Conan

The Short


Pros
-Violent, visceral combat that is very satisfying
- Three weapon styles that have their own trees to level up
- Reasonably long quest with tons of combat and a few puzzles
- Ron Perlman does the voice of Conan

Cons
- Ugly
- Gets dull and repetitive very quickly
- While voice acting is...decent, the script is so awful it doesn't matter
- Conan uses magic? Did these people even READ a Conan novel?
- Collectibles are topless women chained to poles. Pandering much?
- Rips off God of War shamelessly but doesn't come close to reaching its height
- Final boss is Viking: Battle of Asgard bad. Really, really frustrating.

That's using your head!

The Long

So...Conan. Lover of life. Lover of women. Lover of killing stuff. How is it they haven't made a billion games about this guy? Say what you want, Conan has been a relatively untapped market. Despite the recent movie starring Khal Drogo from Game of Thrones, Conan has had the short end of the stick for a while. Yeah, they made an MMO that quickly went free to play, but in terms of action games there's been a dearth. 

This is probably because this game, aptly titled just Conan, poisoned the well for most video gamers. Because, despite the fact that Conan is a character practically made for video games, Nihilistic brilliantly and totally ruined him in this mediocre, boring God of War knockoff. 

But hey, since you need me to prove my claims, here's the rest of the review!

If there's anything Conan hates, it's undead skeleton mammoths trapped in tar pits trying to kill him.

So there's a story in Conan, but it's not particularly interesting. Conan has magic armor (I thought he hated magic?) that gets stolen by some evil person and turned into demons or something, and so he has to kill guys and get laid a lot. Sounds like a Conan story. 

There isn't much here, but there is one rather big error: during the adventure Conan gets magic. Which makes sense if you are ripping off God of War, but in the Conan mythology Conan hates all magic. So there is no way he'd be seen dead with it. Did they even read the books? Why bother branding the guy if you can't even get that the one key element of his story right?

I think this is going to end badly for the one that isn't Conan. Which is how it usually goes. 

Luckily, the rest of the key elements are here, if a bit underplayed. Well, not the bloody gore of Conan; that is here and in spades. If they did anything right, it was the violence: this is a brutal game. Legs, arms, and heads must all be attached by spiderwebs and no bones because they fly off at the slightest provocation. Blood sprays all over the place like every person is a crimson fountain, and all the while Conan spouts awful one-liners like "Let Krom judge you!" or "One less dog in the streets!" Look, Ron Perlman, I think you're a good actor. Underrated, even. But you really did a crap job here. Your Conan sounds like a bored fat man, not a badass warrior who love life. You should be roaring in elation when you lop a dude's arms off and then lop both legs and his head off just to be sure (gotta double tap, you know). Instead he's just like...moping around. 

The combat is still the best part of the game, and has a few unique tricks. First thing is you have three unique fighting styles: duel wielding, sword and shield, or a double handed weapon (spears or axes). Basically the differences are speed vs power, with shield having the extra boon of more blocks (which you'll never need). Weapons are dropped all the time so you can switch styles at need, and the game forces you to for certain enemies which is both annoying and a good way to force people to variate. 

It's like they saw the hydra fight in God of War and thought, "Let's do the exact same thing. Exactly."

Another trick is the counter system. If you block at exactly the right time, an enemy will get a random button over their head and if you tap it, it's an instant kill. I actually think this is a great idea because the one thing I hate about these games is picking off the weak fodder. They are only there to die and make you feel cool, so why not make them really easy? It's too bad you don't get to pick what your counter kill will be, and they don't have nearly enough of them to remain interesting, but I like the mechanic. And lopping a guy's arms, legs, AND head off for no good reason other than to justify the M rating.

Speaking of justifying the M rating, this game has a truckload of boobs in it. Which fits, I guess, because Conan's stories were always about super-busty native chicks who don't understand the idea of a bra or public decency getting all up over Conan if he so much as looks in their direction. But here they are the "collectables" in the game, which basically means you find a topless bronze buxom babes just, you know, hanging out waiting to be set free and then disappear. So...ok. Seems a bit gratuitous, and it isn't like Conan gets any action or anything. I guess they were like "maybe the insane amounts of blood and guts won't hide the fact we are ripping off God of War enough, so if we add tons of boobs people will overlook it!"

Then Steve the intern raised his hand and was like "But, um God of War has tons of boobs too. And a sex minigame. So in truth we are really just looking more like God of War knockoffs." 

And then Steve was swiftly fired and Conan came out. 

Poor Steve. 

Going back to the combat: it's all well and good but it gets boring. You have a tech tree to level up but the changes never feel particularly significant aside the initial ones. You can spread your points across all three trees, but then you'll be a jack of all trades but master of none, so I'd just put everything in the fast duel wielding and call it good. While countering and lopping up dudes is great for the first hour, after that it's the same boring mess over and over again. It does throw in some harder enemies that you have to like, sometimes dodge I guess, but in truth the variety is sparse and the whole gratuitous violence thing gets old. 

And then you get to the final boss, and you realize just how unplaytested this game was. 

I couldn't find a picture of the final boss, so you get this instead. 

I mentioned in my Viking: Battle of Asgard review how bad that final boss was, but thinking back I honestly believe Conan's is worse. It's a battle of attrition you are set to lose, against a boss that has multiple forms and if you fail once you go back to the beginning. I'll spare you the details, just know it takes 30 - 45 minutes to beat this guy, and yes, you can lose all that progress by one little mistake. Never mind the hit detection is cheap, you are on a platform with ledges on all sides (insta-death), and hitting him does about as much damage as flicking his ears, but man...way to ruin your game. Seriously, I don't think it's possible on Hard. 

They should decapitate whoever designed the last boss. Seriously. 

This game is also downright hideous, even for an early Xbox 360 / PS3 game. Character models are bland and look like they are made out of plastic, backdrops have the same boring textures with no real bumpmapping to speak of, shadows are weak and uninteresting, and even the blood looks really stupid. They do get points for making Conan's face look like he's constantly going "DURRR," a dorky look only equaled by the new Prince's face in Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. Also yeah, boobs, but only if you really get off with awful looking video game boobs, which if you do you are a bad person and really need to get out more. 

Sound is also mediocre. As stated, Ron Perlman phones it in with the awful one-liners Conan spouts out, and the supporting cast is poor at best. Sound effects lack punch (though some of the hits do feel nice and heavy) and as a whole the production values are just lackluster all around. Not a great game to show off your new TV with.

Unless you want to test your full "red" spectrum. 

I am kind of ashamed to admit it, but Conan was the first game I ever beat on my Xbox 360. At the time I actually had a decent experience, because I was fresh off God of War 2 and God of War 3 was a long ways out (and not on a system I had currently owned). However, even then I recognized this game as the cheap, middling experience that it was. 

Conan isn't completely awful. The first few hours are descent and it makes for a lot of great inside jokes (a friend of mine and I love to yell "ONE LESS DOG IN THE STREETS" for no reason in the awful, underplayed Conan voice) but as it stands it's just a mediocre product. If you really need a bloody hack-n-slash and already played Viking: Battle for Asgard, I suppose you could do a lot worse. But unless you can pick it up for like $5 you are overspending. 

Two out of five stars. 

I named this image file "wowgraphics." I think we'll just leave it at that.