Conan

Barbaric

More Images

Step back in time with me, back to a time when men were men, swords were swords, axes were axes, and women were scantily clad. Sounds like fun? You would be very correct in thinking so.

To make things a little different from most licensed games, THQ have based their product on the original books by Robert E. Howard rather than the popular Conan films. So please, don't buy this game if you are an avid Arnie fan - you will be disappointed.

Starting out, we find Conan wandering down a dungeon killing ghosts. This is a nice tutorial section, which introduces you to the fast attacks, strong attacks, and grapples available to Conan; all pretty standard stuff for an action game. It also introduces the different weapon combinations available.

Conan can use his own large one-handed sword (which he can use with a shield later on in the game), or he can grab enemy weapons to dual-wield and even double-hand weapons. Each style of fighting has its own distinct list of moves. Conan starts off with only basic combos for each one, but as you move through the game you can gain experience and unlock more.

Experience is obtained in the form of red "runes" which explode out of vanquished enemies. Conan also gets a welcome experience boost when he opens a treasure-chest, or rescues a "maiden" (afore-mentioned topless girl chained to a rock). The experience is used only to unlock new moves, but what moves they are.

After a while, you will be merrily head-butting enemies, flipping them up in the air, cart wheeling into groups of them, or even relieving them of their swords and shields. The special moves get progressively more spectacular - my personal favourite was one with the sword and shield combination, where Conan grabs a poor soul by the neck and slices their head off with his shield. Up shoots the fountain of blood, and Conan moves on to the next. Another option is to hold an enemy by the feet and spin them round, knocking all other enemies out of the way with the greatest of ease.

These combinations do require a bit of skill and timing to pull off, and this prevents Conan from descending into another button-masher. But another nice touch is the parry system. As in many similar games, the left trigger blocks blows when held down. But when pressed just as the blow connects, Conan parries the blow and has the option for an instant kill. A specific button (A, B, or X) will flash up on the screen and if you press it in time, Conan produces a fairly spectacular finishing move on the unhappy recipient. Perhaps he will rip out the opponent's heart, or leap on top of their shoulders and decapitate them with two swords. Personally, I preferred the one where he kicks the opponent high into the air, throws his sword into them as they are over his head, and pulls it out as they come down, splitting them neatly down the middle.

As well as these blood-thirsty finales, Conan also has the option to grapple with enemies. These often also provide instant kills on weaker foes, involving Conan leaping up while grabbing the victim's legs and crashing down on the floor with... oh, look. There's a head under his feet. Good stuff.

Each move has a certain number of times in the game that it must be used in order for Conan to "master" it. Once Conan has mastered a move, he will get extra health or experience when he kills an enemy with it. Overuse of the combo will cancel this bonus, and this is another incentive to mix up your style.

As the game progresses, Conan defeats some nasty types and finds some of his lost armour, which apparently has gained some magical powers in its absence. These involve temporarily turning enemies to stone, or summoning a rain of fireballs. These are interesting to use a few times, but are really just distractions from the real fun of the game's combat.

Through all of this, we have some rousing orchestral scores playing. This gives a real atmosphere to proceedings and definitely adds to the experience. The voice acting is passable, although Conan is a bit too well spoken for my liking.

Aesthetically, Conan is a very nice looking game indeed. The environments are fairly dreary, although this is partly because of the setting itself rather than any lack of effort on the design side. When a particularly extreme move is pulled off, there is a bit of slow motion and zooming in on the action, which gives things a very cinematic feel.

Of course, there must be some down sides to all this. The main problem I found was the difficulty factor. Conan can simply wade through hordes of enemies and barely take a scratch, even on the Hard difficulty setting. But then you will come up against some enemies that feel quite cheap - I immediately think of a level where you are against large gorillas, where you have to simply let them swing at you, roll in, strike once, roll out, and repeat. The larger non-humanoid enemies are where the game falls down in my opinion - they are simply not much fun to fight.

The bosses are also a bit hit-and-miss, as they are all pretty huge, each battle mostly revolves around dodging in for attacks when the opportunity presents itself. This is not where the game's strengths lie.

Once you are through the mildly interesting story, there is not a whole lot of replay value. There are "cheats" that are unlocked, such as playing through the game with every move already learned, but these are limited, and at the end of it all, you are playing the same game again. There is, however, a nice selection of achievements for the Xbox 360 player, and most are fairly easy to achieve if you are into that sort of thing.

At the end of it all, Conan is an absolutely storming adventure, and I will definitely recommend it to any fans of the genre; it has been one of the most enjoyable titles of its type that I have played in a long time. There are a few flaws that stop it from being truly great, but it does what it sets out to do - provide a few hours of happy blood-lust, carving a path of destruction through hordes of enemies. And no one can argue with the fun in that - especially when I've got a really big sword backing me up.

85%

By Richard Bright