When I look back to the comic book, Conan, the first thing that comes to
mind is the pair of legendary Schwarzenegger flick that launched Arnold's film career. There was also the cartoon I faithfully watched every morning back in my elementary school years. Up until now, everyone's favorite barbarian was absent from the videogame scene. After all these years and hundreds of comics, Conan is finally making his videogame debut from THQ on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Conan starts off his quest knocked out after freeing an entity known as "The Black Plague" which strips him of his magical armor. Shortly thereafter on Conan's journey to recapture all his armor, he is joined by a female warrior, Arkana. She is also in pursuit of Conan's armor so she can use its magic to stop the Plague from destroying her homelands.

Conan is a straightforward hack 'n slash action game in the same vein as God of War. It mixes in slight elements of platforming in order for Conan to catch a breather from his mass slaughtering. So after slashing through waves of demons and warriors, Conan must jump across a small series of platforms, or push down a tree to cross a large gap. Conan accrues points for each foe he sends to their grave which can be used on unlockable combo attacks to add to Conan's arsenal of moves. Besides a plethora of sword combo attacks, Conan also performs defensive strikes with a shield, a wide array of parry attacks which results in brutal instant kills, and disarms where Conan can rob an enemy of their weapon.

The developers at Nihilistic implemented the Shenmue-esque "Quick Time Event" controls during pivotal points in boss battles or in order to lift up a huge barrier where the game will prompt several random buttons in order to accomplish said task. These QTE commands don't feel as intrusive or tacked on as some other games have made them feel in the past few years, and they add a decent layer of challenge to the intense boss battles. The boss battles provide a good deal of challenge, the good kind that pushes you to find the trick to killing them off instead of the cheap kind that ruthlessly frustrates you. The bosses themselves range from all sorts of wackiness from giant squids to demon elephants. Yes, demon elephants!

Conan uses a fixed camera that the player has no control of whatsoever. I was worried about this at first, since the camera seems like an incurable disease among third person games. Somehow, the developers managed to get the fixed camera angle to work just fine as I don't recall the camera blocking my view at any moment throughout the game.

If there is one major area that Conan could have used some improvement, it is replay value. I completed the game in a little over seven hours, and other than trying my luck on the hardest difficulty level and unlocking the last couple of combo attacks, there seemed to be little incentive to go through the game again. That is, unless you really love your achievements. There is dozens of samples of concept art which I unlocked all of in one play through, but I think there could have been more meaningful unlocks like comic book cover scans, or perhaps a two player co-op mode with Arkana?

The ESRB must have loved taking a look at this game, as Conan made great strides of earning its M rating. Besides Conan relishing in the presence of the nude maidens he rescues, this happens to be one of the goriest games I have played in some time. Conan has mastered the art of dismembering his prey, as it is quite common to see body parts flying all over the place, accompanied along with buckets of blood! All this chaos is animated to a T, the game definitely nailed the gore factor. The rest of the graphics are serviceable. I like the level design, it's nothing that memorable, but it captures the fantasy/wasteland-inspired worlds of the comic that Conan traverses. Aurally, I wasn't a fan of whoever voiced Conan at first, he just seemed too mellow and laid back, but then he grew on me throughout the game. The sound effects are all right on the mark, and the musical score is fitting, yet nothing remarkable by any means.

Conan plays fine, and is good old mindless fun, but it feels like it is missing something to take it to that next level of being a great game. I wouldn't recommend paying full price for Conan, but you can't go wrong plowing through this with a rental or buying it cheap once it hits the bargain bins.



Article By: Dale "Gruel" Kulas