So now Rare had a popular little squirrel everyone wanted, but no game to put him in. An official statement later announced that Conker was still going to hit the N64 but in a way nobody ever thought would make it past the Big N. In fact it was so unbelievable most people took the statement as either a rumour or a fake. Thankfully it was neither, and now -- almost 4 years after Conker was first seen running around a green field collecting nuts -- comes Conker's Bad Fur Day.

This is a game like none other you have played -- that is of course not true if you have played a game where you control a drunk of a squirrel through a nasty land of foul language, decapitations, big bollocks and poo. If you've played both the Banjo games, as much of Donkey Kong 64 as you could handle, Jet Force Gemini and Mario 64 and you don't think you can handle yet another "run around completing tasks" game, then think again. Don't look past Conker.

This game has some graphical and control similarities to those games, but that is where the comparison ends.

Don't think you're about to embark on an adventure that will stop you from advancing simply because you haven't collected every single gold coin or piece of cheese. Conker continuously advances, and the only frustration will come in the form of failing something 10 times, then on the 11th turn getting it without losing any health at all.

The game starts off with the traditional N-Cube logo (synonymous with most Nintendo published N64 games) being chainsawed in half and replaced with the Rare logo with the help of the main squirrel himself. Then, after walking his furry little self into the Cock and Plucker (local pub) and having a few with the lads, he tries to stumble home. He finds himself waking next to a river with a bad, BAD hang-over. And this is where you come in -- to help the poor guy get back home for a sleep.

The control is unique and very simplistic, in fact it makes you feel like you are about to embark in one of the easiest games. Because all you need through most of the game is the control stick, the A button to jump, the Z button to crouch and the B button as punch/frying pan hit button and the "context sensitive" button. Simple, right? Now try controlling a drunk Conker. Watch him stumble a few feet, stop in his tracks and then stumble again in a slightly wrong angle, drop his pants and urinate on anything he wants.

After the drunken state of course comes the hungover state. A slower stumble, a pathetic punch which lands closer to the floor than his target and a jump that can't help the little blighter onto anything higher than the ground he is already standing on.

The amount of control styles in this game is amazing and they normally come in with every new satire that this game portrays. Which movies get roasted? Try Terminator, Alien, The Matrix, Saving Private Ryan and many, many more.

Considering this game has many control styles it runs through many genres as well. It starts off in the traditional Banjo-esque run around, swimming and jumping from ledge to ledge. Rare even included the traditional crouch and jump to get to higher places and the "push A button twice" to make Conker do "The Helicoptery tail thing" to help him reach harder to reach ledges.

The game turns into a 3rd person shooter everytime Conker whips out a gun (ranging from shotgun to double machine guns), to a first person shooter whenever Conker jumps into a turret gun -- hell this game even has a racing engine built in for the race against the brown-eye pulling Uga Bugas.

The graphics seen in this game are unlike anything ever seen on N64. Facial animations and full lip-sync shows expressions and emotion by every single creature in this world. The number of polygons used to help animate the face is so high it forced a reduction in background polygons, which isn't an all too bad thing as you're never looking out at fields that carry on forever.

The textures are very similar to those seen in Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie but sadly the Nintendo blur is smeared all over the screen making the game a bit hard on the eyes for people used to playing the crisp graphics of PS2 and DC. Everything is modelled perfectly and some things even look rounded or even clay like with the extremely detailed textures used throughout the game. The one thing that stood out straight away was the lack of a small round blob of a shadow -- everything Conker does produces a perfect shadow below him.

A new feature previously unseen on the Nintendo 64 is the small splashes of crap and bullet holes that appear in or on your TV while splashing about in crap or running through gun fire.