Vlaphor
Member
Several years ago, a company named Criansoft came out with a game called Age of Barbarian, a modern day homage to the classic Barbarian games of the Amiga and such. It was bad.
The controls were clunky and unresponsive.
The game was buggy as shit.
Even the world map, with only six or so locations, was a pain to navigate, as the navigational controls seemed to change every time you moved to a new location.
Why did I give this game any time then? Two reasons: One being that when it worked, it was actually a fair amount of fun. It kind of felt like a cross between the slower and more methodical platformers of yore (such as Prince of Persia, Out Of This World, or Flashback) and the Souls series, which at this point was I believe just Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 and 2, what with the way you had to be careful with how you attacked the enemies in terms of animation and stamina management as well as how you had to watch out for traps around the world. Again, this is when it worked properly. The second reason was the content promises they were offering. See, this is already around the time that gore and sex in gaming were getting rarer and rarer, so to have a game offer swords carving people up in graphic ways (a running forward low slash will castrate your opponents if it kills, and their dick and balls will visibly fall to the floor, you can slash an opponent so their guts pour out, chop off an enemies skull and watch their brains fall out, stuff like that) and to have one of the two selectable characters be this
is enough of a reason for someone like me to pay attention to it anyway (the other character is the prototypical barbarian named Rahaan, but nobody cares about him...except Jim Sterling when you see Rahaan's giant head get used for comedic effect)
Still, I never got too far in it, due to both the constant issues wearing on my nerves and the fact that the unresponsive controls made the small amount of platforming an absolute nightmare, I could never play it for too long. I just chalked the game up to "what could have been" and moved on with my life. Several years later though...
No, they didn't give the lady more clothes in game, this is just for the Steam banner. Yeah, I forgot to mention that the original game wasn't even available on Steam, I had to buy it from Criansoft's website for $10. Still, here it was on Steam, calling itself an extended cut and promising more refined everything. I bought it right away and found that while it was better, it was also still fairly buggy; however, the devs of the game were fairly active on the game's forums and ready to take suggestions and bug reports. I'd mention some glitch I found and within 12 hours, a hotfix would be released that would resolve it. While a bit of a ramshackle way to release a game, it's a game I wanted to be good, so I was ok with wading through some issues for awhile, and that wading was worth it. Once the game got more and more refined, its potential began to truly shine through, and I sat down and played through it, having a pretty good time.
Granted, I will admit that this isn't the greatest game ever. Some of the controls are kind of clunky, somewhat by design, though they've been getting better through patches (a recent patch changed the run from a double tap to a button hold), the graphics are slightly primitive, though fully functional (and they wisely spent the most time on Sheyna, so they know where their priorities are), and the level design is a bit too maze like for its own good (in the early levels mainly). Still, I had a pretty good time, and the few negatives I encountered were fully negated in my mind by the copious amount of sex and gore on display, so I was happy. Speaking of sex, let's talk about Sheyna a bit, and how the developers give us just enough of what we want without going too far into the 18+ catagory.
First off, you will see Sheyna nude in the game, several times, even in her story opening (it will be blurred out unless you go to the menu and turn censorship off, but that's easy enough). Scenes like showering naked under a waterfall, undressing while dancing next to a fire, rubbing herself while next to a lake...and the "Very Bad Nights". What are the "Very Bad Nights"? Well, when you go to an area on the map, you are given a chance to rest and restore your lives (lose a life-go back to a checkpoint, lose all lives-start the level over) and randomly you'll get a scene where people creep up on Sheyna while she's sleeping and you have to mash buttons to wake her up. If you fail, you get a brief cinematic, called a "Very Bad Night", lose a life, and then go back to the map screen. Here's one of them. NSFW
There are several more, and they are all really good, especially the one included with the DLC level, The Slaves Fortress
Anyway, the basic gameplay loop of Age of Barbarian is that you go to a level and navigate around while fighting enemies, engaging in occasional platforming (which feels about as precise as those previous games I mentioned, with a small amount of clunkiness) and looking for the exit. The combat is based on being careful with your attacks, managing your stamina, and using block and dodge wisely. You can block up and down, as well as dodge left and right with the shoulder buttons. In the early levels, there's a more difficult and mazelike path which leads to a harder boss and a damsel in distress. You'll need to rescue these damsels to beat the game, so going after them early on is a priority. The later levels are more straightforward, but there are twists and turns here and there, including a couple of fairly easy vehicle sequences. Still, slay the bosses, save the damsels, beat the levels. It took me about 10 hours to beat the game the first time, though once you know where you are going, you could probably do it in significantly less. Still, it is a damn fine game for people like me who want more gore and sex in their video games and I can't recommend it enough, not just for the game itself, but for the love the developers keep pouring into it. That patch I mentioned earlier, where it changed the run from a tap to a hold, was well over a year after the game came out. They've released a side game since then, (Age of Barbarian Arena, which I'll talk about in the next post), and they are currently working on a huge patch for AOB with plenty of new content and a new piece of DLC called "The Spider God" coming out soon. I fully recommend this game, here's where to buy it.
The controls were clunky and unresponsive.
The game was buggy as shit.
Even the world map, with only six or so locations, was a pain to navigate, as the navigational controls seemed to change every time you moved to a new location.
Why did I give this game any time then? Two reasons: One being that when it worked, it was actually a fair amount of fun. It kind of felt like a cross between the slower and more methodical platformers of yore (such as Prince of Persia, Out Of This World, or Flashback) and the Souls series, which at this point was I believe just Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 and 2, what with the way you had to be careful with how you attacked the enemies in terms of animation and stamina management as well as how you had to watch out for traps around the world. Again, this is when it worked properly. The second reason was the content promises they were offering. See, this is already around the time that gore and sex in gaming were getting rarer and rarer, so to have a game offer swords carving people up in graphic ways (a running forward low slash will castrate your opponents if it kills, and their dick and balls will visibly fall to the floor, you can slash an opponent so their guts pour out, chop off an enemies skull and watch their brains fall out, stuff like that) and to have one of the two selectable characters be this
is enough of a reason for someone like me to pay attention to it anyway (the other character is the prototypical barbarian named Rahaan, but nobody cares about him...except Jim Sterling when you see Rahaan's giant head get used for comedic effect)
Still, I never got too far in it, due to both the constant issues wearing on my nerves and the fact that the unresponsive controls made the small amount of platforming an absolute nightmare, I could never play it for too long. I just chalked the game up to "what could have been" and moved on with my life. Several years later though...
No, they didn't give the lady more clothes in game, this is just for the Steam banner. Yeah, I forgot to mention that the original game wasn't even available on Steam, I had to buy it from Criansoft's website for $10. Still, here it was on Steam, calling itself an extended cut and promising more refined everything. I bought it right away and found that while it was better, it was also still fairly buggy; however, the devs of the game were fairly active on the game's forums and ready to take suggestions and bug reports. I'd mention some glitch I found and within 12 hours, a hotfix would be released that would resolve it. While a bit of a ramshackle way to release a game, it's a game I wanted to be good, so I was ok with wading through some issues for awhile, and that wading was worth it. Once the game got more and more refined, its potential began to truly shine through, and I sat down and played through it, having a pretty good time.
Granted, I will admit that this isn't the greatest game ever. Some of the controls are kind of clunky, somewhat by design, though they've been getting better through patches (a recent patch changed the run from a double tap to a button hold), the graphics are slightly primitive, though fully functional (and they wisely spent the most time on Sheyna, so they know where their priorities are), and the level design is a bit too maze like for its own good (in the early levels mainly). Still, I had a pretty good time, and the few negatives I encountered were fully negated in my mind by the copious amount of sex and gore on display, so I was happy. Speaking of sex, let's talk about Sheyna a bit, and how the developers give us just enough of what we want without going too far into the 18+ catagory.
First off, you will see Sheyna nude in the game, several times, even in her story opening (it will be blurred out unless you go to the menu and turn censorship off, but that's easy enough). Scenes like showering naked under a waterfall, undressing while dancing next to a fire, rubbing herself while next to a lake...and the "Very Bad Nights". What are the "Very Bad Nights"? Well, when you go to an area on the map, you are given a chance to rest and restore your lives (lose a life-go back to a checkpoint, lose all lives-start the level over) and randomly you'll get a scene where people creep up on Sheyna while she's sleeping and you have to mash buttons to wake her up. If you fail, you get a brief cinematic, called a "Very Bad Night", lose a life, and then go back to the map screen. Here's one of them. NSFW
There are several more, and they are all really good, especially the one included with the DLC level, The Slaves Fortress
Anyway, the basic gameplay loop of Age of Barbarian is that you go to a level and navigate around while fighting enemies, engaging in occasional platforming (which feels about as precise as those previous games I mentioned, with a small amount of clunkiness) and looking for the exit. The combat is based on being careful with your attacks, managing your stamina, and using block and dodge wisely. You can block up and down, as well as dodge left and right with the shoulder buttons. In the early levels, there's a more difficult and mazelike path which leads to a harder boss and a damsel in distress. You'll need to rescue these damsels to beat the game, so going after them early on is a priority. The later levels are more straightforward, but there are twists and turns here and there, including a couple of fairly easy vehicle sequences. Still, slay the bosses, save the damsels, beat the levels. It took me about 10 hours to beat the game the first time, though once you know where you are going, you could probably do it in significantly less. Still, it is a damn fine game for people like me who want more gore and sex in their video games and I can't recommend it enough, not just for the game itself, but for the love the developers keep pouring into it. That patch I mentioned earlier, where it changed the run from a tap to a hold, was well over a year after the game came out. They've released a side game since then, (Age of Barbarian Arena, which I'll talk about in the next post), and they are currently working on a huge patch for AOB with plenty of new content and a new piece of DLC called "The Spider God" coming out soon. I fully recommend this game, here's where to buy it.
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