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There is a certain amount of glee in kicking an enemy off your blade after running him through. I think I may have cackled on more than one occasion when, after bashing an opponent to his knees, I clubbed him another couples times in the head for good measure. This is what being a barbarian is about, right? Blood and guts, out in the wilderness, playing Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures earns it’s M for mature rating. I just need a big meaty bone to chew on.

Weird Tales

Age of Conan is based on Robert E. Howard's character and world, first featured in the fantasy/horror magazine Weird Tales in 1932. From there Conan's various warrior/pirate adventures took him to cartoons, comics, movies, and obviously, Funcom's game, which over 700,000 people pre-ordered. Are players just biding their time until the next World of Warcraft expansion? That could be part of it, but I met quite a few people who had a genuine soft spot for the original stories.

The game's own weird tale begins after Conan worked his way up to the throne in Aquilonia. A slave ship serves as the backdrop for your character creation, but it promptly sinks one you customize your character's look, choose one of three races—Cimmerian, if you want to match your king, and decide on one of the 12 classes. Washed up on the island of Tortage (read: Noob Island) your escaped slave is all set to fulfill his/her destiny, starting with the single player quest.

And now, presenting...your heroes!

Before continuing on with gameplay, some perspective is probably in order. I spent most of my time with my Dark Templar, Crowley. Known for life-sucking leech powers and the inherent ability, Sadism, which beefs you up--and even deals unholy damage--in proportion to how much your friends are getting their asses kicked. It just sounded like a pretty badass thing to be.

I dabbled briefly in the Ranger class, to see how mouse-wheeling into first-person worked for shooting your bow and arrow (not bad, but I hate how the enemy models disappear sometimes when they're fighting up close, so you can't always tell if your melee attacks are hitting or not—better to scroll out again.) Look forward to Immolation, which “makes the target burst into flames and flee screaming in fear and panic,” but even more so to Improved Immolation, which shares the fun with neighboring enemies. I also started a Herald of Xotli, just to see how rad it was to transform into a demon and breathe fire. (Pretty rad!!!) There are a lot of interesting choices (Bear Shaman? Demonologist?) among the more standard offerings like Barbarians and Assassins.

Into the Night

Your first 20-ish levels are spent in the vicinity of your shipwreck helping the locals deal with freaky bad demon vibes and the tyrant of the town, Strom. Much of this action takes place at night, which makes sense for sneaking, but the game is designed so that you are actually alone during these missions—effectively wrapped up in your own single player game.

At level 15 you get the option to go through with your “Destiny Quest” to cap the single player experience (most likely after spending some time during the day adventuring with other lowbies around the island to gain those last couple levels) or skip it in favor of a quicker repatriation to your character's homeland. This is where the more typical type missions begin in earnest: How many enemy molars am I supposed to collect again? Venom sacs? Wolf pelts? Somehow the wide world isn't quite as compelling as you feel it should be after your training wheels. You're still able to level at a decent clip, noticeably quicker than other games, but the story thins out and the voice acting vanishes. You'd be surprised how much you miss it, even if you weren't paying attention to every word on Tortage.

Spec that Barb!

Time to talk battle--it's important! There are lots of decapitations to perform, from the Picts to the Vanir and beyond. Age of Conan features a new system called Real Combat. Instead of locking auto-attack and picking out special abilities, players use directional attack buttons to hit where the opponent is failing to block. Of course, this can devolve into just mashing three buttons instead of one, but that little red bar goes down a lot faster if you time your combo attacks to finish on an unprotected side. Not to mention that anywhere your sword goes, damage follows sweeping through. Unlike games where unless an attack is area of effect, you always hit your target and nothing else. Combo specials play almost like quick-time events. Instead of clicking and waiting, you click and follow the directional attack pattern. At first you'll only need one addition button, but as you learn higher tiers, the chains grow.

Spells work more traditionally in that they have casting times, but for a good risk-reward challenge, mages and priests can use spellweaving—essentially staking their lives against their ability to match the flashing combos to support a gigantic awesome spell.

Combos deal damage, but the means to that end are feats. You start putting points into feat trees at level 10 to earn abilities and spells, plus combos. Then you have a whole other batch of points to put towards skills, which include not only things like regeneration speed (health, stamina, and mana) but also how fast you run and how high you can climb. It sounds like a lot, but you acclimate fast.

All that tasty MMO stuff

Obviously I couldn't take my Dark Templar all the way to the 80 level cap, so there's a lot that bears exploring. Crafting doesn't begin until level 40 (same goes for mounts), and you need a well-organized guild to start building a keep to get into siege warfare (although you'll still get into it way sooner than if you were playing something like Lineage II.) Luckily there are other PvP diversions along the way—minigames like Capture the Skull, for example.

Age of Conan's graphical potential seems to depend largely on how insane your rig is—even moreso later on when DirectX 10 support goes in. There is a lot of detail to be had if you can process it, but even some basic things like having an animation for resting instead of just having the your character plunk down on the ground for a while make the game feel more realistic. None of the music particularly caught my ear, but at least that means it wasn't annoying me.

You'll find everyone from inspired role-players to hardcore number crunchers, transplants from both WoW and LOTRO, in this game. How long they'll stay is anyone's guess, but it seems like Age of Conan has plenty of room to grow.

Review by: Emily Balistrieri