Boss battles in Conan are very reminiscent of God of War type battles because they feature the timed button series that gamers have become familiar with. Basically each boss has a general weakness, attack that weakness enough and it opens up the chance to make a “kill strike”, using the environment around you. For example one boss is beaten down until he is vulnerable to the huge stone sword sitting behind you, impale him with it enough times and he is finished. If the boss fights were as boring and simple as the other puzzles in Conan I wouldn’t give them a second mention but each different boss fight is so unique from the one before it that they really take some thought to figure out. Conan also features plenty of nudity, not the full frontal kind but just enough to earn the Mature rating by itself, without the buckets of blood. The weird thing is that the breasts in Conan bounce as if they were yanked right out of the Dead or Alive series, I didn’t know that cavemen had silicone?
From the moment Conan booted up I knew this game was going to be violent, I did not know however that I would be playing the most violent videogame ever made. Decapitations are the least bloody kill in the game if that tells you anything. After one battle that included about ten pirates it looked like I was walking through a scene of the movie 300. There were body parts everywhere, all bloody and lifeless. As I swung my sword arms and heads would go flying through the air before and after they left their original owner’s bodies. As long as no one under the age of fifteen plays this game then this is not a bad thing. The violence in Conan is the big feature of the game and the developers really took it to the next level. Luckily this gruesome swordplay helped the game never get dull, I could never wait to earn enough points to buy a new move or figure out a new way to slice up the next enemy. While wielding two swords the barbarian has a move where he slices downward at the enemy chopping off both arms in one swipe, freaking awesome.
The graphics in Conan are nothing to write home about. Some of the backgrounds look pretty good from a distance and Conan himself is modeled from a top-notch artist, but the rest of the game looks very last-gen. Other than the character models and fire effects, most of the time I easily could have been playing this game on the Playstation 2. All of the random artifacts throughout the game just look very blocky. The textures are also very bad as is the blood, considering how much blood there is in the game this is just unacceptable. This little snafu would ruin most games that come out today but Conan somehow figures out how to fight through it and still be one hell of a fun game. There were only a few small moments that I wanted to quit playing but after pushing through I was glad I did. The massive variability in combos, attack styles, and weapons keeps Conan from being a simple button masher. Even though the puzzles are lame the developers struck gold with the boss battles and instant kills. If videogames could be X-rated I have a feeling Conan would be the X-rated game of the year, as a normal game it is just above average. Right now there is a demo of Conan on Xbox Live, give it a play through and based on that either rent or buy this game. I had a great time playing through it but with no online mode there is little reason to come back for more, other than the blood and breasts.
