Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures review (PC)

Following the AoC hands-on we had for you a few weeks back I have been hacking and slashing and sometimes running away (okay, running away a lot) in the beautiful world of Hyboria and boy am I excited about it.

Obviously the beginning of the game hasn’t changed from the hands-on so you still get the smart little boat ride where you can create man or woman in your image. Well, sort of. I tried to be truthful to my own likeness in my creation and was left quite depressed until I fibbed a little and made a growling manly warrior! You have a fine selection of things you can do to personalise your character from the usual skin tones to tattoos and scars although strangely enough I haven’t seen any pot-bellied balding people running about Hyboria...I guess Wii fitness has worked then.

Once you have chosen your Avatar you are shown a very simple CGI scene to start you on the road to wherever you want to go, eventually. I say eventually because the game eases you into its world by starting you off on an Island full of cut-throats and brigands, a pirate haven with some rather nasty characters and adult quests. The whole game has a very adult theme to it which seems to be in vogue at the moment and I for one am glad for it. It’s a land of beer swilling Barbarians, menacing monsters and voluptuous Valkyries.

First Steps

The initial high you will get from the game will undoubtedly be caused by the fantastic vistas, rolling mist and spine tingling sound effects. Visually you will find no better RPG at this moment in time. The graphical variety of the different nations is fantastic, even when set to the lower settings. Although, if you have a machine with enough muscle to run AoC with all the eye candy set to maximum then go for it because your eyes will thank you once you finally wrench them from the screen and if your ears had hands they would clap for joy at the abundance of perfectly sampled sounds that drift wonderfully from every direction. Never have sound effects in a game impressed me as much as they have when in Hyboria. So much has been added that you never see, yet is there regardless to make you feel part of something alive and sprawling. The sound of doors opening and closing, dogs barking, people talking, haggling and arguing. I actually had to look around myself a couple of times to make sure there wasn’t a real fly buzzing about my head.

When your jaw has been lifted from the floor and given a wipe down you can begin the adventure in earnest. In the first part of the game there is a great selection of enemies to tangle with, earning us those wonderful experience points we all covet so much and with which we can level up and build a character worthy of great tales. With each level (at least after level five that is) you can start to build your skills and attributes. It’s the usual fare but you can really feel them working as you choose where to spend your allocated points. I have chosen a rather barbaric character who is more at home hacking the limbs from enemies than fiddling with potions therefore my points go towards brute strength and regenerating health at a hefty pace. The choice, of course, is your own to make and there are twelve classes to choose from along with three races.

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Once you reach level twenty you will be allowed to travel from the Island of Tortage to the mainland nations of Hyboria. There are so many places to see and countless quests both large and small at this point that you can be forgiven for feeling a little overwhelmed. Have some faith in yourself though and venture into any part of the land and you will be amazed at the sheer scope of what is on offer to the willing traveller. Not everything is available to you early on, yet you would scarcely notice as you will be much too busy saving wounded children or removing the heads of bandit leaders. Some lands are rugged and beautiful but have a dangerous feel to them whilst others are more civilized on the surface with undertones of malice. These feelings are created by the wonderful writing in every facet of the game. There is so much depth to the characters and lands that you may well get impatient with the knowledge that it will take you an age to actually see all of AoC.

This is also where you will have to interact with the people around you in both the chat panel (where you can keep up to date with the gossip and guilds vying for new members), and by clicking on another character and asking them to join you on a particular quest that is too hard for you alone. I decided to form a guild called the Popular People’s Front. Oddly enough, nobody has wanted to join me yet. Splitters! Still, I have managed to join a few groups for the odd quest here and there and it has been a unique experience for me. I quite like the freedom to help or accept help when it is needed. It adds a nice feeling of kinship to the proceedings. Beware who you help though since when I went wading in to help a lady, sword flying and blood curdling yell splitting the air, I got accused of being “egotistic” and of ”trying to steal her experience points” (the first person to hit an enemy gets the experience points no matter who actually kills it). Paranoia is not just a curse of the real world it seems. As for “egotistic”-aren’t we all running about pounding the hell out of creatures sometimes as big as a house and chopping people up left, right and centre (literally) with great aplomb? If that isn’t egotistical then I am a man in a loin cloth holding a plastic sword trying to get into character for the next big battle.

Future's So Bright...

Later on you can learn skills like mining, stonecutting, woodcutting and general harvesting of items useful for those who want to create or sell things (something I have just started on at level 40). Then of course there are the creatures you can buy and ride into battle (when you earn the ridiculous amount of money needed to buy them) and the Player versus Player battles that will kick in when the guilds get big and strong enough to do battle with one another and build cities for each other to destroy. I am playing AoC on a Player versus Environment server which gives you the role-playing with plenty of action thrown in. It all adds up to an immense package that will be getting more content soon and will continue to do so for as long as we all love it, which looks set to be a fair length of time indeed.

Of course the time has come to say that this game is not perfect. There are indeed issues that need addressed-graphical glitches where parts of the landscape can be walked through like you are some form of spectre, to waterfalls that you can swim straight up with your feet sticking out into the air whilst the poor fish try desperately to follow your lead with no such luck. The characters that sometimes pop up in front of you also dampen your immersive experience and something else to note is the much touted DirectX10 will not be coming our way until August. I wonder how much difference it will make to the look of the game.

These are things I know are being worked on even as you read this and for every bump in the road to greatness AoC has many glorious golden bridges. The fatality killings are a joy to behold and as you earn more of them your battles can turn rather messy and manic. Buying, selling and generally interacting is fairly intuitive and the game helps you along in the earlier stages without being patronizing. While there are only so many things you can do with quests they have a sense of style and purpose that makes you care about what you are doing-a rare thing in a game I think you will agree.

There have been games recently that have been hailed as a good a reason as any to upgrade your PCs and they have not lived up to expectations on the game play side. AoC is one I believe to be different. This is loooooong term fun. This is rich in character and beauty. This is an ode to an author who started something huge.

This.

Is.

Hyboria!