Blade of Darkness is a decent game, make no mistake. Long overdue, it has already developed a devoted following. It has breathtaking graphics that dress up what could have been a very ordinary "slash and slay" action adventure. The characters are predictable and the plot is thin, but the graphics are above average. So maybe it’s the eye-candy display at the highest settings that saves this game?

No, it’s the gore. It’s coded on the box as "M" which translates thusly: "This game features explicit blood, gore and violence. Some players may find this disturbing." One in a million younger players just might the game disturbing, but you can bet about every mother ever born would go ballistic over her teenager getting into this game. And is that right? Shouldn’t parents be proud to see their son slaving away to save the world? "There’s a malevolence that must be forced back to the void, Ma…"

Nah, it won’t fly. It’s hard to see this game and not dwell on the gore. Which is too bad, because to do so would be to risk missing the point.

What point? That this is old-fashioned, honorable mayhem. These are no standoff smart bombs that come in from over the horizon to wait patiently at a red light before blasting downtown Baghdad. This is mano a mano, face-to-face with bladed weapons that make you get up close and smell your opponent’s bad breath. Notice that the disturbed dreck that went Duke Nukem at the local high school had to bring in their girly guns — because in addition to being sick and twisted, they are generally puny men who cannot face their enemy with cold, clean steel.

Apparently, this is the point of Blade of Darkness. It traces its heritage not to Doom and Castle Wolfenstein so much as to Robert E. Howard and his immortal Cimmerian hero, Conan the Barbarian. There are two can’t-be-coincidental touches that pay homage to the character that is arguably still the greatest sword-and-sorcery hero ever created. First, one of the images while selecting depicts a seated barbarian, head on fist, in exactly the same pose that Arnold Schwarzenegger struck at the end of his immortal movie Conan the Barbarian, when the producers intimated that he would someday be king.

The second Conanesque flourish is subtler. Back in the 1970s, Conan was resurrected by a rising but still-obscure British artist named Barry Windsor-Smith. Previously laboring on a variety of Marvel super-heroes, Windsor-Smith soon hooked up with Conan Productions, Inc. and Stan Lee to produce the first two years of a new color comic named Conan The Barbarian. It featured incredible artwork, in an updated art nouveau style that reminded one of Maxfield Parrish or 1930s Bauhaus Berlin, but like nothing the comics world had ever seen before. Coupled with the re-release of Lancer and Ace paperbacks featuring Howard’s hero, Conan grew to such prominence that he is pretty much a household word. Anyway, back to the game: After selecting the barbarian, an orange-hued, bare-chested bravo is depicted in a way that looks decidedly like Conan in the epic "Red Nails" that Windsor-Smith illustrated in the early 1970s.

Thus, this Spanish game (Conan is very popular in Spain, by the way) must be seen in the light of an epic quest story. It’s barbarian bloodshed, nothing more. And contrary to any previous perceptions, this game does not allow you to hack off your opponent’s arm and beat him with it. Nope, he’s going to die too fast for that. You’ll have to beat his companion over the head!

I know; that’s not the same. But for some reason, Rebel Act forgot that the game is so over the top that a little extra comic relief was needed. Don’t go getting serious on us, fellas … it’s your first game!

The game is wrapped around the usual plot, posing four different (but predictable) mystical heroes against legions of undead or soon-dead enemies. Your primary goal is to beat every level, whereupon the reward of a magic sword is presented and the world is saved. The developers send you chasing a few puzzles, but not enough to distract from the job at hand: shedding copious quantities of gore.

Each of the four characters has unique abilities. Zoe the Amazon is an over-mammaried Lara Croft type she-vixen, nasty with a staff and prone to shrieking far too often. Naglfar the dwarf is a brutish little beast as ornery as his name, who seems to be competent but not very inviting as a character. Sargon the knight is noble-born and honorable, if a bit stiff. But in a hack-a-thon, do you really want to be a dwarf? A high-born nobleman? A sissy girl? Or do you want the strength, speed and smarts of a barbarian named Tukaram? Like the comics told us, ‘Nuff said.

I would have had more luck with the tutorial, but all the manuals and cheat sheets disappeared soon after the box arrived. A local teenager is suspected, but the case remains unsolved. Thus, I was forced to consult that game itself for instruction. Fortunately, there is F1 help available and a good tutorial. I had to start the game, hit F1, make a screen shot, print, and then re-start. Hint to game-makers: provide a PDF on the CD of your manual for bozos like me that lose the documentation.

First, what I liked, with a little help from the sales literature:

* The enemy units have a smart artificial intelligence to them. They gang up pretty well, and they sure seemed to sense when I was floundering. According to the marketing blurbs, there are 25 races of enemies ranging from disorganized orcs to crafty Traitor Knights that try to flank you. * The graphics are gorgeous at the highest settings. * They use a new REBEL ONE portal engine that does wonders with real-time lighting, dynamic volumetric lighting and more acronym-rich noun stacks that mean nothing to me. All I know is I can stick a finger in the water and watch the reflection… * You can toggle between first- and third-person viewpoint, although if you’re playing Zoe you’ll want her slightly in front of you. * The usual mayhem of smashing everything is supported with great physics. Smashing barrels actually resembles smashing barrels. * The lit says there are 100 puzzles and traps. * The sounds were good as well. Drips and noises had a great echo. * Good attention to detail, with a reported 16 different indoor and outdoor environments. There are supposed to be 100 different weapons, ranging from two-handed swords to leg of orc. But does a head really count as a weapon?

Flaws are plenty, but then after you’ve pulverized some cretin with his partner’s appendage, who cares? Here are the biggies:

* Long, long, long load times. Agonizingly slow; you’ll wonder if you need to reset. Fortunately, your hard drive light is flickering and the CD drive is whirring like crazy, so you know something momentous is happening. But you can almost finish an e-mail and play a round of Solitaire Spider while waiting. * Internet multi-player isn’t done. Ethernet multi-mayhem will have to suffice for awhile. * The ability to strafe — to blaze away with a variety of attacks — is missing. You can lock on to an opponent, but it’s clunky. You’ll need to learn to block once in awhile, too; there are 20 different defensive combinations. The controls were very hard to master, so that if you’re just a button monkey pressing blindly, you’ll lose. * Your system will probably need an upgrade. Otherwise, you’ll be turning stuff off. In my case, it was a new Soundblaster Gamer-X card, but you may need an nVidia-based video card as well. And check your DirectX diagnostics to make sure all your drivers are up to snuff. DirectX 8.0a ships on the Blade CD-ROM. * The end of the game is hard, very hard. There’s no way to turn down the difficulty settings, either. And with the afore-mentioned long load times, you’ll be leery of stacking up save after save.

The anti-violence lobby is sure to latch on to this game as Exhibit A in the "What are those people thinking?" sweepstakes. Sure, you can turn off the gore in the setup menu, but once you do, this game is just another labyrinth stroll. Yawn. Where’s the testosterone in that? No, this game is an homage to barbarians and brute strength and hand-to-hand combat. It isn’t all that complex, but it doesn’t need to be. For complexity, try writing a game around one of Conan’s adventures like Red Nails. Until then, Blade of Darkness will have to do.