Like any dutiful MMO gamer, I left work on May 20 and headed a few stores down the concourse to obtain my freshly minted copy of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (incidentally, if I had been on the Marketing and PR team at inception, I would have chose to invert the name, in order to plan ahead for future expansions; i.e. Hyborian Adventures would have been the name of the series, and Age of Conan would have been the sub-title for the first release of the game – but that’s just me). After getting home and more carefully reviewing the system requirements, I decided that my Ancient and Decrepit P4 2Ghz processor would definitely be the bottleneck in my rig. AoC requires at minimum a 3GHz P4 or PD, or a 2.4 Dual Core.
For nostalgic reasons, I always smell the inside of game cases and instruction booklets when I open them. This is a weird habit that I have had since childhood. You see, when I first got my SNES, I had worked about 1.5 months to save the money for it (I was only 12 so I couldn’t get a real job; my parents told me if I did the dishes every night and did other things like vacuum the living and dining rooms, they would pay me extra so I could buy it myself — and I did, with much grumping). So when my dad surprised me one night by bringing it home and hiding it in the downstairs closet, I was ecstatic beyond all reason. Only fellow gamers can know what kind of elation I am talking about. The SNES was the most hyped, most coveted gaming system in the world at that time, and had been getting talked up for years. All I could dream about was playing the new Zelda game on it (after having stayed up countless nights re-reading the same reviews and looking at the same pictures over and over again in obscure UK and Japanese gaming mags). So when I finally opened it and began to set it up, there was this smell of ink and plastic — it has a very distinct smell, and the whole room smelled like solid state electronics. To this day, any time I get a new “toy” – like a game – I am reminded of that elated childhood moment through the smell. Weird? Yes. Normal? I think I am not the only one with this strange habit, from what other gamers tell me.
Okay so now that I’ve gone off on that tangent, let’s get back to the point of this post. First impressions of Conan.
First of all I was elated to see that the game actually came with a HEFTY and well-written instruction booklet. I am a total nerd about these things, and I firmly believe in the old school tradition of putting full, well written instruction manuals in with any type of role-playing or fantasy game. That goes DOUBLE for MMO’s, which are so dependent upon knowing the UI, class choices, and races. Most games have slacked off in this department, as the in-game tutorials are usually all one needs. But what else is a person to do while waiting for those boring install dialog boxes to complete their little green or blue bars? The instruction manual is the perfect answer. And not since Guild Wars has there been such a wonderful gaming manual included with an MMO.
Now, I have to be honest. The install process took a BIT longer than I would have liked. The game comes on 2 DVD’s. Those of you with newer PC’s with faster processors and hard drives might notice this takes less time, but for me the physical install took about a half-hour per disc. Funcom seemed to know this, because but specifically “This may take a LONG time” I was both amused and annoyed.
After the physical install comes the necessary evil of the PATCH. We all love patches. There is a sick kind of masochistic enjoyment that I think gaming nerds, and particularly the MMO variety nerds, get out of long patches. Assuming nothing goes abhorrently wrong, like a system failure in the middle of a patch, we all kind of like to know that ‘Wow, this is going to be an awesome patch! It’s huge!’ but at the same time we are all sort of thinking ‘God I wish this thing would hurry up!’ We regularly debate about whether we want to drink that Coke or throw it at our monitor in frustration.
The patch for AoC on May 20 was surprisingly small. Only 600 some megs. The patcher did have some strange issues, though. The Launcher itself was beautifully designed, but would refresh itself periodically, causing a strange and disconcerting “flash” to happen – and more than once the progress bar appeared to stop altogether. Re-starting the launcher would show that, in fact, progress had been happening – the bar had just stopped moving. So that was a weird visual quirk that caused me quite a bit of confusion until I realized what was going on. The whole install process, including the patch, took just about 3 hours. Your experience may vary, but overall it was an incredibly smooth, albeit long, process.
With the game patched I was ready to dive in.
After a truly gorgeous high definition intro movie played at full 1440×900 resolution (no blurring or stretching, here, folks) I was taken to the login screen.
As I had known, my Ancient and Decrepit processor was unable to function at first. Although the game itself launched to the login without a hitch, once I entered character creation, I found that everything had failed to render. I was staring at the bottom of a boat inhabited by hair wigs floating in mid air. Backing out and resetting the game settings to “Low” resolved this. The game still chugged, but I could see things and proceed, and amazingly the game looked GOOD. Damn good, even for the lowest settings.
Character creation is not quite as in depth as EQ2, but it’s probably the most in-depth creation I’ve experienced outside of EQ2. I LOVE creating new characters and one of my favorite things in any MMO is the ability to have tons of customization options. EQ2 has been heaven for me with it’s 19 races with a plethora of different looks and options. I really feel that the EQ2 character creation has set the bar in my mind for all other creations to match. AoC comes close, though.
There are 3 races to choose from, all human. Cimmerian, Stygian, and Aquilonian. The Cimmerians are the most brutish, the Stygians the most arcane, and the Aquilonians are in the middle. They have slightly differing options and features, such as different facial sets, markings and tattoo sets. But physically speaking, their bodies are identical in the options. They all have a distinct Mediterranean look to them.
Your race determines your class. Only Stygians can be true mages, for example. Other classes are either melee, or hybrid. For my first class, I chose the Dark Templar, a heavy armored soldier class with the ability to do lifetaps and use debilitating magic as well as strong melee offenses. This seemed closest to the Shadowknight of EQ2, a class I have played and enjoyed. I did not want to limit myself to strictly melee or strictly magic, and I wanted something that seemed like it would lend itself to solo play as well as group play, so the DT seemed a great choice. Also, I tend to play pure mage classes or pure fighter classes, so a hybrid calss would be a new foray.
Once you’ve covered the basics, you can go into the advanced customization options. These included sliders very similar to EQ2 and Oblivion, where you adjust individual facial settings. One thing that was very neat, if somewhat limited, was the ability to change your body proportions. There is a triangle with 3 overall factors for weight and muscle mass, and then there are individual sliders for arms, legs, stomach, and, very amusing: “posterior” — you can imagine how that works for women. I made my male toon suitably brutish and imposing. I have to admit … the models, male and female, are quite attractive, which is never a bad thing if you are going to be staring at one for thousands of hours – they better damn well be attractive, right!?
There are several server types to choose from: PvE, PvP, and RP-PvP. I chose the standard PvE server “Set.”
Entering the game, you find yourself alone on a beach. Sound familiar? The designers seemed to take a page from EQ2 by having new adventurers, formerly slaves, become refugees on a tropical island. After meeting a strangely out of place NPC who gets the ball rolling on the storyline and then wanders off into nowhere (where did he come from and where did he go?) I ran around like an idiot and swung my boat oar a few times before moving into the jungle and helping a scantily clad maiden in distress – strung up spread eagle between two trees, no less. For my services she promised to “reward me” when we got to town – she claimed to have no money, so clearly the implication was a different type of reward. M ratings for the win! I would have liked the option to rescue a fellow male and see what the dialogue would say. Oh well. Can’t have it all! It should be noted that if you play a female, it is still a female you need to rescue. If you’re like … 13. That might be amusing. They ought to just have a strung up man next to the strung up woman and let players pick, regardless of their gender!
The opening series of island quests was very straightforward. A simple and unobtrusive help system in the form of tutorials popped up on the side of the screen letting me know about basic things like the combat and movement systems, quest system, journal, UI, inventory, and so forth.
Let’s talk about the combat. I admit, this was my big hangup when I was reading about the game. I like auto-attack systems that leave me free to manage my other skills with worrying about real-time sword swinging, so I was a bit put off on the idea that I would have to move my character around and actually press buttons to attack. However, the reality of this is that it is about as seamless and fluid as it could have been made to be.
You have three directional attacks at the outset. As you gain levels, you also gain your class-based skills. All enemies have shield indicators around them a la Vagrant Story, the number of shield indicators goes up to 3 indicating strength or weakness – attacking with the the opposing directional attack will ensure you do more damage where they are weak. Clicking class skills will sometimes require that you follow up with a specific directional attack – leading to a combo. This lends an amount of strategy to planning your attacks based on where the enemies shift their shields. Enemies do not have static setups. They alter their shielding through the battle based on where they have been hit – this makes for very interesting and engaging combat that does not get cumbersome. If you string together several combo attacks in the correct order and the enemy is near death, the final combo attack will trigger a fatality a la Mortal Kombat. So far at level 8 I’ve only discovered one fatality. In a neat, if somewhat cliche effect, bright red blood splatters onto your screen indicating that you’ve performed a fatality. This is quite gratifiying, I have to admit. Particularly when you are dispatching hordes of baddies at once. It should be noted that the gore and mature content can be disabled via the options menu – so although the game carries and M rating, it could be made more suitable for families playing together, if the gore is an issue.
The island jungle is lush. AoC has lots of thick grasses all around, giant flowers and vegetation, overhanging trees and vines, and such. Combined with the stellar and beautiful rendering, the game looks great, even at low settings. I am awaiting new PC parts and will report further with screenshots when they arrive. 
Beyond that, I have to let the graphics speak for themselves. The world is detailed and immersive. At no point did I feel like I was tossed into a cookie cutter texture factory where the same sets were reused over and over. The world designers did an excellent job of making utlizing visual markers and extremely diverse terrain layouts, right down to crates and barrels and cages.
The storyline in AoC is progressed through a series of dynamic cut scenes. This I really enjoyed. Whenever you approach an NPC, you automatically enter an over-the-shoulder point of view. Other characters talking to the same NPC still run in and out of this view – so you still feel very connected to what is happening around you, and, in a nice touch, you can get an up close view of your fellow players. The NPC dialogue is spoken, and there are conversation options at the bottom. The cutscene is framed by black bars like a cinema, and the text and reponses are at the bottom. This reminded me a lot of the old adventure games like Death Gate that Legend Entertainment produced back in the 90’s. If you don’t like waiting for NPC’s to talk, you can click the options at any time, or disable voice overs altogether. You can even entirely disable the cut-aways if you like, via the options menu. One thing that always goaded me about EQ2 and other MMO’s is that when you run up to an NPC, you have to spend a second adjusting your camera to get a clear view of the NPC, or go into 1st person. AoC has nicely sidestepped that by using this sort of dynamic cut scene, yet sill includes other players by allowing them to enter your space while you are in the cut scene. So you never feel like you’re separated from what’s going on.
The levels 1-20 are designed for solo play. A smart move. EQ2 has recently done the same thing with it’s starting areas in Greater Faydark, Darklight Woods, and Timorous Deep. Players have really responded positively to the “solo-but-not-quite SOLO” experience. Whereby you can see and interact with other players, but no quests demand that you be in a group.
Tortage is where your main quest line will begin, around level 6ish. In comparion to EQ2, the beach in AoC is sort of like the Isle of Refuge, and Tortage is sort of like the base camp or starting city.
IN a unique twist, Funcom has gone one step beyond this now-standard formula of solo play and given the option to do “day” or “night” quests. In the daytime, you can see and interact with other players, and the content is designed for groups. At night, you are set in an instance version and the content is based around solo play. After level 20 or so, this dynamic goes away and the game becomes a standard open-world MMO. This is actually a nice option. Those who enjoy grouping right off the bat or have friends to adventure with may opt to do so, and those who enjoy solo play or have limited amounts of time, can opt for the night experience. Either way, there is something for everyone.
Overall, it’s clear that Hyboria has a decidedly Mediterranean flavor to it, in terms of the world and the people, the architecture, ships, and things of that nature. The tone of the game is equally mature, and the two work nicely together to create a pleasant thematic whole. The gameplay is engaging and unique, the graphics lush and beautiful, the class system diverse and interesting. Altogether, it’s a very nice package that will probably cut into a good chunk of my game time in the future.
The biggest hurdle this game will need to overcome is performance. If Funcom can hit the sweet spot with performance vs. technology and not repeat the mistake that EQ2 made in 2004 and Vanguard made in 2006, they should do quite well for themselves.
Recent Comments