Nearly every era of time has had a game interpretation. The Romans have Rome: Total War, the Greeks have God of War and the Vikings now have Viking: Battle for Asgard. Now, by playing Viking you can tell where the inspiration for the game came from. Kratos and his Greek friends made hack and slash good in God of War. However, in Viking it is not so good. It seems Creative Assembly have tried too hard to make Viking like God of War, instead making an average hack and slash game. People who like dismembering limbs and lots of blood may find some interest in this, but the majority will just find it rather bland.
Somewhere amongst the flying heads and spraying blood there is a story about a Viking solider named Skarin who is called upon by the Norse gods to stop the legion of Hel, a group of hideous undead soliders lead by a not so ugly goddess of Death. The cutscenes are mainly in 300 style comic strip animations voiced beautifully by Brian Blessed, however they are too confusing to be bothered with. Then there are some visions that occur every now and then as you play. These are, however, very annoying and interrupt the game making it rather tedious.
The game is set in a huge world split into 3 different sections. To proceed to the next you need to liberate that area completely, destroying the legions of Hel in that area and freeing more Vikings. The sections are littered with caves, camps and areas taken over by Hel. To gain these back you need to free the Vikings and eradicate all undead there. Once this is done though, there isn’t much to find in-between and each camp is pretty much the same. The game is described as “open world”. This is true; however the “open world” is devoid of anything. There are a few soldiers dotted here and there with some Vikings that need freeing and some chests that can be opened for Gold, but not much else. Travelling across the land is rather boring as well; luckily this is made easier by leystones which allow you to teleport around. Often you will find yourself getting lost trying to reach a place on the map because the map wasn’t very clear. This too is very tedious and just makes you want to put down the game.
Well, the story isn’t very good, the setting isn’t very good; is there anything that is good, I hear you cry? Unfortunately, there isn’t much that is permanently good. The gameplay is quite mediocre. As previously mentioned the aim of the game is to liberate all of the camps in the area, then once that is done, you have to attack a larger base which is usually a barracks for the legion of Hel. These are epic battles which include a lot of enemies and allies on screen at once. Strangely, the game can handle this. At this point your aim is to kill the shamans that are spawning the enemies while your allies take on the undead. You can summon dragons to take out strategic points such as the archer hills or the shamans themselves, to save you time. But to be able to use the dragons you must find dragon runes which are mainly found in Champions, who wield huge swords capable to cutting people in half. You need to take these down using a quick time system once you have punished them enough. These major battles unfortunately get very repetitive, just like the freeing of the soldiers. Each battle is pretty much the same, just in a different place. The objectives rarely change and the enemies don’t at all.
To make it through these epic battles you need to master the combat. The combat is, at best, actually quite fun. At worst, however, it is shockingly bad. Skarin possess two massive weapons for hacking, slashing, dismembering and skewering. And they do a pretty good job at it too. Upgrades for your weapons can be purchased for making attacks that bit more gory and powerful and runes can be purchased to enable your weapons to have elemental powers such as ice, which freezes your enemies. Knocking undead off bridges and cliffs, chopping off limbs and heads and skewering them on your sword can be fun for the first few hours. But then it just becomes a task in itself. You end up getting slightly bored of hammering A then X to slaughter them and when faced with multiple enemies, they easily gang up on you and kill you pretty quickly. As previously said, the game features quick time killings, but they are only for the ogres and champions which makes killing the grunts just seem less and less fun. With the AI being a bit shoddy you can run past a group of enemies without being noticed, however they can easily spot you stealthily taking out one of their friends from far away. This results in you having a huge group of enemies on your tail, making it is very hard to escape and avoid the assault of 10 enemies slicing openings into your body.
The graphics are nice, if a bit grungy. The lack of wildlife and landmarks around the maps are quite disappointing. Instead you end up wandering only to find the same mountain you saw an hour back and a few trees. The enemies look menacing, Lord of the Rings orc-esque, however, they all seem to look the same. The graphics really stand out during the epic battles with explosions, fighting, blood and dragons all over the place. Unfortunately, the main action takes place in cutscenes and the rest of the battle looks the same as any other smaller battle. This lack of desire to effort is apparent once again in the sound, which is terribly average, with practically none present when exploring. Voice acting is equally terrible, with the majority of characters sounding the same just with a slightly different accent.
By now you have no doubt got the hint that Viking is average. For a hack and slash it is good, but for people wanting a good story and a reason to play, they should stay away at all costs.
