christiangamer

There’s a new game on the rise in the industry, and while it won’t be outselling or outshining GTA4 in popularity, it is an interesting game – and it’s selling very well for a PC pseudo-exclusive (It will be out on Xbox 360 sometime in the future).  Funcom is already saying there have been 400,000 people sign up for subscriptions (yep, it’s one of those games that you have to keep paying to play) and the collector’s edition of the game sold out completely.

The reason I gave GTA the sword in the pic is cause, well, I’m done with it.  I made the decision that my initial impressions of the title were good enough to let parents know what they are getting into with the game.  And while the story was intriguing – it just wasn’t worth treading through all the junk to get to it (at least not to me).  So it’s on to other games for me; including Age of Conan, which has more appeal to my inner geek and though it’s a mature game for lots of reasons, there is significantly less nastiness.

Here are the basics on Age of Conan: The Hyborian Adventures

• Based on Robert E. Howard’s brutal “low-fantasy” universe (this is NOT Lord of the Rings – no elves or silly hobbitses)
• Online play only – Like World of Warcraft, which you may have heard of, this is an MMORPG (MMORPG stands for massively multiplayer online role playing game and means that you buy the game and then subscribe for 15 bucks a month – ouch).  You are playing on constantly updated servers over a high speed internet connection (required) with 1000’s of other people at the same time.
• This is the first (popular) M for Mature rated online game (Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language, Nudity, Sexual Themes are the ESRB descriptors)
• The game has incredibly steep computer system requirements – you will need a serious gaming machine to run it well.  Do not buy this game thinking you can run it on your office computer.
• Real-time combat system is new to the genre.  Most MMORPG’s have auto-attack systems that can get pretty boring after a while – this one keeps you busy and features real combos and more action.

So far I have two characters; a level 10 Barbarian and a level 13 Ranger.  I love fantasy-themed role-playing-games and so there are parts of the game that I’m enjoying quite a bit.  But parents need to know that the game is not for kids.  Robert Howard’s dark fantasy world has been kept in tact in brutal detail.  The violence is strong with blood spattering, decapitations and removal of limbs possible (though not very realistic-looking), suggestive sexual content is in the game (nowhere near the level of GTA, but present), and language and nudity are there as well.

The themes found in the story are of a mature nature that most kids may simply find unappealing or gloss over completely.  Slavery, good vs evil, loyalty, greed, sex, situational ethic scenarios (can you be Jack Bauer) are all parts of different quests I’ve been on.  It’s story/writing is handled mostly with class and maturity (a welcome change to the dirty joke assault that was Grand Theft Auto IV), and it’s interesting and compelling.  My one gamer specific complaint is that the character models, though amazing-looking, are stiff and the animations and movements seem pretty weak.  Also the 4 hour downtimes that have happened are kind of a bummer (you can’t play when the servers aren’t up).

If you’re into rpg’s or fantasy settings, you may want to try it out.  As with most MMO games, you get the first month of play free, but after that its an allowance drain.  And make sure you have the system to run it before you buy it.  I’ve never played a PC game that asked for 32 gigabytes of hard drive space!  If your video card is over 2 years old, you may have to upgrade.  It’s an absolutely beautiful game graphically, but you’ll need some serious power to run it on high settings.  I’m interested to see when and how they will get it going on the Xbox 360.