Age of Conan - Hyborian Adventures: A Review of the first 24 hours

Minimum configuration:

• (1024x768, detail reduced)
  
• OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista
  
• Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3Ghz or equivalent
  
• RAM: 1GB
  
• Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or better
  
• Video memory: 128MB
  
• DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
  
• HARD DRIVE SPACE: 30GB
  

Recommended configuration:

• (Up to 1280X960, most features on)
  
• OS: Windows XP SP 2 or Windows Vista
  
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz or equivalent
  
• RAM: 2048MB Dual Channel DDR2
  
• Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX or equivalent
  
• Video memory: 512MB
  
• DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
  
• HARD DRIVE SPACE: 30GB
  

But enough of the tech foreplay….let’s get into the game itself.

Character Creation

The amount of sliders and choices for your new avatar firmly separate this title from any of its competitors or predecessors. The chances of running into someone who looks exactly like you is quite low, and the fact that the entire process takes place during a cut scene helps draw the player into the experience.

As you can see from the screenshot, there are three races to choose from. Also there are twelve total classes, three for each archetype available in the game. Of course, your race determines what classes you can choose from, but they all seem to be just as robust as the last. I spent a good forty-five minutes tweaking sliders and fiddling with tattoo choices, but I could have easily spent more.

Entering Hyboria

After recovering from slider overload, I ventured forth into the game itself. Now this I feel was another great innovation from Funcom. Even though this game is a MMoRPG, it doesn’t start off as one. You wash up ashore alone, literally. You are alone in the world completely separate from the other players. For the first 20 levels of the game, you get to choose where and when you interact with other players. The Day/Night choice is given to you once you have completed your first few quests on the beach and finally enter the city limits.

At this stage of the game, you will either play during the day with other player characters. Or you can choose to play during the night and work your character by furthering the storyline. You get exp’s for both night and day dealings, however I found myself tending toward the night life…you know cause I like to boogie. It just seemed that I got more accomplished when I wasn’t sharing spawn points and bumping shoulders with scores of strangers. Personally I think it was great an idea for controlling the overflow of such a large launch day. Anyone who has played a MMoRPG on launch day will tell you that congestion and spawn timers are your worst enemies.

UI and Chat system

Simply put, they are the industry standard since WoW. Nothing is changed here, and quite frankly nothing needs to be. It’s familiar and it works. Nothing much more to say about this other than it’s well executed and has a very low learning curve.

Combat

Now this was the one feature of the game that I was not completely sure about. Unlike most of the MMoRPG’s that I have played in the past, this one’s combat is twitch based. It’s bread and butter is the combo system. Basically you have abilities that correspond to parts of the body, represented by hotkeys/UI buttons. There is a bit of a learning curve, to say the least. However I have to say that if someone like me can handle it, so can anyone! It’s really not hard to pick up the combos and soon you’ll be using them without even thinking of which directional key/UI button goes with which ability. I found it much more satisfying to take out a group of pirates with my choice of headshot, bodyblow, legsweep than I ever did with right click attacking mobs in WoW. Also, did I forget to mention the fatalities? Oh yeah...they are in there too, and just as gory as promised. I’d like to delve more into these, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise for those who are looking to pick up this title.

Conclusion

All in all I would have to give this title a big ole’ thumbs up. Having not been outside of the beginning city as of yet, obviously my opinion may change, but I sincerely doubt it. With what limited game play I have seen thus far, I am already completely overwhelmed. I have yet to see guilds, pvp, crafting, cities, siege engines etc and yet I am fully engulfed in its spell. Even with the difficulty with which my system runs this game, I cannot put it down. If any other game had given me this much technical grief it would have been thrown under a bus….but somehow the hiccups don’t mean a damn when it comes to this game.

I will say however that Funcom is taking one hell of a risk. Making a MMoRPG that is only able to be played by those with a serious gaming rig is ballsy to say the least. However they chose not to compromise the quality of their product in lieu of the almighty dollar. If it will come back to bite them in the rear when it comes to subscriber numbers in the long run? Well that remains to be seen, but I for one hope it retains a substantial portion of the MMoRPG landscape.

If you’re a MMoRPG fan, and have the kind of system specs needed to run this game, I couldn’t recommend it more. A big two thumbs up from yours truly, here’s hoping that we meet in Hyboria someday soon.