Conan is a hack and slash third person adventure game, where you play as Conan the Cimmerian, a barbarian who has been away on a long adventure, who returns home to find his village has been wiped out by an evil tribe. A single survivor tells Conan that they came for a magical mirror, and have taken the mystical object and gone. Naturally Conan takes it on himself to seek revenge on the mysterious tribe, and take back the mirror that was stolen.

   

The game is split into 5 main areas across different landscapes. Basic puzzle solving is occasionally required for you to progress, and along the way you will find new weapons for Conan to use. Throughout the areas you come across varying enemies that need a good battering. You have two main attack buttons, a block and a jump move. With certain button press combinations Conan can perform fighting combos that dish out even more damage. When you have killed an enemy, you are awarded hit points, which you can use to level up your abilities and strengths.

Unfortunately, the combat mechanics aren't too hot and can be frustrating. Even allowing for the fact that Conan is a heavyweight, movement isn't fluid enough and feels very sluggish when pressing a combination of buttons. Even moving Conan around the levels feels slow at times, which can become a chore when coming up against fast moving enemies.

   

However, if you thought the movement and combat was an annoyance, just wait until you die. Instead of having the option of continuing, having a lives system, or a straight 'Game Over' screen, the designer decided instead to play God - let me explain: When you die, you get a short loading screen, and then a Star Gate style warp through space until you get to a place somewhere between life and death. You are placed in a small arena and you have to battle up to three enemies. If you win, you are sent right back into where you died and can continue. However, if the enemies in this area beat you, it's Game Over. You have to go back to your previous save from the main menu... This has to be one of the most frustrating things I have had to do in a videogame for years. I can only compare it to the restarts you had to do in Stuntman on PS2, where you had to completely reload a level if you messed up. It's incredibly annoying, and if you have saved close to where you died (i.e. a boss), I found it easier to quit and out and reload my save. It's certainly a lot faster and less annoying to do it this way. If you're going to let people have (effectively) infinite continues, why not just give them to the player instead of having the "another-chance" section?

   

Graphically, Conan doesn't push the system in the slightest. The levels and models aren't very detailed, texture quality is rather low, and at times the game suffers from major frame rate and tearing issues. Couple this with the previously mentioned sluggishness of the combat, and occasionally Conan gets close to unplayable.

Conan has Xbox Live multiplayer options, where you can play various different game modes like one-on-one and death match. Unfortunately every time I went online there was never a single other person playing the game, so this part of the game couldn't be tested.

   

Overall Conan is no more than an average title, and pales in comparison to comparable games in the genre like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II and Otogi, both of which are far superior.