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Rent but do not buy

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Lucky for me I had a free rental credit at my local video place when I went to try this game.

I'm all for button mashers. Not a darn thing wrong with them. Sure, there's naked prisoner chicks that offer to "repay" you. Conan gets it on with the hot Amazonian-esque protagonist. Lop people's arms and heads off, grab them and slam then on the ground or into a pike barrier or off a cliff, go into a Cimmerian bezerker frenzy...

Then completely screw it all up. Annoying jump angles and camera views, little scrawny guys with shields spiking the mighty Conan and botching his sword-wielding mojo, boss battles that some idiot employee that has probably never played a video game in his life said, "Hey...this is a button-masher! Oh Noes!!!!111!1one! Let us put in a challenge...I know, we'll make it so that you have to press a certain button when we tell you to!"

What the frick is that!? Do NOT interrupt the monotony of my button-mashing, naked chick rescuing, head-severing melee frenzy! I want to grab little wimpy guys and slam them against the ground until I see brains...I do NOT want to watch Conan fall off scaffolding over and over and over and over just because nobody bothered to play that part of the game and realize, "hey...this actually sucks."

Forget God of War. God of War's specific button presses were integrated to a point that you felt you actually achieved something. It happened often enough that you were ready for it but not so often that you wanted to go 80's metal with your controller.

Conan lets you get relaxed and start to enjoy the mindless slaughter and then BOMBARDS you with that crap. The final boss battle? I have never NEVER returned a video game early...until I rented this one. It's a trend that I'm starting to notice with newer video games, unfortunately. You still have a gem every once in awhile but it seems that, more and more, companies are relying on the system WAY too much. Here's an idea, video game worker people, forget about the system and make a GOOD GAME. I don't care that the flowers are pretty if they smell like raw sewage.

Thomas Kinkaid could paint a little perfect pile of dog poo surrounded by cottage-ey snow covered perfection with a little poem running down the side of it written by John Ashbery explaining how that in another reality the poo is our childhood imagination and then have a little digital box on the side of the picture that plays the voice of James Earl Jones reading the poem and in the end it would still be just a pile of crap.

In the end...that's really what this game is. A pile of dog poo. You may get to walk through a pretty yard and play with a few decent toys, but it's not worth the cost of admission and the nasty smell that will follow you around for awhile. Not to mention what it will do to your carpet when it's stuck down in the treads of your shoe.

Get it cheap if you insist on playing!

A mirror of God of War

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

So far this game hasn't impressed me very much. The graphics are nicely done, and the game play isn't top notch, but not so bad that it ruins the game either. I thought the voice acting was really horrible. Conan doesn't sound very "barbarian" at all. Actually, this game feels so much like a bad interpretation of God of War for the Playstaion, that it just left me with "I've seen it before." It has the same type of narration at the beginning, the same type of opening sequence, and pretty much the same type of moves through the game (especially boss finishing moves). Perhaps if I had never played God of War I & II (which were excellent games) I would have a better opinion of this one.

Very buggy

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: October 31, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is very buggy. Several times, Conan got stuck in the air after jumping next to the wall. Once I had to reboot the game because he got permanently stuck in the air. During the elephant boss battle, after jumping to the upper corner of the rock, the camera got stuck pointing below and can't see Conan. And, the controls are terrible because it frequently have problem with jumping at an angle.

Fun, but lonely!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Conan

Conan, for Xbox 360 is a decent offering. Great graphics and action. Highly entertaining.

It could benefit from two things: some way to share the experience with friends, and a few more save points. ;)

Conan, the saga continues...hopefully!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 24, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have always loved the graphically violent and sexually charged CONAN comics, some of the novels, and ok, both of the movies. I really enjoyed playing this game even though it is alittle repeditive and the sound engineering is seriously flawed. Not to mention this is a copycat style of God Of War, right down to the button-sequence-boss-finishing moves. And even though I was seriously disappointed in the lack of "interest" shown in the rescued "damsels", I really hope this francise can pull it's act together. I would love to play a sequel, but jeez, work on the sound production.

Blood, Chicks, & Sharp impliments of Death!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Conan The Barbarian....A fairly decent fighting game (similar to God of War) BUT, NOT THE SAME! I hear a lot of people comparing this game to God Of War, and while it IS similar in playing/fighting, it has it's own flair. I do think GOW is still better than Conan, but Conan is definitely a decent game with tons of action, fighting, naked babes, and a boatload of bloody GORE!

Other folks have mentioned the difficulty in fighting the "boss characters"....YEAH, it's true! It also gets very annoying to hack, slash, and block, and block, and block for 15 minutes to get nowhere....Yet, some of the Boss Characters are fairly simple to defeat???? But, the FUNNIEST part about the game is that some of the more "basic" characters in the game are downright extremely HARD to kill.....Go figure???? It seems like you'll have 10 bad guys gang up on you at the same time, all swinging away, while you block for a half an hour, just trying to get in ONE SWING of the blade!!!

That's probably my main gripe with this game...

Otherwise, it's a blast to play, and I'd say it's worth owning, because the replay value is certainly there.

Craptacular Crap!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

You can tell when a game has been rushed into production. How you ask? Well, it comes out like Conan. After playing Conan, I have to wonder if the video game magazines out there are in bed with the game companies as well. How else can you explain GamePro giving this game a decent review?

Okay, so the animtions are nice but usually suffer from some serious frame drops when more than one character is on the screen. The graphics are simply unacceptable as a nextgen title. These are subpar pre-xbox at best.

My guess is that THQ ran out of creative steam and instead of adding decent content and levels of play they simply chose to make each boss fight last forever. I mean seriously, I enjoy a good boss fight but eight "variations" of the same boss fight before you finally defeat it? There is nothing fun about these boss fights, period.

The controls are okay and as I previously stated the bodily hacking animations never get boring (when they run smoothly that is). One question is why the annoying pause after executing a combo that has not hit an enemy? To annoy me?

I wanted to punch my tv several times playing this game and cancelled my subscription to GamePro Magazine after buying it on their advice. I want unbiased reviews of a game period. If a games sucks, say so before I spend sixty bucks!

In the sea of crap games out there, Conan sinks to the bottom.

- Dan.

Fantastic hack and slash with terrible boss battles

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

OK, I am not a hardcore gamer. But I do like Conan, and the demo looked good enough for me to buy it. I have to say that the game was a lot of fun, and the storyline was Canon-like (not much plot). There are many bare breasted women (not really sure why), and a lot of graphic violence. This is not for kids, no way.

As you kill enemies you gain red mana that lets you learn new moves. The new moves is very cool. It is basically teaching you combos for each stage of the game. There are different combos for 1 handed with shield, dual wield, or big one handed weapons. I thought you could sort of specialize in one fighting style and learn all those moves... wrong. Just grab them at random. When you reload saved games all your weapons are gone anyway and you just grab what you find. Each type of weapon combos are fun to learn, but really do not have much impact on gameplay. It is fun to hack the arms off an enemy, or throw him on a spike, but going back through a second time there is no difference in the order you buy skills or train yourself. That was a let down.

You can find some hidden areas, usually pretty obvious. These unlock treasures and usually some naked women saying don't leave me here until you save her. Then she says let me reward you and stands there, you can't do anything (even hack her up).

There are some pretty clever environment plays as well. Some huge crossbows you get to fire into ships, or destroy part of the environment, that was a lot of fun.

Now for the bad parts... The camera is on some sort of system (non intelligent). So sometimes the area you need to go is at the bottom of the screen where you can't see it! And many times your perspective shifts with the camera, and so does the controller. You will press left and suddenly be going down on the screen. WIERD camera system. It was really frustrating in several spots where I had no idea where to go next or what to do. Resort to running around until something highlights for an action.

Actions are ok. You get a white circle on the ground and press the action button. What comes next is the frustrating part. It is different for each situation. You would like Action - X to open a door (it shows which button to hit at the top of the screen) would always work. Nope. It depends on what door, sometimes it is X, sometimes the left stick up, then down. If you get any of these "prompts" wrong you start all over. That is not too frustrating when it is a door, it is downright CRAZY when you fight bosses.

The bosses fight like normal with a huge health bar. As you get them down near zero a precanned sequence starts where you have to press a prompted button at the exact right time... Not always the same button either. IT IS RANDOM!!! So you figured out on the last boss at 1% health, STOP trying to get off your 9 button combo (because one of those button presses will be taken as your boss prompt). Fine. Then you think you have it figured out, nope. Random button prompt at top of the screen with about 1/2 a second to react, press button (or button sequence) or you die. Lame. The final boss was an incredibly tedious sequence of get him to 1% health and GUESS the buttons, then have the boss regen 1/2 or more of his health because you pressed the wrong button. Rinse, repeat. Took me over an hour. The entire rest of the game only took 8 hours!

Without the boss "non-combat" system it would have been fun to complete. As it is I never want to repeat the end of the game. I will start from the beginning and play for a bit, and then delete the saves before I get to the end boss, too lame for me to bother finishing again.

So, to summarize:
Graphic game
Lots of cool finishing moves to kill enemies
Wierd camera system
A few "puzzle" areas of jump before you die (lame)
Nice variety of things to kill and weapons to use
The learning system was so close, but doesn't actually make any difference in the game

I would not pay for it new, but I would rent it for a weekend or buy it used.

Great Hack-n-Slash Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 15, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is probably one of the best hack-n-slash games I have ever played. Unlike most, I actually feel like I'm in control of the character. With a lot of games like this, I end up getting too frustrated because you have to wait for your character to finish a canned move sequence before you get to control them again.

Sure, there's little storyline, but who cares? This game was created so you can torture legions of enemies. It delivers.

The only thing I don't like about this game is the boss battles can really piss you off. They go on for ever. They are epic, that's for sure. Just when you think you've got the boss licked, it comes back for some more.

I find myself laughing out loud at the shear carnage in the game.

I highly recommend this game. I'm glad I just rented it, though, as it has no replay value to me.

~Slick

Always in moderation: Indulge and you'll be overwhelmed

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

With gameplay like God of War, Conan is a great, gritty, down-to-earth realistic low-fantasy, firmly within a universe like that of Conan the Cimmerian.

Rather fantastical elements are added in which only serve to make the story lamer than it could be, such as talk of ancient magic and wizards and demons, and an emphasis on "Conan the Destroyer" type magic, rather than firmly hard R-rated action.

But there IS plenty of R-rated action; blood is profuse in spilling (not crazy anime-style, but it gushes properly, leaves large permanent stains, etc), and body parts can be hacked off. Topless women are available to be saved, but other than watching them jig a bit in skimpy panties, you can't do anything with them.

The action as of yet has somehow managed to keep from growing stale, as you learn too many new moves too quickly in the game, but there seem to be more things to learn as you progress. Enemies begin to get too easy to kill, while some enemies are ridiculously difficult not due to any skill on their part, but simply a seemingly impenetrable shirt of armor, and an ability to break your sword parry almost every time they use a strong attack. Some of the bosses (including a morbidly obese creature on an island carrying a big stick covered in nails) are simply invincible, and can only be killed by utilizing the landscape, or monotonously waiting for them to miss you (quite easily) and then slicing at them with weak speed moves for half an hour.

The gore gets excessive to a point where the squeamish will be vomiting, and the non-squeamish, if unaffected, will be dissatisfied with the "300"-style gratuitousness of it, because rather than 2 hours of nonstop violence, this can go on for endless hours depending how long you play.

And in the end, enjoyment and lasting value comes with moderation. I've found in my experience that playing an hour or two every day or so makes this game more valuable than flooding an entire day with the game. Because the gore becomes cartoonishly gratuitous, and much, if not all, of the levels are the same labyrinthine maze requiring lots of simple puzzle work and ridiculously high "God of War"-style jumping.

Decent game in moderation, destined for irrelevance if indulged, a decent start for a Conan launch in console games, but not the best they could have done.

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