Games From the Grave: Conker’s Bad Fur Day
Conker's Bad Fur Day is a traditional platformer with a strong cartoon influence, much like Banjo Kazooie, Chameleon Twist, Glover and dozens of others for the N64. What separates Conker from the rest, however, is that Conker is an adult game. A very adult game. The humor found in this game definitely borders what some people might consider “tasteless” “woeful” or even “vile.” That said, I thoroughly enjoy this game. The humor, the characters, the situations, they're all wonderful.
Our protagonist is Conker, a red squirrel with a taste for alcohol and destructive decisions. He sports a baby blue hoodie, running shoes, gloves for those cold nights, and of course, no pants. His quest is an epic one, to be sure. His goal? To find his way back home after a night of excessive drinking. Yes, this game is that awesome.
The quirkiness is hard to understand if you've never played this game. It's very deceiving. You see a cute little squirrel doing cute little things, almost aimlessly. You might recognize this theme from early-morning children's programming. But minutes of gameplay reveal the cuteness to be only an illusion. Our innocent little game is caked with dirty language, coarse characters and random acts of naughtiness.
Here is a brief slice of the game's oddity. Early in the game you are tasked with assisting an anamorphic steel block, who is being crushed out of fear by an even larger, female block from a rodent menace, who plagues our geometric friends with onslaughts of gas emissions. The rat, who is cross-eyed, bucked toothed, and speech impaired cannot simply be smacked away. Oh no, dear friends, our enemy is apparently a closet masochist. Even under conditions of significant pain and blood loss, his quest to pester is not interrupted.
To help our metal pals, you must journey to a “cheese” pen, where wide eyed cheese wedges bounce happily in the morning sun. Their merriment is cut short, however, when you clobber them with your frying pan, kidnap them, and feed them to the gassy rodent, who's hunger is so great he simply cannot be content eating merely one screaming, pleading cheese-person. Instead, he eats until he can eat no more and then, he eats some more. The vermin expresses a single regret, which not surprisingly, is that he has eaten too much. He then explodes in a fantastic and gory display, emitting a final fart from his dismembered tail end. In exchange for our murderous and genocidal errand, the friendly block thanks us for our assistance and gives us a snippet of advice. Joy.
A little later in the game, you convince a sunflower to “pollinate” by using swarms of bees with a penchant for tickling to immobilize her. Afterwards, she is so thankful you forcefully invaded her flowers without consent, she allows use of her large and supple breasts as a springboard to jump to an almost unreachable platform. I say again, this game is that awesome.
There are a few flaws, though. Our furry little friend is, for some reason, very slippery, which makes some of the more detailed platform work very frustrating. Thin strips of walk-way will be your biggest foe in this game, as even the slowest of movements can end in disaster. Though there aren't many occasions where precision is necessary, when it is, you'll find yourself repeating and rerepeating them, cursing squirrels for their poor taste in shoes.
Aside from that, the game is very enjoyable. The humor is slightly British, but thankfully not outdated. The biggest charm of this game is definitely not the platforming, it's the abundance of strange and unadulterated humor. Anyone who enjoys a unique game should check it out, if you haven't already.