Pros: fun button mashing, fairly complex combat system, lots of good gore
Cons: Dumb puzzles, lack of camera control, goofy story and dialog
The bottom line: Conan could have been a great button masher, but shoddy graphics and serious design flaws make it only a good one.
Conan the Barbarian (or Cimmerian) has had a long history of violence. First there was the comic which make Conan a brutal, ruthless anti-hero. Then there was the Conan of the Arnold Schwarzenegger films which took some of the violence and added a heaping of camp. Does the new Xbox 360 game, Conan, represent the movie and comic in brutally good fun?

•• Story ••
I know there's a story here, but it's not a clear narrative. Or at least it's so generic thjat I didn't care enough to really pay attention. Conan is missing his armor and needs to find it, piece by piece. Oh yeah and there's an evil by the name of Graven that needs to be sent back to hell for some reason. With the help of a delightful warrior princess, you must dispatch many enemies on your journey to do both. If this seems cool, it's actually kind of boring. The game is not about a stunning story. It's about slicing dudes up.

•• Gameplay ••
At heart, Conan is nothing more than hack n slash buttonm masher. And as the game begins, this becomes very apparent. You are given one weapon and only a couple of moves. But as the game progresses, it gets surprisingly more complex. You can dual wield weapons, use only one weapon, equip a weapon and shield, or two-fist one single large weapon (my preference). Each comobination of weapons has a different feel and affect. Some enemies will go down with a couple of slashes of light weapons while bigger bosses will require heavier weapons. This is a nice variation on the typical hack n slash. As well, you can equip yourself with different types of each weapon, though they don't seem to have a different effect. Example, a 2-handed long sword seems to be identicalin terms of damage and speed as a two-handed long sword.

As mentioned, the game starts off simply but gets gradually more complex as it goes along. While it never achieves the level of a true action RPG, it does offer some goodies that raise it above the typical button masher. As you go along, you can collect runes which go toward powering up your character. The more you collect, the more special moves you can buy. These special moves are simply different button combinations that offer more and more gory dismembering or disembowlings. And they are the most fun part of the game. When you first get a special move, you have to break it in before it becomes more uself. Simply use it 25 times and you'll master the power. From then on, using it to kill will give you more rune rewards.

And go even further and you can learn magic spells. These are powered by the blue runes which you can collect along with the red and green (which give you health). These special powers deal devastating damage in fun ways such as a blast of cold air or meteors falling from the sky. I didn't find myself using them all that much, but when I did, they were a kick. They are unfortunately mapped to the left shoulder button, so on more than one occasion I accidentally set one off.

Conan wouldn't be Conan without a generous heaping of camp. Conan is an M-rated game and therefore has a ton of gore and a fair amount of nudity. Much like Gears of War had you find hidden cog tags, you get to "free" chanined up maidens. Topless ones, at that. Once you find one, you simply break their chains and they'll reward you with a seductively stupid pose and an even lamer verbal reward. Subtleties such as "crush me with your love." Combine this with the goofy sexual innuendos in-game and the overtly sexual cutscenes and you'll be laughing at the sheer silliness of the game. This is not a game that takes itself seriously and neither should you.

As decent as the gameplay is, there are some things which really hamper the experience. The first and foremost is the lack of camera control. Instead of the right thumbstick controlling the camera, it makes Conan roll away. While this is useful, I found myself absently trying to move the camera with it and I'd roll away instead. I don't know why designers take camera control away from the player. There are very few things more annoying than being killed by some joker who suddenly appears out of nowhere from off camera. Or getting knocked down by a series of rolling balls that you had no advanced notice of. Designers may think they're being clever by giving us these "surprises", but they're just being cheap. To go with that, we have some odd platform type puzzles that try to be a little Tomb Raider-ish, but end up falling flat. They are puzzles simply for the sake of being puzzles. In one instance, you can jump from ledge to ledge. But you have to do them in a certain order even though some of them are right next to each other. Goofy design to puzzle you without justification. The other puzzles are overly simplistic: move the giant statue here so you can jump on a ledge. Duh.

And finally, Conan is painfully linear. There are virtually no areas to explore and finding the "hidden" stuff is all too easy. The path to success is laid out directly in front of you and there's very little question as to where you should go. I wouldn't say the game is easy, because it does get challenging, but the puzzle aspect of the game is amazingly simplified. And the same goes for the bosses. There is never any question how you're supposed to kill the bosses and the designers' idea of difficulty is simply respawning the boss again so you have to do it all over again a few times. Wash, rinse, repeat.

•• Graphics ••
Sometimes Conan looks good, but usually it doesn't. The cutscenes are particularly bad and don't look much better than something that appeared on the original Xbox. The same holds true for in-game graphics. Obviously the art team is not too strong at the developer. But the animations are surprisingly better. Given the large amount of special moves, the animations are fluid and dynamic and varied with Conan's hair flitting around along with his red sash. The game is full of great animations in a world that isn't nearly as detailed or insteresting.

•• Sound ••
Perennial video game actor (and Hellboy) Ron Perlman is the voice of Conan and while he does a fine job, he's hampered by horribly repetitous dialog that happens to be badly written. Every times Conan kills someone, you are greeted with some goofy saying like "Taste my blade!". Given the sheer amount of enemies you encounter, his gross spewing of verbiage gets old very quickly. And since the dialogue is goofy at best, it's hard for the actors to really shine. That said, the music is fairly good. There's a decent score that's dynamic and varied and certainly this is the best part of the overall sound design.

•• Multiplayer ••
There is no multiplayer in Conan. Co-op with the warrior princess would have been cool, but oh well.

•• Parents Should Know ••
This game is rated M for Mature and is one of the most adult games I've ever played. While the story is juvenile, there is no shortage of blood and gore. Not only spewing fountains of blood, but stretched intestines, beheadings, disembowlings, and limb detachments. Couple that with the nudity and you've got yourself a game for adults only.

•• Conclusion ••
Conan could have been a great button masher, but shoddy graphics and serious design flaws make it only a good one.