Conan (360) - Review

CROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Sorry, couldn’t resist the temptation.  Actually, giving in to temptation is a good way to describe Conan (not to be confused with the upcoming MMORPG Age of Conan); this game is not going to be the one that you whip out to impress your friends with the way gaming has matured as an industry.

No, Conan is your temptation; the guilty little pleasure that you put in the drive when all you want to do is enjoy some mindless violence, hammy dialogue, and the sheer awesomeness that can only be brought about by the simultaneous decapitation, evisceration, and exsanguination of multiple Stygian foes, by Crom!

If you haven’t worked it out by now, Conan is a straight-up, slash-em-till-they-all-fall-down-dead game.  Don’t let the fancy graphics, classic sword-and-sorcery theme, and copious amounts of boobies throw you, Conan is pretty much a spiritual successor to arcade classics like Double Dragon or Streets of Rage. 

Basic gameplay works like this: Walk forward, encounter enemies, kill them with a variety of unlockable combos (which are purchased by spending points earned through killing more enemies) in four different combat styles, encounter the occasional boss with the now-obligatory quicktime sequence, and solve several incredibly simple puzzles.  Rinse, repeat, and so on.

Naturally, the combat system is the most important part of any beat’em up game, and thankfully Conan delivers a system that is a snap to pick up, but varied and robust enough to actually remain fun and accommodate different playing styles and tactics. The fighting styles, as previously mentioned, come in four different varieties: Single weapon (with optional shield); dual-wielding; two-handed weapons; and grappling moves, which can be used regardless of weapon combination, and which are always hilariously brutal (check out the piledriver; decapitation, WWE style!).

The various fighting styles are all versatile enough that you could probably get through the whole game just using a favourite; however the various enemies in the game and the coolness of the different combos encourages you to diversify, and you will definitely need to swap weapons repeatedly to get through the game on the harder levels.  In fact, it’s a pretty cool feeling to use your shield to disarm an enemy, steal his sword, kill numerous enemies with your twin weapons, throw one into the face of another demonic bad guy, and then pick up a fallen great-axe and swing it two-handed into the face of the nasty bugger with the whip coming at you; it is just that easy to adapt on the fly, and it’s pretty impressive to enjoy the freedom that the combat system endows.

Unfortunately the combat system has its downsides.  First of all, a lot of the combos are useless against many enemies, including most of those found in the later half of the game; they just shrug you off, and maybe slap you one for being stupid enough to think the attack you just spent 1600 points unlocking might actually work on them.  Other ones seem to have just been tacked on and serve no useful purpose to gameplay; kicking an enemy in the nuts is all well and good, but not when every other attack you have will be more effective, including the basic combo of X - X - X that you learn in the first seconds of play by simply button-mashing away happily.

That’s the second criticism of the combat actually; button-mashing is entirely too effective a method of getting through the game; hammering the attack buttons can often be more useful than memorising complex attack combos late in the game, as a lot of these combos are easily blockable and thus useless against tough enemies that never lower their guard; in these cases, rapid-fire simple attacks will more often break through; a pretty serious flaw.

Regardless of this, the combat system is a great deal of fun to use, and is made more robust by the parrying and mastery systems on offer.  Parrying means blocking just before an attack lands (duh), and doing this gives you a brief window to counter by pressing the nominated button; doing so successfully executes (no pun intended) a highly gory instakill, and is an immensely useful skill to have when surrounded by the enemy horde.  These parry kills are so incredibly over the top that it’s worth practicing using them just to see the stupid-coolness of flipping an enemy into the air and cutting them in half lengthways on the way down in super slow-motion.

Mastery is another intelligent design decision that helps to encourage the use of varied combos (including the weaker ones); once used enough times, a combo is considered “mastered” and will usually give some sort of bonus for being used from then on; this can be additional health for scoring the kill, or additional experience, or whatnot, and is useful in some of the more dangerous situations in the game.  There is also an unlockable magic system present in the game (which goes massively against Conan lore, but I digress), but these spells feel like mere gimmickry, and weren’t particularly useful in most situations; the ‘Song of Death’ ability is more useful, as it occurs when you quickly rack up the hits on enemies, and makes you progressively more powerful while simultaneously earning you health and other powerups.  It also has the added bonus of seeming more in keeping with the Conan universe. 

Graphically, Conan has a great deal in common with the combat system of the game; kind of cool, but enough flaws to stop it from being terrific.  The fight scenes, the gore, the lusty wenches, the various bosses, and Conan himself, are all pretty impressive to look at, with an art style that appears as though the game were “painted” on canvas, rather than just made on a computer.  This unique appearance really adds to the feeling and immersion of the game, and somewhat makes up for the fact that, in a lot of ways, Conan isn’t actually that great to look at.

Don’t get the wrong idea; all the latest bells and whistles are here, it’s just that graphical wizardry isn’t all that is needed to make a game look good.  Conan has a few flaws that speak more of deadlines during development, rather than actual graphical limitations; enemies and environments are not particularly varied, for example, and there is more than one occasion where textures appear to be decidedly low-res.  More criminally, the camera can be a massive pain in the Cimmerian, and cannot be moved by the player; it’s cinematic camera angles or nothing, baby.

The audio experience, on the other hand, has little in the way of plus sides.  The music is a decent, but typical, dark fantasy fare, and you would have heard it’s like in a million RPGs and fantasy action games in your lifetime.   The voice acting and script, unfortunately, are simply appalling; Conan comes across like a bellowing simpleton (which, despite the “the Barbarian” moniker, he is not actually meant to be), and the supporting cast are so clichéd that you’ll die a little inside every time one of them shouts out another hackneyed line in their best faux-English accents.

However, it is pretty easy to brush off the plot (the plot itself actually isn’t THAT bad, although it is highly predictable; I’d guessed what was going to happen before the opening cutscene had finished) and appalling voice acting in what is the gaming equivalent of a Jean Claude van Damme movie.  The problem with Conan, however, is the fact that there exist numerous problems with the game that aren’t quite as easy to ignore.

The first time you fall through the floor of a level, you’ll probably put it down to a bit of bad luck; the second time, it might be a little more annoying; when it’s happened four more times, you’ve had multiple saves corrupt, the console has locked up repeatedly, and the camera has gotten stuck in a wall for the umpteenth time, you’ll realise pretty rapidly that Conan was a game that needed about six months more time in the QA department.  I have never played a console game as buggy as this; even the incredible bug-fest that was Knights of the Old Republic 2 had less problems, and “most buggy console release ever” is the kind of accolade no company should want for their product.

The other major problem with Conan is, of course, the fact that the whole thing is horribly shallow.  Is the game derivative (yes, yes, God of War people, we all see the similarities)? Of course it is, but this isn’t much of a criticism; Conan brings enough new stuff to the table, like the setting and the varied combat system, that it manages to stand tall on its own, ruggedly masculine feet.  The problem is that the game feels exactly the same from start to finish; you’ll tap the same buttons in the same situations to achieve the same results, with the only difference being that enemies get tougher and the architecture changes.  Even your rewards stay the same; chained up busty maidens, potions, and treasure chests reoccur ad infinitum, with nary a change beyond hair shade or nipple colour (seriously…).

The boss fights are sometimes awe-inspiring (keep an eye out for the dragon in particular), but the basic enemies get boring fast, and many enemies in the later game have such annoyingly frustrating attack routines that the game becomes a chore to play; difficulty is fine, but enemies with unblockable attacks that slide you off a cliff repeatedly does not a fun game make.  And lets have a quick show of hands here; who’s sick of fighting bosses using quicktime button presses? Everyone? Good then.   Wouldn’t rather fight the bad guys in real time without the prettiness, instead of tapping B - Y - X during a cutscene so you can watch the character unload on the giant squid; God of War fans might disagree, but this author thinks that taking the player out of the action like this is just a lazy design decision.

Conan is a big, dumb game that delivers some big, dumb fun.  Hack’n’slash action has rarely been delivered in such a complex but fun form, but the price for a robust combat system is limitations on practically every other aspect of the gameplay, not to mention a whole shed-load of bugs and glitches.  If you pick up a copy of Conan, you are pretty much guaranteed to have some fun; how much depends on how easily entertained you are.  If you can ignore the numerous flaws, you’ll get a good, solid 7 hours of gruesome fun; if all the negatives spoken about in this review are enough to tick you off dramatically, then maybe give it a miss; even if you love this kind of thing, I would suggest a rental first, just in case.

In short, there is a great deal of solid-but-simple entertainment to be found in Conan; just don’t go in expecting this to be the gaming equivalent of War and Peace; maybe War and Pieces?

Oh Crom, sorry about that one…

               

Graphics: 7.5/10 (Interesting artistic style, good graphics, but flawed in places.)

Sound: 5/10 (Decent music manages to just drag this up into the realm of barely average; voice acting is terrible, and combat sound effects are uninspired.)

Gameplay: 7/10 (A fun combat system and good boss fights, but let down by some poor design choices, a veritable smorgasbord of bugs, and an overreliance on quicktime events; do we need to have one for EVERY SINGLE FREAKING DOOR?!)

Longevity: 4/10 (No multiplayer hurts; this game would have been perfect in co-op.  The singleplayer game has three difficulties, with a fourth unlockable, but there is little reason to play through again unless you are a sucker for unlockable game art or an achievement whore.)

Overall: 7/10 (An unintelligent but generally entertaining old-school slash’em up.  Hardly inspired, but hardly terrible, the main downside here is bugs and a lack of new ideas.  If you enjoy a bit of nonsensical violence and some good ol’ fashioned swords and sorcery, you could do far worse than Conan; just hope that the game will actually work on your system!)

      

-Tim Sweeney the Barbarian