Age of Conan - Hyborian Adventures (PC)

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Washed up on a beach with amnesia? Time to get naked!

First things first, time to get naked! As soon as the old man stopped his gibbering we jumped straight into our character equip screen and unequipped everything. In the flash of an eye and a click of a mouse our female Stygian had her impressive assets bouncing all over the place as we jumped about Tortage beach. Yes, there are naked breasts in Age of Conan. Everywhere. But don't get too hot under the covers. Despite discarding her level one red bottom knickers, our frolicking buxom beauty still had a default thong covering her most private parts. Toto, I don't think we're in Azeroth any more.

We decided to keep it real and play as much of the game naked as possible. To our surprise, we managed to get to level 10 without having to cover up once. As we headed for Tortage city we spied a damsel in distress, chained up and left for dead. When you talk to an NPC in AoC you won't get a scroll with loads of text to read. You'll get voice acted dialogue from a cinematic perspective, and the choice to pick from various conversation options. So far we haven't noticed that we've affected the story based on our conversation choices, but it's a nice touch to be able to engage with the game world in a more compelling way than simply skipping a quest scroll.

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The chained woman asked us to get the key off the bad guy who strung her up, a detestable bloke plodding along the beach. Off we trotted, club in hand, to knock his block off and get our first taste of Age of Conan's much heralded combat system.

Instead of spamming attacks with the number keys, Conan uses a five-way directional attack system combined with combos. Here, the 1,2,3,Q and E keys control the direction of your swing, from overhead left all the way around to underarm right. This is then combined with combos, triggered by a click of the combo hot key on the tool bar at the bottom of the screen. Once done, you need to press the right directions, displayed on screen, at the right time to complete the combo and, if it's a finishing blow, trigger a gruesome finishing move that sends blood splattering onto the screen and limbs flailing into the distance. As you level up you'll unlock more complicated and destructive combos that end in bone crunching decapitations. For us though, during levels 1 to 10, they were pretty basic. But the combo system is genuinely fun to use, feels meaty and keeps killing interesting - something we can't say about plenty other MMORPGs out there.

Our initial impressions of AoC are extremely positive

After rescuing the woman we had to escort her all the way to the city of Tortage itself, killing countless goons along the way. After dispatching our old slave master and slaying a demon that had the key to the city tucked away in its back pocket, we finally approached our prize. Up to this point (about level 5 for us) we didn't see any other AoC players - indeed this is a deliberate choice on Funcom's part. AoC plays much like a single-player fantasy RPG in its early levels. Once you reach Tortage you can choose to play with all the other players or you can continue with the single-player experience. The game achieves this by using a day/night mechanic. During the day you can engage in quests throughout Tortage and the surrounding area with the other players or you can go to the main inn, speak to an NPC, have a nap and wake up at night where you'll have Tortage all to yourself and you can move the main story forward. We think this is a wonderful way of easing players, some of whom might not be familiar with the genre, into the world of Hyboria and avoid what we sometimes forget can be an extremely daunting experience.

We decided to mix it up, switching from night to day constantly to get a taste of both the single-player experience and the MMO experience. AoC's mini-map provides excellent quest guidance - small arrows tell you where to go at every stage of a quest, cutting wasted time down considerably. During the day, our naked breasts certainly turned a few player heads (we were surprised we didn't see more nakedness), but, perhaps disappointingly, we didn't receive any inappropriate in-game communication. Tortage itself is bustling and well designed, with plenty of levels, intriguing back alleys and shops, inns and vendors to explore.

The visuals are great for an MMO

Age of Conan is extremely impressive on the graphics front. It'll certainly surprise players of World of Warcraft, but is comparable to say, Lord of the Rings Online. This ties in of course with the much more mature tone of the game. Age of Conan really is for adults only, with nakedness, plenty of sexual innuendo, swearing and more blood splattering than we've ever seen in an MMO. It fits perfectly of course. Conan's world was always a brutal one, and it's reassuringly recreated here.

From what we've seen so far from level 1 to 10, the quests are a tad uninspiring, usually involving killing X amount of bad guys or collecting N amount of items from this area, but we hope they will certainly pick up as we approach level 20 and bring the Tortage section of the game to a close. The main story arc sees you join an underground resistance which aims to overthrow Tortage island's brutal ruler Strom, one of Conan's arch enemies, as well as unravel the mystery behind your past. We experienced some odd bugs. Some NPCs' breasts twitch hypnotically during dialogue for no apparent reason (can't wait to see the patch note for that one!). But this being an MMO, a genre which constantly evolves over time, we expect Funcom to fix things it couldn't have noticed pre-release with content updates and patches.

So far, so very good. Crucially for us Age of Conan has plenty to distinguish itself from other MMOs. During the early levels it's mainly the combat, the violence and the graphical quality that hardened MMO veterans will enjoy most. We haven't seen much innovation in the way of quests at this stage, but we hope to see an improvement in that area as we level up and eventually leave Tortage and head into Hyboria itself. But we can safely say that Age of Conan is worth trying out if you're growing bored waiting for the next World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, or simply fancy dipping your toes into a more mature MMO for the first time. We'll have further impressions and a review soon.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is out on PC now.

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