God of War starring Conan the Barbarian on the xbox 360
After playing for a while, I realized the atmosphere of the comic is pretty much vacant. It seems like another victim of smacking some brand on a game vaguely true to the concept and then push it out to the shelfs. It seems like the developers have little knowledge of the comic, and are unable to blow life into the character or the surroundings. Conan's one liners are dull and poorly acted, and the world in general seems flat and shallow compared to the Comic.
Having said that, this still is an excellent hack and slash game. And, the graphics is in my opinion more than what I would expect from a modern game of this type. I had a lot of fun trying out all kinds of nasty combos, relieving Conans enemies from various body parts as he dives further into the story.
The game is in the danger zone of becoming repetitive, but the unique experience system gives it more depth. Basically you receive experience points from killing enemies, rescuing bare breasted girls or find hidden treasure. The experience points can then be spent on new combos, which will then need to be practiced to be mastered. This gives the game a nice learning curve, and by the end you will be able to do some pretty fancy moves, making this more than an exercise in button mashing.
I also like the fact you can pick up almost any item and throw it at the enemy, my favorite is the torch with can in fact put them on fire. Quite satisfying to see a tough enemy who was kicking your ass on fire... You also have some kind of magic, making Conan able to perform some Medusa type of attack, turning enemies into stone for a brief time. All in all, this makes you able to vary the way you play quite a bit.
There's a range of varied boss'es to be found as well, contributing to the game's longevity. I found the boss battles to be quite varied and interesting, however some of them dragged out for too long. Trying to hack through the same boss for the n'th time is frustrating and boring as you have to start from the beginning every time you fail to reach that exact same spot where you are challenged, yawning your way there while repeating the exact same thing over and over. I'm currently stuck in the middle of such a battle, and I'm not very motivated to go back to the game now. I wish the save points were distributed more generously, and the difficulty curve more balanced.
The game also offers various puzzles. But they are more for show than anything else. Usually there will be some strong visual clues of what to do, like a blinking lever, so the puzzles only slows you down, never adds any true challenge. Which is good in fact, if I wanted puzzle game I will get Portal or something, this is about chopping heads off! I wish more game developers was true to their genre, instead of trying to put all kinds of mismatching things into the gameplay.
All in all, the very best hack and slash game for xbox 360. An enjoyable and for the most part satisfying experience