“Next time I have to remember not to paint myself into a corner”

Never before has the phrase “hack and slash” been taken so literally. Fans of the brutal barbarian get not just one, but two licensed games coming out soon, with the action-platforming console game “Conan” coming out this month, as evidenced by a new Xbox Live demo.

The other Conan game, by the way, is “Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures”, an MMORPG where you don’t actually play as Conan. That game comes out next year, and will probably be a longer and more social experience than Conan seems to be.

But Age of Conan, while bloody and filled with booty, doesn’t hold a tossed torch next to Conan’s gratuitous flying body parts. In Conan you’re constantly hacking the limbs off of a poor sap, thrusting him onto a spiky wall, or reaching inside his cold, lonesome chest and pulling out his entrails while Ron Perlman preaches about how Grom saves. You get a chance to perform a lot of these gruesome moves against pathetic, butter knife wielding weaklings in the demo, but it’s only one level and there’s no real variety in the enemy types from this early stage.

“I work really hard for these rock hard abs”

You do get a hint of the game mechanics, though– study the control scheme carefully, and consider if anything is different from God of War. Jump, grab, light and heavy attacks are all in the same place. Block and roll are right where you think they’d be. The major difference, however, is using the right trigger and right button to interact with items, pick up swords to dual wield or use two-handed weapons, and throw them at foes. Later in the game when you’re picking up torches and using them to raze huts, or set lions on fire, the game becomes a bit more interesting, but early on it can feel a little unnecessary.

And if you have an interest in slave girls, the full Conan game deliver the gratuitous frontal nudity that wannabe barbarians have come to expect. You can’t “interact” with them very much (no timed button presses here) but if you free enough of them in the final game you will receive achievements. And we all know that chicks dig achievements. Sadly, the chicks in chains are absent from this demo.

There’s a bit more to look forward to in Conan than the demo would suggest– eventually you’ll be fighting lions, spirits, and some interesting bosses. But there’s also the straightforward level design, an average move-purchasing system, and a complete plagiarism of God of War’s interface. Technically you could argue that since Conan is an older creation than Kratos, Conan is the original god of war, but after playing this demo it may just make you want SCEA to hurry up and announce GoW 3.

Tags: Conan, demo, Nihilistic, THQ, Xbox-Live

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