The first Quake is a masterpiece in every sense of the word, but the second one is very alright. I absolutely hated this game at first, mostly because the starting weapons are complete trash, but it started to grow on me as I progressed. Then it sort of fizzled out toward the end. I like the idea of the unit-based level design, and some of the maps are a lot of fun, but it occasionally brings with it some annoying backtracking that really kills the game's flow. The enemies are pretty bland and spongey as well, and while the later weapons are far better than what are maybe the weakest pistol and shotgun in video game history, they never come close to matching the satisfying arsenals in either Quake or Doom. Now that I've finished it, I don't feel as strongly opposed to this game as I did at first, but unlike its predecessors, it didn't leave me wanting more. I'm sure I'll give the expansions a shot at some point, but right now I feel like I've had my fill.

A prime cut of Slavjank marinated in a special sauce of baffling design decisions only Cauldron could concoct. It displays a clear adoration for Howard's works, at least from a story and art design standpoint, and its score is fantastic. Those elements made it at least a little endearing, but the rest of the rough patches made it a struggle.

This is an action game with combat not too dissimilar from the Lord of the Rings games EA had released around the time: you've got several combos you perform with various different button strings which can be unlocked and upgraded with experience gained from defeating enemies. Unfortunately, like those games, you usually end up spamming the most powerful combos once you've unlocked them because it'd just be stupid not to. It's doubly an issue in this game, as the enemies are so fucking cheap, especially when facing three or more at once, that thinning their ranks takes the highest priority, and the cheesiest combo is the only real way to accomplish it. They can block your strikes mid-combo, arbitrarily break combos after a few hits, and if you make even the slightest error, can stunlock you into oblivion. You can switch between axes, maces and greatswords to alleviate the first two issues with certain enemies, but generally speaking there's no real reason to do so unless you put together the Atlantean sword at the very end of the game and thus completely trivialize combat from then on. The third one has no real solution, and it's the biggest place where the faithfulness to the source material falls apart. Remember that part in Red Nails when Conan gets decimated by four Xotalancas because they were so cartoonishly relentless? Or in People of the Black Circle when the Seers kept spamming projectiles and running away as soon as he got close to them? Or when the giant snake in The Scarlet Citadel had a million hit points and would take a fucking century to allow him three seconds of opportunity for offense? Of course not. It never happened because Conan don't play that bullshit. Maybe he would, though, if he were affected by some of the wonkiest controls and camera I've ever experienced.

Conan's movement is beyond fucked. He seems to move independently yet simultaneously dependently of the camera. If you turn it or if it turns itself, you have to stop dead in your tracks to course correct. Otherwise, he'll keep moving in whatever direction you were holding beforehand regardless of what new direction you're pushing in. This can lead to some very frustrating combat sequences, especially in tight corridors that the game loves to put you in, because your input doesn't immediately correlate with where you'll actually go half the time and you can easily get cornered. There are even times where you can get stuck in the running animation on geometry even if you're not pressing a direction, seemingly because of the camera's position. There's a reason those Lord of the Rings games and the likes of Devil May Cry stuck to very basic if not mostly static camera angles, and its specifically to avoid this kind of problem. I guess they were too busy cooking up that masterpiece Chaser to play those games enough to understand that.

I think there's a solid game hidden underneath all the scars this one exhibits. Had it been given more time and budget, it probably could have been a hit love letter to one of the most influential sword and sorcery properties ever. As it stands, though, it's really nothing more than a curiosity for hardened Conan and/or Robert E. Howard fans that are looking for an interactive tale in the Hyborian Age, one where you actually get to play as Conan and isn't another generic open world survival game.

There are a number of gripes I have with this game, mainly how fucking atrocious the AI can be when it comes to pathfinding and friendly NPCs making the most asinine moves imaginable in battle, but it's undoubtedly greater than the sum of its parts. It'll never not be exciting to see a modern roleplaying game not only remember but stick so closely to the "roleplaying" part of its label. It does so better than even the first two Baldur's Gate games, and for that I think it's easily the best in the series.

Starts out about as unremarkable and yawn-worthy as Halo 4, but around the halfway point takes a serious dive in the level and encounter design that ends up making it worse. The locales and arenas are so banal with enemy placement ranging from uninspired to complete fucking Adderall abuse. The story's completely uninteresting with characters I have zero attachment to other than Blue Team...whom you get to play as for exactly one fifth of the game's missions. Each level has a collection of audio logs to find that attempt to and fail to flesh out the story, but you can only hear them diegetically from the exact sources which you find them and they don't have subtitles. System Shock got this right in 1994, for Christ's sake. The score is generic fluff you'd expect to hear in a Michael Bay blockbuster; Martin O'Donnell is sorely missed. Forerunner enemies and weapons still suck my ass. I can keep bullet-pointing all the flaws here until my fingers cramp. It's just all around a genuine, bona fide, 1000% not good.

This game has really clear production value with how great it looks and the film's cast delivering excellent performances. Unfortunately, outside of that it's kinda just...there. The gameplay is an adequate mix of platformers, brawlers and stealth games (namely Splinter Cell) of the time with plenty of cool, proto-Arkham ideas, but they're never really utilized in any interesting ways. The level design is very linear, almost formulaic after a certain point, but never offensive. The combat is pretty loose, with a camera that's too zoomed in that makes fighting multiple enemies really difficult. You don't have any real combos and your attacks get blocked all the fucking time, and the only way to break an enemy's defense is a context sensitive action that takes a little too long to charge up (if it even decides to allow you to do it) and can easily get canceled by another enemy. Despite all that, I never found myself that frustrated with it. Then again, I never really felt many emotions playing the game in general. Like I said, it's just kinda there.

For 2001, this could look a lot worse, and having the cast of the animated series helps it a lot, but the game itself is not good at all.

The controls are way too loose, especially when it comes to aiming: there were so many times that I missed an opportunity to damage a boss because the crosshair just wasn't cooperating.

The platforming is very wonky, worsened by the occasional odd collision on certain platforms. Your glide is incredibly unreliable, its speed and height seemingly random. I think if you do it immediately after a jump you go faster and higher, which makes no goddamn sense. There was a particular jump where logic denoted waiting until the peak of the jump then gliding, but I'd miss every single time. For whatever reason, doing it as soon as I jumped got me to where I needed to be.

Combat is flat-out broken. When you engage in it, you're locked into it and can only exit by pressing Y, but if an enemy hits you when you do, you're immediately locked back in again. If an enemy grabs you, you have to wiggle the analog stick to escape, and as soon as you do, the game exits the combat stance and costs you the chance to punish every time. When it's semi-functional, it's really stiff, your attacks are very delayed and enemies can start attacking while you're mid-combo, completely snapping the balance in half. By the end, I just started blocking everything, getting potshots in to fill my special meter, and spamming the special moves that deal a shitload of damage.

There are a lot of really poorly designed setpieces throughout with very little conveyance as to what it expects of the player or if they're even performing it correctly. There are some fundamental design decisions that are questionable as well, like having finite ammo and Batcuffs. There are always conveniently respawning pickups for them when they're needed, so they're already practically infinite. Why waste the player's time with having to keep picking them up?

I wanted to give this game a chance because I knew it had its fans, but unfortunately I'm not one of them.