Conan (Xbox 360)

There's a fairly intuitive parry-riposte system in place as well, time a block well enough and the game will pop up a little prompt to tell you what button to press. Hit it in time and you're rewarded with a slow motion uber-death-kill that puts pay to your enemy in true bloody-gore Conan style.

There are parry-kills associated with the weapon types in the game, such as the bloodthirsty 'Steps of Hell' where Conan leaps up the bewildered opponent before slicing them neatly in twain with a gallon or so of blood and dangly intestines.

There are also finish moves that can deal with one or more foes, depending on their strength and resilience. Skills can be learned by finding treasure chests (these deliver red orbs - Devil May Cry, God of War comparisons ahoy) that give you points to buy new abilities. Or you can rescue the naked chicks and that'll also reward you with red orbs.

There's one other way to get red orbs: kill lots of enemies with style, there's a combo meter and a rage meter that play an important part. Do especially well in combat when you've found some of Conan's armour and you'll be rewarded with the 'Song of Death' allowing Conan's weapon(s) to dish out some extremely major damage and put pay to those pesky baddies once and for all.

As you unlock skills and continue through the story, you'll be presented with puzzles and open up magic (Conan in typical barbarian fashion doesn't trust it) to use on your enemies (ala Kratos in God of War). There are four spells and these are powered by mana (blue orbs). I'm not going to detail them, they're fairly cool and it's possible to go through the game without using them if you want to make life harder for yourself in some of the big boss battles.

There are boss battles and just like God of War (again) these aren't just button mashers, you have to think with most of them and there are even those little action-button-timed sequences that are the staple of most games like this now. You can't walk down the virtual street of a console game without having to press X,Y.B,A in some mad order to finish the bad guy off. Of course they are linked into the kinds of moves that Conan can already do using the X and Y buttons etc, so they do make sense.

All in all, God of War aside and packed with things to find, enemies to kill, skills to buy and a fairly reasonable story Howard would be pleased with. Conan is backed up by the voice talents of Claudia (Farscape/Pitch Black) Black as the Warrior Queen: Akana alongside her gruff counterpart - Ron Pearlman as Conan. The voice work is good and Pearlman's voice adds that right edge to the barbarian whilst Black's voice gives a sultry undertone to the Warrior Queen's.

The music is reminiscent of God of War, no surprises there though since it's the same composer. The sound work is good and the clash of steel against flesh is well rendered by the game's audio engine.

The AI is decent enough for what it does, it tries to overwhelm you and the game puts out quite a few enemies on screen for Conan to limb. I had to battle eight determined guards at one point whilst holding off a pack of big cats as well as dodging some flying creatures.

Enemy types are fairly varied but the game falls into repetition, there are jumping puzzles and the typical God of War block-moving style puzzles we've come to know and love.

Conan's a good game, not a brilliant one. There are a few frame issues with a spell or two and at times it seems like you're just hacking from one wave to the next to get to another room. The graphics could have done with some more polish and there should have been an option to play the game with a previous Conan so you could finish his skill set.

The combat system is robust and the levels are decently sized and follow a specific theme.

I recommend it to fans of hack/slash games as well as those who enjoyed God of War and God of War II.