To shoot the obvious elephant in the room right out of the gate: yes I think the additional bleeping on a lot the swearing is stupid, especially when the majority of the swearing in the N64 version was uncensored besides the F bombs. That being said I’d happily play this over the original version purely because the last third is borderline unplayable with the dated shooting controls. That goes doubly so if you’re playing it through Rare Replay with the respective controls mapped to their equivalent position on a modern Xbox controller. I wasn’t even intending to play this version from the get-go, I just eventually went “fuck it” and played through the remainder of what I had in the N64 version just so I could manage the final 3 levels without popping another blood vessel.

With that out of the way, I honestly think this games a little overrated, though not to an extreme extent like other media I’ve watched/played before. (if you know, you know) The writing while being rather hit or miss mostly lands 20 years later, though certain movie parodies feel very of the time and not in a good way, especially the drawn out Matrix segment towards the end.

While Conker mostly succeeds in the writing department, it often falls flat in what is arguably the most important aspect: the gameplay. While only a few segments are straight up awful, majority of the game is just tolerable at best.

Fortunately thanks to the refined controls this mostly dissipated during the last third given that the shooting controls aren’t, y’know, a horribly dated crock of shit. It’s still annoying how you have to infrequently switch between shooter gameplay and really precise platforming, but it’s still a bit more bearable now. Ironically though I feel like this is where the writing takes a bit of a nosedive, or at least I would say that except I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the ending. It’s weirdly somber for a game that mostly plays as an immature farce, and while I’m all for a good shake up of my expectations when done right, I honestly can’t gather what the devs were going for.

So uh, yeah. I’m kinda disappointed to be honest. After years of hearing all the hype behind this with some even considering it Rare’s magnum opus, I’m honestly kinda underwhelmed. It wasn’t horrible by any means, but it’s far from reaching the highs of other titles I’ve first played this year. Hell even the best comedic moments don’t compare to the likes of Monty Python and the Holy Grail or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I really hope this isn’t gonna be the standard with the other Rare titles I’m hoping to play soon, or else I’m probably in for a bad time.

N64 version: 6/10
Xbox version: 7/10