Game Stooge

REVIEW: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (PC)

• Scribbled on June 18th, 2008 by Jonah Falcon
• Filed in MMO, PC, Reviews

World of Warcraft is the current Gold Standard of massively-multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs), ruling the roost with its millions of subscribers, accessible-yet-deep gameplay, and charming graphics. When most people only play one MMORPG at a time, to survive, another game of its ilk – especially one with a fantasy setting – must provide something new, carve a niche for itself, and generate a devoted fanbase.

This is why many of the upcoming MMORPGs are based on established licenses. The successful Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar mines Tolkein, while Warhammer Online will be catering to the Games Workshop crowd. This strategy isn’t always successful, though - the Dungeons & Dragons MMORPG more or less failed, though rumblings are Turbine will tackle it with the new 4th Edition rules.

Does the Conan the Barbarian license take another chunk of that MMORPG pie?

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (AoC) certainly sprung out of the gate fast, even outselling Grand Theft Auto IV in some countries. Conan definitely has what a lot of gamers want: big beefy fighters, slinky buxom females with edged weaponry, and beheadings. Conan’s been around since the 1930’s, and even had two movies with The Governator, so its understandable that the promise of limbs flying and visceral action would have a lot of curiosity seekers.

There are two features that attempt to set AoC from the MMO crowd. The first is the “solo mode”, in which you undertake solo missions at night, as if playing a single player game. This mode is fun in that the missions are fairly self-contained. Unfortunately, all of the missions are tied into the player’s storyline, and once you’ve completed all the missions for the PC’s stage, you’ve not permitted to solo til the next stage (which is every 5 levels). The disappointing aspect is that the “looking for group” system is almost nonexistant, and the multiplayer missions are fairly drab.

The other attempt to set itself apart is the combat, which is similar to World of Warcraft, but somewhat more action-oriented. Enemies will have defenses, and the player will try to attack in a direction where the enemy is exposed. Special attacks require the player to perform an arrow combo (ie. left-center-center). There are also dodges which the player can perform by double-pressing a direction. The combat system, however, is hampered by the lack of visceral feeling. Combat, which should be an adrenaline rush, gets old quickly. Part of the reason is that all the vaunted gore is basically a blood splash here and there, and even beheadings just feel like taking the head off a mannequin. Players expecting limbs to fly and disembowelments a la Ninja Gaiden or God of War will feel cheated. Worse, female player animations feel stilted and wrong, as if very little attention was paid to that part of the game.

A major part of the problem is the general drabness of the game. The environments are brown and muddy, lacking the colorfulness and intensity of World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online. While it’s nice to be faithful to the Aquilonian settings to the books, it just doesn’t feel as if there was any effort put at all to the art direction. LOTRO proved you can be faithful to the books and still remain fresh and original.

It doesn’t help that the missions, too, are unoriginal, and the voice acting is drab. The story itself, involving the player’s tattoo and King Conan’s travails, are mildly interesting, but it will be interesting to see if the gamers will want to pay more than one extra month’s monthly fee.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is a blown opportunity by FunCom, in a realm dominated by the cartoonish – if attractive - WoW. Here’s hoping Warhammer Online, by experienced Dark Age of Camelot developer Mythic Studios, fares better. From what I experienced at ComicCon, it will.