“Swords speak louder than words” says the video game cover. And Conan’s swords certainly do a lot of talking in this game. It truly is a violent gore-fest of epic proportions. And the more skilful you become, the gorier it gets as you pick up new ways of mutilating your enemies.

But aside from his unquenchable lust for bloody carnage, Conan is actually a pretty decent sort of chap, as he pauses on his travels to wrest the occasional scantily clad maiden from her bonds. This game really is pretty NSFW. Not that you’d be playing an Xbox 360 at work, but you know what I mean.

Believe it or not, there’s a plot running through the middle of this wholesale slaughter, and it has you helping a slightly less scantily-clad warrior queen, and solving one of those mysterious ‘evil force’ things that tend to ravage the lands of these sword-and-sorcery-type places all too regularly. Fine by me.

In stark contrast to all the slice and dice nastiness, there is a real lushness to the jungle, desert, and architectural environments throughout this game.

The way Conan moves about, and interacts with the scenery, coupled with the intelligently controlled ‘camera’ angles, make for a very cinematic experience.

The game really barrels along, with a good spread of puzzling sections to break up the pace a bit. The puzzles aren’t so frustratingly difficult that they put you off your stride though – the onus is on entertaining, rather than irritating, the player. Checkpoints and save-points are nicely spread about too, so you won’t have too much to redo if Conan takes an arrow too many in the chest.

While you get by in Conan employing little more than an old-school button-mashing technique, if you combine Conan’s special moves with grapples and well-timed defensive blocks, you can unleash raging torrents of blood and viscera –and later in the game the special moves become even more special if you keep the bodycount combo-meter high.

I’ll end with a note about Conan’s voice – if you were expecting a monosyllabic Austrian movie-star-come-politician to make an appearance, you won’t find one. Nope. The voice acting is actually good in this game.

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