Conan

Aside from the odd flicker of graphical dodginess (to be forgiven in such a massive, not-finished MMORPG world), the only current flaw we could locate in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures was that you wouldn't be able to play as Conan himself. Luckily, the 75th anniversary of the publication of his very first adventure has inspired a whole heap of barbarous activity, so it looks likely that THQ's far more straightforward hack-'n'-slash adventure will fill the gap nicely.

Some of you may have spent some time with PS2 mythological masterpiece God of War, with which THQ's game has already been unfavorably compared. Certainly, early footage of Conan does, unsurprisingly, feature a muscle-bound warrior beating every drop of blood out of the veins of a range of monsters and thugs in much the same way as God of War's protagonist. But THQ is claiming the high-ground by emphasizing their game's debt to the original Robert E Howard books, and Conan's forgotten reputation as a primeval "renaissance man."