‘Tis a golden age of gaming (or at least a few surprisingly rad months), with titles like Bioshock, Halo 3, The Orange Box, and the upcoming Assassin’s Creed and ;i>Mass Effect all doing their part to refine and stretch the limits of state-of-the-art immersion. But what about those days when you don’t particularly want your mind blown? Or have to put up with complicated controls, limited ammo, and Mountain Dew addled 12-year-olds screaming leetspeak into your headphones? Those times, in short, where you just feel like spending a few minutes ripping some dudes completely in half? If any of the above strikes a chord, then Conan‘s your boy. A decently polished God of War clone with a deceptively rich combat system, this ridiculously gory game serves up a solid week’s diversion until the player moves on to the next big thing. Did I mention the half-naked chained-up wenches?
The story follows everyone’s favorite Cimmerian badass (here voiced by Hellboy‘s rawhide-lunged Ron Perlman), as he reluctantly undertakes a mission to recover various cursed pieces of armor which, if ever reassembled, will allow the forces of evil to, um, conjure up drippy Lovecraftian demons and… look, you basically kill everything that moves, okay? As for said killing, there’s enough variety here to stand apart from the hack-n-slash pack, what with five different combat disciplines to choose from on the fly: bare hands, single sword (nimble), sword and shield (balanced), dual swords (flashy but kinda weak), and two-handed monster weapons (powerful but slooow). Furthermore, each style has around 20 purchasable upgrades, most of which can then be mastered for additional bonuses. Combine with the steadily increasing amount of splatter (one of the most basic moves allows Conan to rip out an enemy’s entire intestinal tract and show it to him, which has yet to get old) and you’ve got a game that warrants a repeat play-through or two.
On the debit side, the graphics and music don’t exactly qualify as
next-gen, while the fixed camera makes the occasionally necessary
platform jump damnably frustrating. Still and all, there’s something
about the game’s relative lack of ambition that feels perversely
admirable in this day and age of gargantuan hype and mandatory
strategy-guide purchases. It ain’t out to change the world or reshape
the paradigm, verily, just cleave some skulls. Plus, you know, the
half-naked wenches…. 