Conan

The Good
Conan cleaves his way to the videogame world once again, and while one might groan at the sight of yet another 3D-action/adventure title, honesty demands that one recognizes the places were Conan works.

Strictly a melee-oriented game, Conan nonetheless packs a shitload of moves that not only do different amounts of damage, but have different strategic advantages such as being able to stun opponents or attack multiple foes. Using a simple button-sequencing system you trigger said moves with surprising ease, however you are not able to dish them out for free, as in addition to your health bar you have a stamina one that gets consumed with each move in different amounts....Well, yeah it's not super-new stuff, but what if I told you that you unlock moves with the experience you get from slaying enemies? Nothing improves arcade gameplay like some good rpg elements.

The game follows the basic layout for most games of this type, with you traversing a series of locales and killing anything that dares to cross your path with the many different weapons you collect along the way. However Conan spices things up by allowing you to come back to life when deceased, a nicely welcomed feature that takes you to a trippy arena when defeated to appease Crom by defeating a few generic enemies from the level you are currently on. This fight is fought only with your starting weapon and no armor or extra aids so it's balls-to-the-walls like never before.

As an interesting addition, TDK licensed the entire soundtrack from the Conan movies by Basil Poledouris, which is always a nice plus as it's one of the greatest soundtracks ever composed in the sword-n-sorcery genre.

The Bad
Despite what the ignorant fools out there might believe, Conan is more than just a hulking brute that dedicates his life to scaring puppies and flexing his muscles, Conan was a cunning thief, a skilled tactician and truly a thinker that seeked much more than war and booze, something that the original Conan movie acknowledged. However you wouldn't know any of that from playing this game, as it's basically your classic, stupid console-born arcadey abomination about a retarded one-man-army that demolishes all the "bad guys" (in the loosest and most generic sense possible). The story and premise is a mere formality, and the gameplay only involves killing bad guys, and the stupid additions console games usually include to distract you a bit like jumping puzzles and other assorted stuff involving geographic accidents. I could hardly believe it myself, but there came a time when I started missing key-card hunts and the usual crap mediocre games usually throw our way, and the apparently deep combat system lacks the fun and sheer entertainment value of simpler button-mashing schemes, a system that would have worked much better for this game due to it's horribly simple gameplay.

Conan was also not just a dumb, strong warrior, but also agile and skilled, however this in no way translates to the controls in the game, maybe it's the pc version, but the keyboard-mouse combo doesn't allow you to dish out the combos and seems to have problems responding, while the gamepad configuration is filled with holes making the use of anything but a sidewinder pad or whatever is considered standard issue these days a problem.

Finally, the graphics in the game are about 3 years old in terms of model quality and textures, Conan looks like ass and while some stages are nicely done, in general things are terribly generic and un-appealing. Quite frankly the game reeks horribly of a library-resources, and given the rather basic gameplay premise on top I can't help but think of the words "pre-fabricated console trash".

The Bottom Line
If you want some good Conan action go get the dvds from the movies, play the other games and read the books. Conan fans will get next to nothing from this game, except the music and the recognizable landmarks and locations. Action gamers will get some basically entertaining melee action, but there are tons of better titles available, so why bother?