There's no Arnie here, but in many ways the Conan game nonetheless manages to capture the blood and guts spirit of his pair of 1980s movies. And while game-Conan is hardly a world conqueror as far as the action adventure genre goes, it does offer a degree of fun in the short to medium term.

It's fairly juvenile fun, though. The game's characters are quite happy to display their virtual flesh, and there's not a female character with endowments that don't arrive on screen half a second before she does. Throw in merciless violence, a generous splattering of blood and guts, the odd limb or two, and you have a fairly unambitious yet not irrelevant take on Robert E. Howard's Conan works.

And we come back to the point made right at the start: it is fun.

In the game, you play inevitably as Conan the Cimmerian, with a plot involving some world-consuming power that you must defeat. And defeating said power falls into a well-trodden and mature gaming mechanic, whereby you traipse your way through levels, slashing away at the assortment of enemies you encounter, and then tackle the occasional boss.

To add a little depth to the hacking and slashing - although we're not talking Street Fighter here - the developers have introduced a broad assortment of combat moves and options. As Conan battles through the game, experience points are earned that can upgrade and add to the assortment of in-game attack moves, and it's here where the game becomes the most enjoyable. It's not tricky to master the assortment of attack options that become available to you, but it is entertaining, and an hour or two into the game you'll find your options far more interesting than they were at the start.

But let's make no mistake about this: Conan is a recipe that's built on dumb fun, and that's where it delivers. Subtleties, intricacies and radical gaming dynamics are nowhere in sight. Conan instead targets the gamer who simply wants to go on the virtual rampage from time to time. Foolishly, there is the occasional attempt to inject puzzle elements, and these do little but slow the tempo and divert attention from the reason most of us turned up to play Conan in the first place.

Furthermore, Conan is a short-term dish. The straightforward gaming simply doesn't lend itself to much in the way of long-term entertainment, yet even if it did, you'll be easily seeing the end of the game within a day or two.

Still, Conan is worth enjoying, and perhaps renting for what it is: a brash, shameless action adventure that eschews evolution in favour of gaming that's sort of like it used to be.

A limited but occasionally giddily entertaining action adventure, with little long-term outlook to it.