hilary Goldstein did a horrible job and definately shouldn't be a video game journalist.

He even went so far as to compare Conker to British humore. Heh. Yeah. Whatever.

[Savok]

Had you been through the Australian education system, you'd know that quote to be 100% true. And all the drunken poo jokes are British humor, the lower end everyone hates, not the good stuff like Monty Python and Black Books.

[MosBen]

I don't know Furious Wang, I think your system would encourage companies to tag on shitty muliplayer to what should be a single player game in hopes of snagging an extra couple decimals in their reviews. I don't want the next Silent Hill to have any kind of multiplayer because it just isn't that type of game, and I don't want the dev team to feal like they're being punished in the score for not tagging on some kind of multiplayer to boost the score a bit. At the same time I see your point that it sort of sucks that the single player game is evidently really great and that's not going to be apparant to people just reading the score, which is especially unfair since this is *mostly* going to be a single player game.

The solution, to my mind, it to score single and multiplayer portions separately. That way in games like this we'd be able to see that it's mostly a single player experience with a so-so multiplayer portion if you're interested. At the same time we'd get to see that in games like most of the UT games the single player is only worth playing to get a handle on the weapons and maps and isn't actually tons of fun, at least that's my opinion.

[mos]

In the time it took Rare to remake one old (overrated) game, a normal company would have made two new games.

What the hell does that mean? Maybe they weren't paid all that much to make the port, and only put a couple of programmers and artists on the task.

[Splat]

It's a sentence that contains absolutely ZERO bias is what it is. :rolleyes:

[Jacob Singer]

Well, never having played the original, I'm looking forward to this big-time.

And multiplayer can go toss.

[AnthraxKitty]

News is so much better when it comes WITH flamebait!

[Vandenh]

Everything about this games sounded good to me in that review.

/pre-orders

[Borys]

Everything about this games sounded good to me in that review.

/pre-orders

You don't say.

Shocking!

[Hellstorm]

Let's see:

1) Game is still censored till you beat it.
2) Whole sections have been excised from the N64 version
3) Sequences made easier
4) Crappy multiplayer
5) 5 years for this?
6) Somewhere in Kyoto Japan a man named Yamauchi is laugh that he scammed Gates for a half billion.

Thankfully I got Conker how it was intended to be, on the N64... hmmm I wonder if you could download this for the Rev?

[Adam Blue]

I'll be getting this. It was a great game on the N64 that I always thought I would go back to. It will be badass, mediocre review or not.

[Lon Lon Rabbit]

6) Somewhere in Kyoto Japan a man named Yamauchi is laugh that he scammed Gates for a half billion.

I have to agree with that...
Rare CONSISTENTLY made great games on the 64, which came out more frequently than 1st party Nintendo games, and they've now been with MS for quite some time, but there is almost nothing (let alone anything of the calibre one would have expected from them) of their's on the shelves. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is only the second game of theirs for MS right? I have a feeling they've made even more games for the GBA since their buyout than they have for MS...
I wonder, has Rare lost their touch?
Conker had been in production for a long time, and has turned out average. Will Kameo and PD0 be equally dissapointing?

[eatme]

In the time it took Rare to remake one old (overrated) game, a normal company would have made two new games.
What the hell does that mean? Maybe they weren't paid all that much to make the port, and only put a couple of programmers and artists on the task.

It means if76 was pissed he didn't have anything else to do on a Saturday night.

[if76]

What the hell does that mean? Maybe they weren't paid all that much to make the port, and only put a couple of programmers and artists on the task.

It means that the company that brought us goldeneye, perfect dark and a bunch of other games for N64 could only muster up a kiddie game (grabbed by ghoulies) and a shot for shot remake of an old game (conker).

It upsets me that they couldn't make a new conker game for the xbox. Even if most xbox owners didn't play the original a lot of us did. Would adding some updated movie parodies really have been that hard? I mean Saving Private Ryan and the Matrix are a bit on the dated side.

With all the money put into art and programming you'd think they could have payed some game and level designers to think up some new content.

[if76]

It means if76 was pissed he didn't have anything else to do on a Saturday night.

Actually I saw Batman Begins with my family. It was quite a lovely evening.

[Royal Fool]

I tried the Xbox demo and was horrified with the controls and overall blandness of the single player remake.

[Kelegacy]

I have to agree with that...
Rare CONSISTENTLY made great games on the 64, which came out more frequently than 1st party Nintendo games, and they've now been with MS for quite some time, but there is almost nothing (let alone anything of the calibre one would have expected from them) of their's on the shelves. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is only the second game of theirs for MS right? I have a feeling they've made even more games for the GBA since their buyout than they have for MS...
I wonder, has Rare lost their touch?
Conker had been in production for a long time, and has turned out average. Will Kameo and PD0 be equally dissapointing?

Grabbed By the Ghoulies is a Rare game for the Xbox. HAHA! Good riddance, Rare. You have been corrupted by the big green machine.

Actually, if PDZ turns out to be a good game, maybe Rare will be on the beginnings of a comeback. I just hate to see such a great company be bought like greedy whores and become a lackluster dev. team. Their days with Nintendo were so much more beautiful. :(

[Vandenh]

>Their days with Nintendo were so much more beautiful

The days before Nintendo were even better. Your point?

[Kelegacy]

This review is bullshit.

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

The guy goes on and on about how the single player game is "great but not as great as the N64 version".

What justification does he give for this reasoning?

"They made some of the hard parts easier."

Come on now. That's just foolishness.

They drastically improve the graphics, tighten up the controls, and smooth out the gameplay but somehow the original version is still better. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Ever. And I've heard some pretty dumb things. Like this quote for instance:

"No, my obvious point was education doesn't make a person intelligence."

Second,

Why in the fuck does this guy claim the single player is 9.1, then bring the score down a full point because he doesn't like the multiplayer? That's fucking piss poor reviewing right there.

A good multiplayer experience should always bring the score of a game up, but a bad one should never bring the score down.

Why? Because then you simply cannot justify giving higher scores to single player only games. Shouldn't a game with poor multiplayer be ranked higher than a game with no multiplayer at all? Or at least equal?

Disclosure: I am no Conker fanboy. I tried and hated both the N64 version and the Xbox demo and won't be buying this game regardless of the reviews. I just think Mr. Hilary Goldstein did a horrible job and definately shouldn't be a video game journalist.

He even went so far as to compare Conker to British humore. Heh. Yeah. Whatever.

There IS alot of british style humor in the games. But i think remakes will always get lower scores than their originals. Had Rare actually made a SEQUEL rather than updating a game from only a couple years ago, maybe it would have scored higher. I dont look too fondly upon remakes, and i do agree with them getting lower scores if they are just more of the same, with updated graphics being the primary thing. MGS for Gamecube is such an example. Drastically overhauled graphics, but still not better than the original. It would be like remaking this generation's Ninja Gaiden for the XB360, but with better graphics and making the harder parts easier. I dont think it would deserve a better score.

[Kelegacy]

>Their days with Nintendo were so much more beautiful

The days before Nintendo were even better. Your point?

I'm having trouble remembering them beyond Nintendo. Who were they with before? I only remember Nintendo, because, as per the question about my point, while with Nintendo they made totally superb games. The N64 alone gave us a large library of Rare games that rocked. The Xbox releases since the aquisition of Rare? The horrid GBTG and an update of a game from a few years ago. WOW!!

[Hellstorm]

It means that the company that brought us goldeneye, perfect dark and a bunch of other games for N64 could only muster up a kiddie game (grabbed by ghoulies) and a shot for shot remake of an old game (conker).



Now let's be fair, the guy who was the visionary of Goldeneye and for the most part half of Perfect Dark, Martin Hollis, left half way through Perfect Dark's production to work for Nintendo and start his own company Zoonami, heck he even says PD was never going to be as good as Goldeneye on the Zoonami website. Meanwhile David Doak and almost nearly all the original Goldeneye team left during Perfect Dark to form Free Radical. There are hardly any original team members working on PDZ. Heck Bungie had to send some people there to help get this game back on track.

Remeber when Allard or Bach said, "Rare will release 5 games for the xbox in 2 years for sure." Maybe they really ment 2 games in 5 years?

[EGO]

IGn are a bunch of twats... They're the most biased, illitterate, close-minded bunch of asshats I've ever seen get that much traffic.

It makes NO SENSE to mark a game DOWN for a feature, unless the feature is fataly-flawed, hype or not.

IGN and the other reviewer-fucks need to start reviewing games on the merit of what it IS, not what their fanboy-wetdreams WANT it to BE.

So what if he THINKS the N64 version is better! How is THIS version? How is THIS game? In the wonderful world of games, gamers are such shit-for-brains that they can't be arsed to play an "old game", so remakes/remixes/whatever are valid ways of brining back great games for a new audience. It's not like music or movies, where people are smart enough to look at something old and enjoy it.

Reviewers need to pull their heads out of their biased-asses, otherwise people will stop listening to them, especially since they have as much power in the gaming community as the guy behind the counter at GameStop!

[kizke]

I rushed out and bought Conker's Bad Fur Day on N64 the day it came out. In my mind it's the second best N64 game, next to Ocarina of Time. It's got such a wild variety of gameplay modes, tons of multiplayer fun, and a varied and hilarious story. When I went to the Penny Arcade Expo last year the first game I went to play (skipping over Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and Fable) was Conker: Live and Reloaded. I played both a multiplayer portion and a remade single player portion. Now this was almost a full year before its release so some things probably changed but what I played was damn near spot on. I was thoroughly impressed with the graphical enhancements (couldn't hear the sound so well in a loud room but it sounded ok) and the gameplay felt just as solid as before.

I'll be picking this up on Xbox too.

[Borys]

IGN gives Jade Empire 9.9. All is good. Gamespot is THE DEVIL.
IGN gives Conker 8.1. Hell breaks loose. IGN is THE DEVIL.

Oh the irony.

[Kelegacy]

IGN gives Jade Empire 9.9. All is good. Gamespot is THE DEVIL.
IGN gives Conker 8.1. Hell breaks loose. IGN is THE DEVIL.

Oh the irony.

I agreed with Gamespot's review on JE. Most times Gamespot is spot on with their reviews. a 9.9 is WAAAAAAY too high for so flawed a game. For a remake, an 8.1 is a good score. Like i said, if this game was a remake of a NES or SNES game, maybe it wouldnt bother me so. But it's a remake of a game from LAST generation. That's way too soon for me. Why not a sequel instead?

[Nessus]

I agree that they should rate a game based on its merits, not in how it compares to other versions.

Being primarily a GameCube player (I also own a PS2 and Xbox but prefer to buy the GameCube version when I can) I wanted to find out how Pandora Tomorrow for GameCube was. Just try finding a review that doesn't compare it to the Xbox and PS2 version. They always bring up the lack of online multiplayer and detract points. Except that I was never going to be playing the game online in the first place. I'm more interested in how the graphics and gameplay and story compare to the original GameCube Splinter Cell, which I thought was a great game.

And in my mind weighing online multiplayer so heavily is stupid, at least this generation when market penetration is so low. We're still at the point where like 85% of Xbox owners and 90% of PS2 owners aren't online. I don't like the idea of reviewing a game under conditions the vast majority of people who will be buying the game do not meet.

Online portions of games should be reviewed as a seperate package. I think then Halo 2 would have recieved a more fair score. I liked Halo 2 single player, it did some cool things, but it was shorter than the first game and still had some pretty serious flaws (the cliffhanger ending didn't bother me as much as it might have because I knew about it going in). Halo 2 did not deserve a 9.8, even if the online multiplayer is amazing, because most Xbox players will never play it online.

Of course such a system would make reviews even more complicated, and there'd be no way to standardize it.

[Kelegacy]

I agree that they should rate a game based on its merits, not in how it compares to other versions.

Being primarily a GameCube player (I also own a PS2 and Xbox but prefer to buy the GameCube version when I can) I wanted to find out how Pandora Tomorrow for GameCube was. Just try finding a review that doesn't compare it to the Xbox and PS2 version. They always bring up the lack of online multiplayer and detract points. Except that I was never going to be playing the game online in the first place. I'm more interested in how the graphics and gameplay and story compare to the original GameCube Splinter Cell, which I thought was a great game.

And in my mind weighing online multiplayer so heavily is stupid, at least this generation when market penetration is so low. We're still at the point where like 85% of Xbox owners and 90% of PS2 owners aren't online. I don't like the idea of reviewing a game under conditions the vast majority of people who will be buying the game do not meet.

Online portions of games should be reviewed as a seperate package. I think then Halo 2 would have recieved a more fair score. I liked Halo 2 single player, it did some cool things, but it was shorter than the first game and still had some pretty serious flaws (the cliffhanger ending didn't bother me as much as it might have because I knew about it going in). Halo 2 did not deserve a 9.8, even if the online multiplayer is amazing, because most Xbox players will never play it online.

Of course such a system would make reviews even more complicated, and there'd be no way to standardize it.

Hmm, i never really thought of that. If Halo had no multiplayer, would it have received such a high score or be the defining game for the Xbox? Perhaps not. I dont like the game, but then again, I dont play online games very often.

[Furious Wang]

I don't know Furious Wang, I think your system would encourage companies to tag on shitty muliplayer to what should be a single player game in hopes of snagging an extra couple decimals in their reviews. I don't want the next Silent Hill to have any kind of multiplayer because it just isn't that type of game, and I don't want the dev team to feal like they're being punished in the score for not tagging on some kind of multiplayer to boost the score a bit. At the same time I see your point that it sort of sucks that the single player game is evidently really great and that's not going to be apparant to people just reading the score, which is especially unfair since this is *mostly* going to be a single player game.


No. I said Good Multiplayer: Bring the Score up, Bad Multiplayer: Don't bring the score down. If the the Multiplayer is mediocre Don't bring the score up.

BUT, if you're going to bring a game's score down for bad multiplayer...well by that poor logic then you should bring a game's score down for not having multiplayer at all, shouldn't you?

If you want to review multiplayer and singleplayer seperately, even better. Just don't average the scores together. Because that means nothing.

[Kagger]

So what if he THINKS the N64 version is better! How is THIS version? How is THIS game? In the wonderful world of games, gamers are such shit-for-brains that they can't be arsed to play an "old game", so remakes/remixes/whatever are valid ways of brining back great games for a new audience. It's not like music or movies, where people are smart enough to look at something old and enjoy it.




I find that interesting.

I am 16, which means my age could be considered "weened on the dreamcast"

Yet, I went from a SNES to ps2, and even after I got my ps2, I went back and played (and purchased Super Metroid) and LoZ A link to the past because my brother doesn't like them, and he was the older one with more money when we had that system during its life. And Pilot wings, got that one too, but he liked that.


I love classics

I agree, lowering a score for a feature is dumb

I think to Penny Arcade on this. They were aggrivated with Republic Commando for MP when they could have done stuff like Co-Op. But even then, your not grading the game, just stating, which is what PA actually did

[SaintArnold]

Whether or not you agree with the review, the writing is so bad it's nearly incomprehensible. And when did game reviews stoop to saying "God damn" and worse yet, "a$$hole" ($$ *not* added by me!). It reads like a rant written be a near illiterate.

[Adam Blue]

So are we saying that Multiplayer is just a feature and not considered part of the actual score even though it's part of the game?

Halo is multiplayer, there's a good story in there, but it was made for it. No multiplayer and the singleplayer would have to be 30+ hours.

[MukiMuki]

Note : Badly written rant with about 3-5 swear words follows.

I'm sorry, five years? Are you retarded?

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/371/371977p1.html

Okay, so assuming Conquer comes out today and they started development the day of the purchase, that's about 2½ years.

Note that every game company out there needs to do research and development. Rare in particular does a fuck-ton of it before they can make good games. They had a good deal as a Nintendo 2nd party, and probably had a good year before the GameCube's launch to start work on games.

However, in 5 years...

They had an N64 game canceled.

It then had to be rebuilt from the ground up. This means brand new art assets, a completely new game direction, all new hardware that they were 100% unfamiliar with; unlike PSX to PS2 developers, Rare has ZERO experience with an optical media driven architecture.

They had to create flying stages for a game that had no such thing in mind when they started it, let alone had any business with 'em. Turning Dinosaur Planet into a Star Fox game was fucking stupid on Nintendo's part. They shoulda just started from scratch and released DP on the N64.

First off, I'd like to point out that while the GameCube has been very profitable, Nintendo hasn't exactly been in success-land with THEIR OWN MAJOR game releases. Wind Waker sold a LOT worse than Ocarina, and Sunshine was a goddamn pile ( I'm going to personally kill Professor E. Gadd for attempting to rape all that is fun in the Mario universe. ). I'm talking sales-wise for BOTH of 'em.


Okay, so let's fast-forward 2 years. Rare got their release schedule jumed about and one of their games crushed into a franchise title. It doesn't do so well. Let's sell them to Microsoft.

Okay, what you're now telling Rare is that the last 3-4 years of Research and Development, a good 80% of the programming know-how that goes into a game's code....

IS GONE.

Finito.

From scratch we start.

Now they have to learn shaders and hard drive coding too. That's just great.

I'm not saying that Rare is perfect and that the quality of their X-Box titles should be completely ignored. If they can't put out a good REMAKE, they have issues regardless.

All I'm saying is that this isn't their generation. This is the generation in which they re-group, re-learn, and start building up the research that's going to make their XB360 generation games SHINE.

Try to ignore Rare for the next few months. Hopefully we'll see something nice come next year.

I don't say this 'cause Rare's PDZ preview was indicative of them getting back to their quality of title-making. Well, not entirely anyway. I'm saying this 'cause the XB360 is more powerful than anyone's giving it credit for. 30% power isn't quite where the dev kits are. NO ONE knows what kind of a difference unified shaders are going to make. Itagaki's jaw is gonna fucking hit the floor when he sees just how many polygons that thing can REALLY push when his lighting and effects model barely touches the pixel shader requirements of that chip.

2K6 is gonna be an interesting year =3

[MosBen]

Fair enough Furious, I think we can agree that the better system is to review the single and multiplayer aspects of games separately without averaging or otherwise mixing the scores in anyway.

[Chandler]

hey, finally they gave a review that was lower than what it should been, instead of all the games they overrated... (pariah, doom3, ut2k4)

[Adam Blue]

That was a good point made about Rare. MS obviously wanted them for the long run, and put together titles in the mean-time.

But I could be wrong, some of you seem to know the team personally.

[if76]

Note : Badly written rant with about 3-5 swear words follows.

I'm sorry, five years? Are you retarded?

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/371/371977p1.html

Okay, so assuming Conquer comes out today and they started development the day of the purchase, that's about 2½ years.

Note that every game company out there needs to do research and development. Rare in particular does a fuck-ton of it before they can make good games. They had a good deal as a Nintendo 2nd party, and probably had a good year before the GameCube's launch to start work on games.

However, in 5 years...

They had an N64 game canceled.

It then had to be rebuilt from the ground up. This means brand new art assets, a completely new game direction, all new hardware that they were 100% unfamiliar with; unlike PSX to PS2 developers, Rare has ZERO experience with an optical media driven architecture.

They had to create flying stages for a game that had no such thing in mind when they started it, let alone had any business with 'em. Turning Dinosaur Planet into a Star Fox game was fucking stupid on Nintendo's part. They shoulda just started from scratch and released DP on the N64.

First off, I'd like to point out that while the GameCube has been very profitable, Nintendo hasn't exactly been in success-land with THEIR OWN MAJOR game releases. Wind Waker sold a LOT worse than Ocarina, and Sunshine was a goddamn pile ( I'm going to personally kill Professor E. Gadd for attempting to rape all that is fun in the Mario universe. ). I'm talking sales-wise for BOTH of 'em.


Okay, so let's fast-forward 2 years. Rare got their release schedule jumed about and one of their games crushed into a franchise title. It doesn't do so well. Let's sell them to Microsoft.

Okay, what you're now telling Rare is that the last 3-4 years of Research and Development, a good 80% of the programming know-how that goes into a game's code....

IS GONE.

Finito.

From scratch we start.

Now they have to learn shaders and hard drive coding too. That's just great.

I'm not saying that Rare is perfect and that the quality of their X-Box titles should be completely ignored. If they can't put out a good REMAKE, they have issues regardless.

All I'm saying is that this isn't their generation. This is the generation in which they re-group, re-learn, and start building up the research that's going to make their XB360 generation games SHINE.

Try to ignore Rare for the next few months. Hopefully we'll see something nice come next year.

I don't say this 'cause Rare's PDZ preview was indicative of them getting back to their quality of title-making. Well, not entirely anyway. I'm saying this 'cause the XB360 is more powerful than anyone's giving it credit for. 30% power isn't quite where the dev kits are. NO ONE knows what kind of a difference unified shaders are going to make. Itagaki's jaw is gonna fucking hit the floor when he sees just how many polygons that thing can REALLY push when his lighting and effects model barely touches the pixel shader requirements of that chip.

2K6 is gonna be an interesting year =3


Ok even if you preface your post with "Badly written rant" that's still no excuse for grammar this terrible.

Grammar isn't just for english teachers; it actually makes things easier to read. I probably reread a few of those sentences two or three times just to try to understand what you were trying to say. At least proofread to make sure at least you can understand it yourself.

That said, I think the "they had to learn to code for harddrives" is a lame excuse. Whatever the media format is, the programmer looks at it the same way: a place where data is read and perhaps written. Not to mention since Conker was coded for N64 there wasn't anything that needed to be saved to a large storage device (like the xbox harddrive).

The fact that it took Rare that long to remake an old game can only be excused by the fact that they probably spent the majority of time on the multiplayer portion which I feel was probably a pretty big waste of time. People prefer realistic online war games to cartoony ones no matter what. It just feels a lot cooler to fire a realistic gun in a realistic situation. Can't explain it but it's true.

Rare should have known that an online version of Conker could never compete with the Halos and the Unreals and instead put their focus into a brand new single-player game.

[Achilles]

In the time it took Rare to remake one old (overrated) game, a normal company would have made two new games. Well in 2 and ½ years a normal company could have made 1 and 1/4th quality this-gen games (and before someone argues that it’s not quality, it certainly did have a lot of work put into it, just look at it). And as far as it being overrated, a lot of people really seemed to like it. I pre-ordered Conker about 2 months ago expecting it to be like the original. I’m glad it’s easier but a game being easy will always lose points with the reviewers. They’d much rather have Devil May Cry 3 or Ninja Gaiden than something normal people can get through without any frustration.

Why didn’t they put out a sequel instead of a remake? Because the first one sold poorly, that’s why. Outside of the sorts of people you’d find here very few people played it. It wasn’t a franchise that could sell, so they probably remade the first one hoping to get the series off to a better start on a platform that more closely fit Conker’s intended market.

Selling poorly is by comparison to other Rare efforts of the times, It sold about 400,000 units.

[Hellstorm]

Note : Badly written rant with about 3-5 swear words follows.

I'm sorry, five years? Are you retarded?

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/371/371977p1.html

Okay, so assuming Conquer comes out today and they started development the day of the purchase, that's about 2½ years.

Note that every game company out there needs to do research and development. Rare in particular does a fuck-ton of it before they can make good games. They had a good deal as a Nintendo 2nd party, and probably had a good year before the GameCube's launch to start work on games.

However, in 5 years...

They had an N64 game canceled.

It then had to be rebuilt from the ground up. This means brand new art assets, a completely new game direction, all new hardware that they were 100% unfamiliar with; unlike PSX to PS2 developers, Rare has ZERO experience with an optical media driven architecture.

They had to create flying stages for a game that had no such thing in mind when they started it, let alone had any business with 'em. Turning Dinosaur Planet into a Star Fox game was fucking stupid on Nintendo's part. They shoulda just started from scratch and released DP on the N64.

First off, I'd like to point out that while the GameCube has been very profitable, Nintendo hasn't exactly been in success-land with THEIR OWN MAJOR game releases. Wind Waker sold a LOT worse than Ocarina, and Sunshine was a goddamn pile ( I'm going to personally kill Professor E. Gadd for attempting to rape all that is fun in the Mario universe. ). I'm talking sales-wise for BOTH of 'em.


Okay, so let's fast-forward 2 years. Rare got their release schedule jumed about and one of their games crushed into a franchise title. It doesn't do so well. Let's sell them to Microsoft.

Okay, what you're now telling Rare is that the last 3-4 years of Research and Development, a good 80% of the programming know-how that goes into a game's code....

IS GONE.

Finito.

From scratch we start.

Now they have to learn shaders and hard drive coding too. That's just great.

I'm not saying that Rare is perfect and that the quality of their X-Box titles should be completely ignored. If they can't put out a good REMAKE, they have issues regardless.

All I'm saying is that this isn't their generation. This is the generation in which they re-group, re-learn, and start building up the research that's going to make their XB360 generation games SHINE.

Try to ignore Rare for the next few months. Hopefully we'll see something nice come next year.

I don't say this 'cause Rare's PDZ preview was indicative of them getting back to their quality of title-making. Well, not entirely anyway. I'm saying this 'cause the XB360 is more powerful than anyone's giving it credit for. 30% power isn't quite where the dev kits are. NO ONE knows what kind of a difference unified shaders are going to make. Itagaki's jaw is gonna fucking hit the floor when he sees just how many polygons that thing can REALLY push when his lighting and effects model barely touches the pixel shader requirements of that chip.

2K6 is gonna be an interesting year =3


That's a hella lot of damage control for one post. Not to mention you got the name of the game wrong. I don't know if you considered that this CONKER remake has been in the works since Rare first recieved GC dev kits before anyone else. So there is no way in bloody hell was this done in under 2 years.

Look, the golden(eye) days of Rare are gone, if the magic was still there, and it might be but so far we haven't seen jack, I highly doubt Nintendo would have sold them. Half a billion dollars spent just of PDZ? For that ONE game? Get real. The truth of the matter is this, Rare's games outside of PDZ do not appeal to the typical Xbox/X360 owner. Kameo my look a little mature, but crappy character designs aside, I believe there is still singing and dancing in that game. What is bound to sell less than 125k on the X360 or Xbox would have probably sold 500k on the GC.

In the end, think of the montly burn rate at Rare, not to mention the half billion cost of aquisition. I don't think PDZ will ever sell as many units to even pay half of that off. In the end I see MS doing to Rare what they did to FASA. Remember them? They used to be a 100+ person company and now they are down to 20 people and nothing on the release horizon. Besides the Stamper Bros. are just going to wait till their contract with MS ends and bolt. The very next day expect "Imperials have entered the base! Imperials have entered the base!" to blare over the PA system in Twycross as pink slips fly.

[Kelegacy]

No. I said Good Multiplayer: Bring the Score up, Bad Multiplayer: Don't bring the score down. If the the Multiplayer is mediocre Don't bring the score up.

BUT, if you're going to bring a game's score down for bad multiplayer...well by that poor logic then you should bring a game's score down for not having multiplayer at all, shouldn't you?

If you want to review multiplayer and singleplayer seperately, even better. Just don't average the scores together. Because that means nothing.

I dont think multiplayer should effect the scoring, unless it's a game like Unreal Tourney or Battlefield. Games that have NO multiplayer should never be scored lower because you should base the game on the stuff it contains, not what it should have. You could still say in the written review that multiplayer could have been great, but dont lower the score because of it.

Multiplayer COULD help a game's score out. But yes, I agree to some extent that you should reward good multiplayer and not punish bad. Or better yet, how about for games that DO contain multiplayer, have a scoring area for that. Since according to IGN, Overall Score does not mean an average of the other categories, the multiplayer scoring wouldnt have to effect the overall score. it would just give the reader a head's up that if they want this game for multiplayer, steer clear.

That's why you read the reviews, and not just glance at the scores.

[mister_slim]

Since the point of remaking Conker was to add online multiplayer, I think it's fair to subtract points. Otherwise this is just a graphics update and a re-release, which Nintendo get castigated for on a daily basis.

[Kelegacy]

Since the point of remaking Conker was to add online multiplayer, I think it's fair to subtract points. Otherwise this is just a graphics update and a re-release, which Nintendo get castigated for on a daily basis.

I was thinking about that. If the word LIVE in the games subtitle were an indication of online support, then maybe points should be taken away. Hell, it's a remake!! So you HAVE to be more critical of the game the second time through: we've all seen and done it before, so now we're have to score it with "so what?" in mind. Otherwise, Rare could release Conker 2006 and then 2007 and get the same decent score? No. So yes, if they added a new feature to the game to make it "different" and the primary selling point, then okay, a critical examination of that addition IS in order. Taking points off would be warranted and justified.

So basically I dont know. Why cry over spilled milk anyway? 8.1 is a good score.

EDIT: I found this description of the game on Game Rankings:

Conker: Live and Reloaded features intense Deathmatch and Campaign story line modes via Xbox Live and System Link, and players can compete as one of six combat specialists across multi-mission campaigns covering Old War and Future War. The warfare promises to deliver the non-stop action, humor, and innuendos Conker is famous for. Also included is the critically acclaimed single-player game, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, completely recreated for the Xbox with stunning graphics and unparalleled attitude.

"Also included"? It sounds like the single player game was just thrown it as a secondary feature, with the focus being on multiplayer. If this is true, then YES you can subtract all the points you want from the damned game if said multiplayer is bad. It's a multiplayer game at it's heart, but the SP game is for added enjoyment. Kinda like Tribes: Vengeance. While most games have a focus on SP and MP thrown in as a bonus, it seems Conker may be vice versa?

[Neverborne]

Begin Rant:

Okay, I don't know where Rare got their "developer-GOD," status. They had two good games for the N64: Goldeneye and Conker. The rest were throw-away or forgettable titles that spent way too long in the development cycle for the complete pile of crap that they were when they were completed (yes, I'm including Perfect Dark. It just tried too hard to be more than Goldeneye, and didn't succeed.). And nothing has changed! "Star Fox: Adventures?" "Grabbed by the Ghoulies?" What the Hell, Rare?

And let's all gather around and remember Conker before his Bad Fur Day. That's right, I'm talking about, "Conker's Pocket Tales (Rated E for Everyone)". I'll let a snippet from the IGN review (check under "C" in the Gameboy reviews, folks) remind us of what Conker was before the N64:

"Rare fans take note: this is aimed solely at kids. Your friends and foe are acorns, your goal is to collect birthday presents, and you are on a quest to reclaim your girlfriend, Berri."

And who wants to remember Rare before the N64. I mean, they had a good arcade game or two in the 80's, but they also had, "BattleToads and DoubleDragon?" WTF.

Microsoft got the shaft when they bought Rare.

[Chris_D]

My fav game by far from Rare is Blast Corps which is just incredibly addictive and made good use of the new 3d hardware at the time. Goldeneye was a bit overrated I thought although still fun, but that could be because I come from playing fps on pcs and it therefore didn't impress me as much.

Perhaps IGN should have handed review duties over to someone who hadn't played the game before, as that is presumably the primary target audience of the game. Having said that, I played the demo and it didn't do a lot for me. Back to Jade Empire :).

[31 Flavas]

My fav game by far from Rare is Blast Corps which is just incredibly addictive and made good use of the new 3d hardware at the time.Time to get moving!

[Roc Ingersol]

Battletoads was pretty good for platformers of its time; crazy hard, but such was the design vogue. Then there was Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct: KI was a pretty damn good 2d fighter, and DKC was hella fun too.
I never got around to Conker or Perfect Dark, but I hardly consider Rare good only because of Goldeneye (though that was a fucking fantastic title).
I consider them a dependable developer of pretty darn good games, with occassional spikes into the 'really good'.