Conan Exiles

A SURVIVAL GAME THAT SHEDS SOME OF THE GENRE’S ANNOYANCES.

$79.95 | PC, PS4, XO | www.conanexiles.com THE SURVIVAL GENRE is a tough one, both for developers and players. The likes of DayZ, Rust, The Forest and until recently Ark: Survival Evolved seem stuck permanently in Early Access, a Steam program which allows developers to sell games mid-development. For players, this means coming to grips with any given game’s quirks and bugs. Conan Exiles is a bit of an anomaly: it stayed in Early Access for a single year ( DayZ is approaching its fifth!), and now that it’s launched into version 1.0 across all platforms, it actually plays pretty seamlessly.

As is customary, you’ll start Conan Exiles (as either a scantily clad — or not clad at all — man or woman) with nothing. You’ll need to gather resources like plants, branches and stones in order to build tools in order to harvest better goods, which will let you build bigger stuff, which will lead to even more resource-demanding goods. You get the picture. It’s a perpetual grind to achieve the next milestone, but that’s not a criticism: it’s part and parcel with the genre. In many ways, survival games like Conan Exiles are meditative affairs. You can play them while listening to a podcast or watching television, or else you can buddy up with a friend and chew the fat while building your enemy thwarting fortifications.

Conan Exiles allows you to play offline, meaning any survival game’s biggest threat — other players — can be avoided. It’s actually a great way to play, as interactions with real players in games like these hardly contribute to their sense of realism. Even better, the combat system here is much more fleshed out than the competition, with the ability to dodge and hold up a shield. There’s a fair bit of stamina management at play, lending the combat a ropey Dark Souls feel.

But it’s still a survival game. If you’re averse to the genre, you still won’t get much out of this, but if you’re curious, it’s much easier to recommend Conan Exiles than Ark: Survival Evolved. At times, this feels more like an action RPG than a resource grind, and that alone should hook you. If you can be hooked.