Conan is an action/adventure/button-masher in which you control Conan who is, so I hear, some sort of barbarian. As Conan accidentally releases unspeakable evil upon the world (in his hunt for treasure), he also loses his armor and his recent memory. So, he has to quest to get his armor back before the evil magic that it has been imbued with (as a result of his carelessness) ends humanity as we know it.

Those familiar with the God of War series will feel right at home in Conan as they have very familiar play mechanics. And like, God of War, Conan earns its M rating with gore and nudity to spare.

Controlling Conan is pretty easy. Left stick runs, right stick makes him do a ducking roll. Come to think of it, that's exactly like God of War. There's no camera control, but the world and the levels are designed with that in mind, so it's ok. Fighting is done by mashing buttons. (X) for light attacks, (Y) for heavy, (B) for blocking and bashing and (A) for jumps. Unlike the God of War, Conan has his choice of weaponry: single weapons with or without a shield, dual wielded light weapons, or big-ass two handers.

As Conan bashes heads and severs limbs, he collects "red runes" which are used to "buy" new combat techniques. My favorite so far is the pile-driver, which is sure to be familiar to any fan of the WWE. Conan grabs a smallish opponent (by which we mean not hulkingly huge), picks him up, flips him over and drives his skull into the ground. This move is always fatal, so I use it whenever I can. The best part is that, this being a special move and all, your other enemies will stop and watch the carnage.

There are achievements on the 360 version related to how many times you kill someone with a "hand to hand" move, which the pile driver counts as. There are others related to the number of severed both parts. There's even one for beheading someone with your shield. I yelped with glee when I got that one. Most of the 360 achievements are, in fact, related to how often you kill your opponents in certain ways.

With armor piece that Conan retrieves he also acquires new "Armor Powers". The first one you get turns a number of enemies directly in front of Conan to stone. He can then bash them to bits at will. It's really handy for getting rid of certain, pesky, skilled opponents. With the second piece of armor comes the ability to call fire from the sky. It's quite deadly, but also costly. The energy required for the armor powers is pretty hard to come by, and when you start out, your "reserves" are only large enough to hold a single use.

As you progress through the world, though, you'll encounter set of runes engraved on the ground. To activate them, you must find and jab your sword into all three. Green runes will raise your total health, red your "combo gauge" and blue, you armor power reserves.

As you bash on your enemies without getting bashed yourself, your combo gauge (I don't know what they call it) fills up. As it gets closer to full, your weapons take on a red glow which represents your "blades signing a song of destruction". In short, you're even more bad ass than you were a minute ago, which is to say, Conan is even more of a bad ass. You're still a geek playing video games. Since I suck at these games, I've yet to witness this being a real big bonus. But it does look pretty cool.

In addition to the head bashing, there is a certain amount of environmental puzzle activity going on. Find the chain to pull. Find the rock to break. The button to push. Etcetera. While these sequences don't really add much to the game, they don't particularly detract from it either and they do give your fingers a much needed rest. Button mashing is hard work!

As you might also expect to find in any Conan related media, there are lots of naked damsels which require rescuing. Rescuing them isn't a big deal. you just untie those which you find. You are not, as it happens, able to take them up on their offers of "thanks". Though, on a related note, Conan does "pass the time" with the female protagonist (her words, not mine) in the story.

To be honest, I didn't really expect to like this game nearly as much as I do. It's hard (or I suck) but it's lots of fun. Which is to say, if you like ripping people's limbs off, it's lots of fun. I think the only thing really missing is the fact that you cannot pick up those limbs and beat people with them. If this were a PC game, I'd expect to see that as a mod at some point. If, on the other hand, you prefer flowers to carnage, may I recommend Eternal Sonata?