Review

By God, if I can't have fun playing Conker's Bad Fur Day, then I guess I should just stay the hell away from platformers. The quintessential console offering, the bread-n-butter of the industry, the backbone of electronic gaming's skeleton, the template of Nintendo's mint, the platform action game has been around forever and likely will be around forever. But so has pinochle, and I don't play that.

Games like Super Mario Brothers, Sonic The Hedgehog, Super Mario 64, and today's "insta-classics" like Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank, these define the genre. Conker's Bad Fur Day is on that list, and squarely at the top according to some. It is generally accepted as one of the three reasons to own a Nintendo 64 (the other two being 007:Goldeneye and Zelda - Ocarina of Time). There's also apparently a very sordid history to the development of CBFD, which includes many delays and several identity crises. What eventually came out of the revered offices of Rare, however, ended up being one of the "best games of all time". Again, according to some.

I wanted very badly to like this game. Or, rather, I expected very strongly to like this game. And yet I didn't. That's a difficult thing. It's hard to not like a game that you know has garnered accolades beyond measure, and been awarded perfect scores. On some mental level, there is tremendous social pressure to enjoy it. What does it mean, after all, if I don't like a game that often gets mentioned as one of the finest games ever produced? Does it mean I don't like games? Obviously not. Does it mean that I can no longer place any value on reviews and journalistic analysis? No. Because even as I played it, and temporarily fought the urge to quit playing it, I recognized that it is indeed a fine game -- of it's kind. Ultimately, though, I just couldn't take it. In my failure to enjoy CBFD, I have reached the unequivocal conclusion that I do not like this kind of game. Period.

And that's ok. I don't expect anyone else to not like them just because I don't. I'm certainly not going to go around bad-mouthing Conker's Bad Fur Day, and making churlish remarks about those who hold it aloft as a high-water mark of design. I hope games like it keep getting made, and that people keep playing them, and that they get better and better over time. But they will simply be a dish in the cafeteria of gaming that I don't order.