Written by Jeff Buckland, 3/31/2008
Played on:
Xbox 360
There are entirely too few viking-based action games out there. The last good one I remember was Rune from Human Head Software (eventual developers of Prey); released almost a decade ago, the third-person melee action was a real breath of fresh air for PC gamers. Since then we've seen dozens, if not hundreds, of titles with third-person characters hacking away at each other, and the latest of these is Viking: Battle for Asgard from Sega and Medieval: Total War developers Creative Assembly. While Viking isn't going to win any major awards, it does supply some hot Norse action with plenty of gore and a unique twist.
Viking starts out feeling like a pure action game. It's got a minimal plot about a guy named Skarin who is saved from imminent death from the forces of Norse goddess Hel by another goddess - Freya. She tasks Skarin with taking out Hel's forces, and gives him her blessing as well as a magic amulet that gives him his bearings in the world. Skarin sets out to start rescuing his Viking buddies, sending them back to his base of operations for a big battle later. You'll explore the game's large islands, and while the craggy, rocky landscape isn't nearly as detailed as the very impressive world of PC RPG Gothic 3, they'll work well enough. You'll move from camp to camp, liberating your buddies and searching for a few key quest items in a lead-in to a big battle with Hel's forces.
And when I say big battle, I mean it. These are the guys that made the Medieval: Total War games, and they simply weren't going to try to pass off a skirmish between a few dozen combatants as a battle. No, this game's fights range in the hundreds of participants, and when you go in you can work on the enemy however you want - slowly mow through the enemies one at a time, skirt around the edge of major mass of folks, or even find alternate routes to your battle objectives that offer little resistance at all. You'll have key goals that only you can complete (usually it's to take out enemy shaman, who are constantly summoning in reinforcements a few at a time), and pretty soon into the game, you'll have the help of dragons to finish it.
The dragons seem like they'd be a real plus for this game, but they wind up being quite a letdown. They only work during major battles (which is a small portion of the game when the hours are added up), and they look barely more intimidating than big pterodactyls would. While they do breathe fire as advertised, you can only call them in to specific spots once you've done enough fighting in the battles to allow it. Plus, there are several annoying and unclear quests you've got to finish before you befriend them. I had lost my appetite for them before I even got to see one in the game.
Another peculiarity with Viking is that there was so much potential for deep and interesting RPG elements here, but you'll find very little of it. To start, a better waypoint or quest log system would have been helpful, but instead Viking leaves you to fumble around trying to find the next thing to do to make progress towards the next big battle. There is an RPG side of this game, but it's very light - sure, you can buy health bar upgrades and collect money that's littered throughout the world, but the cash goes into new moves, combos, and weapon powerups that don't force you to make any real choices about how Skarin's power increases. By the end of the game, almost every player will have all of the moves and upgrades. There's no new armor or weapons for you to buy (admittedly, the axe and sword Skarin wields never feel weak or useless) and there is no such thing as leveling up. Of course, with the new fighting moves you buy at the arena as well as the bigger health bar, you certainly will be tougher at the end of the game than you are at the beginning, but this is still not an RPG by any stretch of the imagination.
