Official Website

Platform: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Genre: Action

Number of Players: 1

Support: HD 480p, 720p, PS Network Compatible, Ethernet Broadband, Leaderboards

I would like to think that Robert E. Howard would have been proud of the success that his character, Conan the Barbarian, achieved after he took his own life. The character which first appeared in Weird Tales magazine, the very same publication that featured H.P. Lovecraft, has gone on to be the subject of film, comic books, and video games. In 1982, everyone would know the name of Conan after Arnold Schwarzenegger helped catapult both the character and himself to stardom. Conan has once again returned, luckily without Schwarzenegger, in his first next generation title.

Simply titled Conan, and I think the name alone speaks for itself, the barbarian’s latest story is told from the perspective of an old woman recounting the adventure. Conan has raided a tomb, but he doesn’t quite remember it, but he has lost his armor in the process. Conan finds himself on an island where he meets the beautiful A'Kanna who is trying to free her men form the pirates that inhabit the area. If Conan helps her, not only will she help to get him off the island but she will help in his quest, and once he learns of the Black Plague, sees what it has done, and realizes that the cause is his own armor, he wants nothing more than answers and revenge on the foul evil that has toyed with his memories and stolen his possessions.

Crom! With the success of video games there does come imitations. You have two games that Conan is quite similar to and those would be God of War and Spartan: Total Warrior. Within the first few minutes of the game which serves as the training stage, had I not played a little further, I would have simply chalked Conan up to being nothing more than a clone of either of these games, which in many ways it is, but Conan isn’t without a certain degree of charm and entertainment that can make you forget all of that and just enjoy the game for what it is.

As Conan, you will find yourself capable of a number of different fighting styles, each with benefits and disadvantages. You can use a single weapon, dual swords, a two-handed sword, or a sword and shield. Everything becomes quite easy to grasp as when Conan passes near a certain type of weapon, an icon will appear. I think the idea of seeing two hands grasping a weapon or a shield should be fairly obvious, and you have the option of either picking it up and changing your fighting style or continuing on your way. You also have the option of hurling weapons at enemies in the distance, something that gives you another combat option, though I found myself more prone to tossing torches to set enemies on fire or burning caldrons which act as a primitive form of napalm.

The basic controls in the game are extremely easy to grasp, especially if you’ve played either of the other mentioned games. Square acts as a light attack while triangle is a heavy attack. You will use X to jump, circle to grapple with enemies while L1 is to block or parry and R1 allows you to grab objects or interact with them. The attacks can to u8sed as combos as well, and these will depend on the current fighting style that you are using. However, many of the abilities you will need to buy, and this is done by, as you suspected, defeating enemies, finding treasure chests and freeing captive women who stand up and display their assets to you, if you know what I mean. This should seem very familiar, but red spheres are points that can be exchanged for new combos, green will give you health and blue is used to recharge your magic.

The combos that you purchase are distinct to whatever weapon your have purchased them for, so it’s more important to determine what style your fighting with more instead of simply selecting the first combo on the list. The game will inform you when you have enough points by simply flashing the select button the screen which will allow you to access the menu, buy whatever new combo you wish, and from there you can get a look at your current moves list. During combat, it’s important to try and keep the combo string going. Under Conan’s health, you will see a yellow meter that will begin to build up and once it has reached its full potential, you can unleash the devastating Song of Death, a much more powerful attack that is sure to leave enemies gutted and bleeding in the sand.

Through just about every stage you will find areas that require you to interact with them in some way, and the game will display what buttons you need to use. At times it might be simple, like hitting the grapple button to open a door, but you may find powerful enemies that require button combos to finish them once and for all. Yes, again it’s a game mechanic that is all too familiar. As Conan collects more of his armor, he will eventually gain the use of magic, something that the barbarian isn’t necessarily a big fan of, but under the circumstances, it becomes a requirement, and there are four different magical abilities in all for Conan to unleash upon his enemies and those dreaded bosses that want to make his journey a brief one.

With the “purchased” combos, Conan also has the potential to master them, something that will give him increased spheres when he uses them. With each unleashed attack, you will see how far along you are on your mastery, 10%, 20%, and so on until you finally have perfect the technique. Mastery however doesn’t apply to the starting abilities. Conan also will find himself up again archers from time to time, not necessarily a big problem when you have a sword, but should their arrows hit you, you will need to use R1 to remove it before it starts causing damage, though a shield will protect you quite a bit better. Your parry attacks are a little more advanced though. If you block at the precise moment an enemy attack lands, you will see a button appear on the screen. If you hit it quick enough, you will kill your enemy and also add into the parry mastery, something that once again determines on the weapon style you are using. If you don’t want to parry, you can also use the right analog to doge attacks or move the SIXAXIS in the desired direction, though I did find there was a bit of latency issues trying the wireless method.

During the course of staining the sands with blood, Conan will find stones that are used to save your game, and this can also be done at the end of the stages. Here you will see the statistics from the stage such as how many enemies you’ve slain, favorite attacks and your current totals as far as the body count goes. You can also compare this to other players with the leaderboard. You will also see instances when an icon will pop on screen depending on your actions. These will unlock bonus content for the game allowing you to see conceptual artwork, characters that didn’t make the final cut and so forth.

One of the things you’ll notice about Conan is that if you’re familiar not only with the previous literary works as well as the paintings of Boris Vallejo, the game really falls somewhere in between those. It does look a great deal like some of the covers seen on the novels over the years, and Vallejo actually has done some of those covers. You’ll see that Conan and the rest of the characters have a rather interesting shading design, but it really doesn’t harm the game. It does at times look like your playing a living painting, and the backgrounds and city designs are extremely well detailed and stick with the same design concept. There are some rather cool effects, like the slowdown while performing an attack while parrying, and there is a great deal of bloodshed. Gore however is something that you really expect to find in a game like this, but it’s never done in a fashion where it’s too outrageous but instead very fitting of the overall gameplay.

Conan does have a number of things that make it seem similar to other titles, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that it’s fun to play. There are a lot of games that try and steal the thunder of popular names, but many of these have been pale imitations that quickly fade into the pixels, but I don’t think that’s the case with Conan. For anyone not familiar with God of War or Spartan, Conan is going to be quite exciting to play and for those who are in fact familiar with those games, getting beyond the first hour or so of Conan will soon find players infected with blood lust and forgetting the similarities.

-mike-