With the launch of the Xbox 360 just months away, Conker: Live and Reloaded may be the last hurrah for the original Xbox, which is odd since the game has been another console's swan song already. It's been four years since this platformer/third-person shooter shocked Nintendo 64 users, but the game still holds up, which says something about the enduring nature of toilet humor.
The whole raunchy misadventure has been rebuilt for Xbox, making the titular squirrel so realistically fuzzy, you'd pet him if you weren't afraid he'd pee on you. And there's an all-new Xbox Live component, which lets you wage warfare influenced by Saving Private Ryan and The Terminator. Multiplayer battlefields are suitably frantic, but mostly because the maps are too small. So be prepared to die. A lot. Violently.
The original Conker was revolutionary with its use of context-sensitive commands, gory film spoofs and outrageous characters. Though these elements aren't as fresh as before, it's still nice to be serenaded once more by the Great Mighty Poo.
BATMAN BEGINS (T) (3.5 stars)
Electronic Arts
Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube
Riddle me this: What do you get when you combine Splinter Cell, Burnout 3 and Prince of Persia? Holy rip-off, Batman! It's Batman Begins, a game that "borrows" styles from multiple other titles and stashes them under its utility belt. Fortunately, the dark knight is smart enough to steal from superb franchises and spruce up Gotham City with top-notch production values.
FIRE EMBLEM: THE SACRED STONES (E) (4.5 stars)
Nintendo
GameBoy Advance
Leave no man behind! With endless supplies of disposable men, video games seldom make you appreciate the importance of life. Fire Emblem is the exception. When a character dies, he's dead, and because the story is so rich, you really grow attached to every paladin, mage and Pegasus knight you recruit. After strategically conquering an overwhelming number of foes, you'll lose a single comrade and restart the whole level without thinking twice.
JUICED (T) (3 stars)
THQ
Xbox, PlayStation 2
You know what racing sims have been missing? The suffocating feeling of enormous, inescapable, auto-repair debt. Juiced does a good job of capturing the sensation of speed during its races, but as you play for cash and pink slips, the difficulty revs up too quickly. You need to win cash to upgrade your ride, but you need to upgrade your ride to win cash—a Catch 22 that ultimately leaves you parked.
Matthew Scott Hunter has been known to mumble, "Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start" in his sleep. E-mail him at
[email protected].