Played this game out of a curiosity for what the hell it is. It's basically a strange remnant of the game Conker's Twelve Tales, the game Conker's Bad Fur Day was going to be until someone at Rare was like "hey guys, you see this South Park show? crazy stuff".
If I'm being honest, I think I would have preferred Twelve Tales over what we ended up getting, so I was very curious to see what this game could contain, for that reason and for the fact that no one talks about it. I mean, people were crazy about Rare during this era, why would this game just get totally wiped from our collective memory?
Conker's Pocket Tales is not a platformer, despite you having a very bad jump and even worse ground pound. Due to it's top-down perspective, world layout, NPCs, and progression in the form of completing certain objectives in order to unlock other areas, this game has more in common with Zelda than any Rare game at the time, mixed with some elements of Collect-a-thon. It could be considered a top-down Banjo-Kazooie in some ways, which Rare would eventually go on to do on the GBA.
The story is that Conker was having a birthday party until a horrifying acorn man shows up, kidnaps his girlfriend Berri, and steals all his presents. This made me assume that acorn men were the villains of this game, until I eventually had to talk to an acorn man and I learned this is a world where most of the people living in it are either acorn men or some form of beast trying to kill you. There's also Conker's rival Honker, but he's trying to kill you so I would put him in the latter category. Conker and Berri are basically the only squirrels around here, it's scary actually.
As for the actual game, it's Zelda with no mechanics. The only weapon you have for all the way up until I gave up (about halfway) is a slingshot that takes a long time to shoot, so you will get attacked by the enemy before you get the chance to hit them. There are also enemies you can only ground pound, and the perspective of the game and the timing of the move itself makes it incredibly frustrating to do this. The pause menu is full of slots that I never got to fill throughout playing the game, so no switching items to take care of some enemies faster or solve different puzzle.
In fact, every puzzle I encountered was some version of "push these boxes" or "press these switches in the right order through trial and error". There are some areas that require platforming, and those are a nightmare every time. Sometimes there are side areas that you can check out to find extra presents, and that's fun because it starts to feel like a real game, but then you accidentally run into an enemy because you couldn't have possibly seen them coming due to the size of the screen.
This game is stingy with health, and I believe it may be because of the fact that you can save anywhere, and when you restart the game you will start exactly where you saved with the same amount of collectables. But when you die, you are forced to watch the logos and intro again before getting back to the game's start menu, a process that feels longer every time it happens. The most egregious part of this opening you are forced to watch over and over again is that it makes you select you language again??? Does the game just, forget the language I speak when I die???
Of course it's very easy to die due to the circumstances I described previously, and also because the nature of these very chunky pre-rendered sprites is that it's hard to tell when something is close enough to hit you. This means a lot of watching that opening, and telling the game, yes, believe it or not I don't actually want to start playing the game in German after dying. The sprites in general just don't look great, nothing about this game really does. The faces of the acorn people give me some joy in how goofy they are, but I don't understand filling the world with acorn men instead of, you know, other cute animals. These acorn men also all have the same dialogue, just a generic message on where to go next. I'm not exaggerating, I mean it's literally the same message from each NPC, which is insane. Isn't part of the joy of these games finding weird NPCs and what they have to say about some bullshit? Unless they're part of a quest, they just spout the exact same message each time.
I don't know, I guess I gave this 1 star instead of a half star because if I was forced to finish game, I could probably do it and it wouldn't be the worst possible thing. But yeah, game isn't good, don't know why I wrote so much about it. Conker has a rival named Honker.
If I'm being honest, I think I would have preferred Twelve Tales over what we ended up getting, so I was very curious to see what this game could contain, for that reason and for the fact that no one talks about it. I mean, people were crazy about Rare during this era, why would this game just get totally wiped from our collective memory?
Conker's Pocket Tales is not a platformer, despite you having a very bad jump and even worse ground pound. Due to it's top-down perspective, world layout, NPCs, and progression in the form of completing certain objectives in order to unlock other areas, this game has more in common with Zelda than any Rare game at the time, mixed with some elements of Collect-a-thon. It could be considered a top-down Banjo-Kazooie in some ways, which Rare would eventually go on to do on the GBA.
The story is that Conker was having a birthday party until a horrifying acorn man shows up, kidnaps his girlfriend Berri, and steals all his presents. This made me assume that acorn men were the villains of this game, until I eventually had to talk to an acorn man and I learned this is a world where most of the people living in it are either acorn men or some form of beast trying to kill you. There's also Conker's rival Honker, but he's trying to kill you so I would put him in the latter category. Conker and Berri are basically the only squirrels around here, it's scary actually.
As for the actual game, it's Zelda with no mechanics. The only weapon you have for all the way up until I gave up (about halfway) is a slingshot that takes a long time to shoot, so you will get attacked by the enemy before you get the chance to hit them. There are also enemies you can only ground pound, and the perspective of the game and the timing of the move itself makes it incredibly frustrating to do this. The pause menu is full of slots that I never got to fill throughout playing the game, so no switching items to take care of some enemies faster or solve different puzzle.
In fact, every puzzle I encountered was some version of "push these boxes" or "press these switches in the right order through trial and error". There are some areas that require platforming, and those are a nightmare every time. Sometimes there are side areas that you can check out to find extra presents, and that's fun because it starts to feel like a real game, but then you accidentally run into an enemy because you couldn't have possibly seen them coming due to the size of the screen.
This game is stingy with health, and I believe it may be because of the fact that you can save anywhere, and when you restart the game you will start exactly where you saved with the same amount of collectables. But when you die, you are forced to watch the logos and intro again before getting back to the game's start menu, a process that feels longer every time it happens. The most egregious part of this opening you are forced to watch over and over again is that it makes you select you language again??? Does the game just, forget the language I speak when I die???
Of course it's very easy to die due to the circumstances I described previously, and also because the nature of these very chunky pre-rendered sprites is that it's hard to tell when something is close enough to hit you. This means a lot of watching that opening, and telling the game, yes, believe it or not I don't actually want to start playing the game in German after dying. The sprites in general just don't look great, nothing about this game really does. The faces of the acorn people give me some joy in how goofy they are, but I don't understand filling the world with acorn men instead of, you know, other cute animals. These acorn men also all have the same dialogue, just a generic message on where to go next. I'm not exaggerating, I mean it's literally the same message from each NPC, which is insane. Isn't part of the joy of these games finding weird NPCs and what they have to say about some bullshit? Unless they're part of a quest, they just spout the exact same message each time.
I don't know, I guess I gave this 1 star instead of a half star because if I was forced to finish game, I could probably do it and it wouldn't be the worst possible thing. But yeah, game isn't good, don't know why I wrote so much about it. Conker has a rival named Honker.