Conan [Playstation 2]

Note: This review is part of a series I am going to call “Resurrected Reviews”, essentially stuff that I wrote for previous (now deceased) blogs and review topics on various gaming forums over the years. I have dragged them kicking-and-a-screaming into the harsh light of the present day and revamped them where necessary. Some may say “Rehash” but I say “Recycling”.

Release: 2004 | Developer: Cauldron | Publisher: TDK Mediactive | Also On: PC, Xbox, Gamecube

“What does not destroy me, makes me stronger”

When talking about the videogame adventures of Robert E Howard’s legendary barbarian warrior, most will be more familiar with the PS3 game by THQ, a very average 3D adventure game that I personally found to be akin to a poor man’s God of War. The game that I will be talking about now (also titled simply ‘Conan’) came before on the PS2 and Gamecube and was published by TDK, developed by Cauldron. It’s completely unrelated to the THQ game but would it be better for it? Well…

Picture this: after a mere ten minutes of gameplay, I was staring dully at the TV screen with mental despair taking hold. I was thinking, why oh why are there no good Conan games? The PS3 game was an un-enjoyable slog to the finish after just a few hours of playtime and there are no others that I know of aside from the PC Age of Conan MMO which I can’t be arsed with as I simply don’t ‘do’ PC games. The only other Conan game I have glimpsed came in the form of a few screenshots for an unreleased Atari Jaguar side-scrolling beat ‘em up (the very definition of obscure!) so I was desperate for this PS2 effort to satisfy the Conan fan in me. But no, it just had to be another bitter pill of disappointment.

Why are there no decent Conan games? Why? The films were great (well, the first one was. Conan the Destroyer isn’t quite the same and the remake is just pointless) but the books were even better. I’ve read every one of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories and they were brilliant. Between these and the movie adaptations, there is a world of resource and inspiration for some good Conan games so why…are…there…no…good…Conan…games? WHY? WHY? WHERE ARE THE GOOD CONAN GAMES?!?

Whew. That’s better. Talk about your pent up frustration. In the spirit of Conan himself, I persevered and so with pad in hand I asked Crom for the strength to beat this game and if he wouldn’t listen? To hell with him.

To give Conan some credit, the game is at least faithful to the source material when it comes to locations, weapons and even the characterisation of Conan himself. This isn’t Conan as played by Arnie but the real Conan from E. Howard’s books and – as a fan of those tomes – I really appreciated what Cauldron did to keep things legit and authentically presented. The ‘epic’ music is generic but a good fit for the game (nothing else to say about it to be frank).

Gameplay revolves dispatching enemies with various button combinations. You have light attacks, heavy attacks, grabs and a block button. These are utilised to pull off preset combos and by killing enemies the player earns points to spend on unlocking new, flashier moves – standard stuff. Movement however is really clunky and despite using a few different pads, Conan sometimes simply refused to move in the desired direction when changing course. It didn’t cause too many unnecessary deaths during my play-through but it’s pretty piss-poor when a game makes you question the condition of your controllers, especially when it turns out that they are all working correctly.

This screen is actually from the Xbox version but I’m not sure I care enough.

If you do run out of health though then Conan is transported to the realm of Crom where you must defeat enemies in an enclosed arena in order to be fully restored to the spot where Conan snuffed it. Sounds pretty sweet right? Especially when you consider that the feature has unlimited uses. It’s actually the opposite though because these arena battles are much easier than battles in the mortal realm making Conan’s resurrections assured and the threat of enemies neutered. If you can’t ever technically be killed then where is the challenge? Conan’s apparent immortality also makes a mockery of boss battles because you can be infinitely restored to the spot with the enemy’s life bar still depleted.

The only way that you don’t get a chance to fight for Conan’s restoration is by falling foul of environmental hazards such as holes or traps (apparently Conan hasn’t died as a warrior thus denying him the right to be resurrected) but this still doesn’t excuse the ability to ignore strategy completely and abuse this mechanic. Ultimately, I wondered if there was any point at all in trying to utilise the game’s full range of moves because you may as well repeat the same handful of basic sword combos while spamming this revival ability. It’s certainly possible to beat the game this way with little trouble.

You can switch between swords, axes and maces throughout the game but again, unless you need the mace for beating down armoured foes more effectively, there’s no incentive to bother. There’s also a running side quest to locate and assemble all four pieces of the Atlantean Sword but any exploration is voided by the fact that a) environments are incredibly linear and bland and b) only one of the pieces is easy to miss with the others all in plain sight or after beating a boss. The Atlantean Sword deals with enemies in one hit and shamefully, I even killed the final boss with one wild swipe! Who tested this shit?

Braving the harsh elements and wild animals. At least the feel of the character and setting(s) is there.

The main problem with this game is the clunkiness and just general, basic dullness of everything. It really is an exercise in getting from A to B by killing everything in between, pulling a few levers and avoiding pitfalls. Lots of games have adopted this approach in the past and have turned out really well but Conan is just so uninteresting to sit through with repetitive scraps that don’t ever offer something new or stylish to at least paper over the shortcomings. It does say something that my highlight of the game was the quick cinematic of Conan punching a camel in a marketplace, a reference to a humorous scene in the original Arnie film. It made me smile at least when nothing else did.

The sole reason I persevered to the end was because the authenticity to the original books was spot on and I still wanted to see what happened in the end. I can imagine a non-Conan fan playing this game and binning it after a few levels because as much as I appreciated the videogame renditions of stuff from the books, it was always a case of sitting down and saying “right, got to get this bloody Conan game finished so I can play something else” rather than enjoying the game. I’m bored just writing about it.

Now that I’m nearing the conclusion of this review, I’m looking back over my words and thinking that I haven’t really gone into much detail but the truth is, I just don’t have anything else to say. So…is this an angry rant ending on a mellow note? Not until I’ve gone over the game’s miserable save system! I knew there was something else I hated about Conan – must have blocked it out of my mind for a moment there. Well, there’s no use in burying my head in the sand so I’ll talk about it.

Conan needs to possess a crystal to save the game. You can save anywhere (good) BUT you can only carry four of the damn things at any one time (bad) and let me tell you: there’s nothing worse than trying to make your last crystal go as far as possible only to fall down a hidden pit or be killed by a barely-visible trap because it means slogging back through the whole unsaved section all over again, slaying the same boring enemies and looking at the same uninspiring scenery (extremely, diarrhoea-grade bad). Who thinks that weird save systems like this are a good idea? Fuck these people. A game this underwhelming didn’t need to be any worse but congratulations developers, you managed it.

Overall Thoughts

It’s a shame that the gameplay is so uninspiring and bland because the source material was treated really well with this one. Conan is at least authentic in spirit but that means little when you barely want to play the actual game. Another missed oppurtunity.

Onechanbara Z Kagura with NoNoNo! [Playstation 3]

Note: This review is part of a series I am going to call “Resurrected Reviews”, essentially stuff that I wrote for previous (now deceased) blogs and review topics on various gaming forums over the years. I have dragged them kicking-and-a-screaming into the harsh light of the present day and revamped them where necessary. Some may say “Rehash” but I say “Recycling”.

Onechanbara has always been a bit pervy but it does feel like the development team hit new heights with a new gen of hardware at their disposal.

When I completed Onechanbara Z Kagura with NoNoNo! (more on that nutty subtitle later) for the PS3, I contemplated reviewing this import curio but eventually decided not to bother. Why? Because it’s flippin’ tough to form a stack of paragraphs for a game that has the player hacking up zombies as girls in skimpy bikinis – that’s why. There’s scant room to expand on this paper-thin concept. Z Kagura is one of those games that you simply cannot sit on the fence with; you either feverishly imported a copy as soon as it was released OR are currently about to click away from this blog to go and read something more highbrow on a different site…a detailed analysis on particle theory perhaps.

What I will say however is that Z Kagura is by far the most enjoyable and accessible Onechanbara game I have yet played and I have tried them all aside from the Japanese-only PSP instalment and the gloriously-titled Bikini Samurai Squad on the Xbox 360 (a system I don’t own). The older games felt punishing and extremely bare-bones with excruciatingly sluggish levelling up systems and the less said about the hellish Wii waggle-a-thon controls in Bikini Zombie Slayers, the better. Z Kagura immediately struck me as easier to stomach for long periods of time and the game generally felt better presented with solid controls, a compliant manually adjustable camera and more fluid hack ‘n slash action than ever before.

(But wait; this is turning into a review after all isn’t it? Fuck.)

Otherwise it was business as usual and thanks to the greatly improved aesthetics and sense of progression (upgrades are much easier to afford and equip than in past games), it was certainly no hardship to be tasked with cutting down crazy numbers of zombies and other freakish abominations while playing as an unsuitably garbed heroine. You can switch freely between the buxom bikini-clad Kagura and her more conservatively dressed sister Saaya but thanks to the wonders of the customisation mode (or ‘co-ordinate’ mode as the game dubs it), you can stick Saaya in the same bikini as her sister for double the jiggly boobs and gratuitously exposed bottoms. Look; until there actually is a zombie apocalypse, nobody can say for a fact that these kinds of outfits aren’t suitable for a desperate battle against the undead can they?

Kagura had guys lining up to buy her a drink. Most non-interested girls politely decline but some reply with the business end of a massive blade. Life lesson: stay single; you’ll live longer.

Kagura can go to war against the zombies with either a pair of katanas or her long-reaching blades that she swings about on the end of a chain just like Kratos from the God of War series. Her sister meanwhile can flick between fighting with her fists and feet to using a chainsaw. It was nice to have a variety of weapons rather than another all-swords affair but I didn’t really gel with Saaya’s hands-on melee style or her cumbersome chainsaw attacks so tended to stick with Kagura. Her chained blades are useful when you need to fight from a distance and the katanas are just that much more speedy as well as visually pleasing.

The linear nature of the series hasn’t changed though. You still have to eliminate all enemies within set areas before moving onto the next zone and occasionally facing off against an ugly boss. Thankfully though, the combat itself was much more enjoyable this time largely due to the decent camera (manipulated freely with the right analogue stick) and easy to execute combos that devastate zombie hordes, sending blood spraying everywhere in a comically over-the-top fashion. The rampage state (induced by doing enough killing to fill a blood meter) is still here and you still have to routinely clean your weapons to keep them effective but somehow it all feels a vast step up from those earlier PS2 games which were fun playthings but ultimately too frustrating beyond the first few stages to properly enjoy. There are some brief cut scenes here and there but this is a Japanese import so don’t expect to understand any of it and certainly don’t expect an English-language release to become available because – y’know – this shit is just too weird for us over here apparently. That said, there isn’t much that a language barrier can do to complicate a hack ‘n slash game when all you need to understand are the concepts of swords, zombies and breasts.

There’s blood. Lots of it.

Speaking of weird, there’s that subtitle to address: Onechanbara Z Kagura with NoNoNo! That’s not the sound of the game’s heroines protesting as the developers dump them into a zombie apocalypse with bikinis for protection; it’s the name of Z Kagura’s special guest character, unlocked by completing at least five of the game’s ‘Quests’ (a screen of various targets to meet i.e. collect enough yellow orbs, use enough items in battle, clear missions without switching characters etc.). This is an Onechanbara game though so it’s no great shock when NoNoNo! turns out to be a blue-haired maid with ginormous boobs and a ludicrously round rear end that could only exist in such a smutty videogame as this where developers have sat at their workstations playing God when it comes to plausible anatomy.

NoNoNo! fights while cheerfully dancing about and shooting at zombies with some sort of sci-fi laser pistol and…yeah. Because Japan. I had a brief look online and couldn’t find out who this character was supposed to be. I can only assume that she’s some sort of Japanese idol or ‘vocaloid’ character similar to Hatsune Miku but as much as I love all things Japan, I’m clearly not Otaku enough to know the truth about NoNoNo! (searching on Google brought up a Swedish band of the same name). Anyway, I didn’t particularly enjoy playing as NoNoNo! over Kagura or Saaya so I did feel a little deflated after all that work for the unlock but there was at least her tasteful and conservative rampage mode costume, certain to please progressive gamers:

Obey the ‘CAUTION’ tape.

So it’s ridiculous, gory and sexy but there were some things that I have to grumble about. First and foremost are the numerous glitches. I experienced a few nasty ones:

• Getting stuck in the boundary fencing during a boss battle and being unable to avoid being beaten to death or fight back.
• Hitting a zombie through a boundary fence and being unable to clear all enemies from the area in question.
• Falling through some scenery and getting stuck inside before falling again into a horrible, blurry black abyss of glitchy hell.

All of these required software resets and generally gave me little faith in the game’s stability, leaving me waiting for the next game-ruining gremlin to pop-up. This wouldn’t really be something you could moan about too much on the older PAL PS2 games since they were cheap, budget affairs that didn’t warrant any sort of expectations. Importing is expensive though and Z Kagura was more or less the same price as a brand-new, full price PS3 game for a sealed copy so these bugs irked me more than usual. That said, expecting a lot of polish from an Onechanbara game is like expecting a Sharknado sequel to stand alongside Citizen Cane.

Another issue is that you won’t be able to access the game’s DLC unless you mess about with multiple PSN accounts. It’s not a strike against the game itself of course but it is a shame because Z Kagura’s add-ons include customisation parts, new outfits and even Aya + Saki from the previous Onechanbara games as playable characters. On a side note, a quick images search online shows that some of the DLC outfits are so skimpy that the player might as well sell their imagination on ebay because they likely won’t need it anymore. Who said DLC was cynical?

These few niggles aside however, I still stand by my decision to rate Z Kagura as the best Onechanbara game so far. I haven’t really criticised the linearity or simple nature of the game because to expect anything else by now would be foolish and it’s almost a part of the series’ charm in a crappy way. If a studio such as Platinum were given the keys then we might see something truly extraordinary but until then, this is bizarre Japanese budget gaming at its most enjoyable. My only advice would be to skip ahead to the sequel, Z2 Chaos, which received a worldwide release on PS4 and should be an even better game at a more affordable, non-import price. Unless you really must play as NoNoNo! of course…

Overall Thoughts

So rubbish, it’s amazing. That’s always been the Onechanbara way and it’s no different with Z Kagura. You already know if you will enjoy this so you really don’t need my seal of approval.