Home Games Viking: Battle for Asgard

Viking: BoA

Action
Releases: 03.25.08
Creative Assembly
SEGA
ESRB: Mature

Viking: Battle for Asgard

Send this game adrift on a burning Viking ship.

by Sweeney

There is a good reason I took forever writing this review. It's because it takes forever to play the damn game. Not that its really long, or even difficult, its just so monotonous I couldn't bring myself to keep playing. After around 1-2 hours of gaming per session, I had to take a boredom break and play some Tekken5 online just so I wouldn't smash my controller apart in fits of rage. In fact, its still sitting in my PS3 taking up space. I'm even getting bored trying to write this. With Vikings, tons of bloodshed, battles, Norse mythology, a dash of magic, and even dragons, it seemed impossible to fuck this one up, but somehow they did.

Your life's mission in Viking is to run around as the super manly and 'roided out Skarin and defeat the forces of Hel's minions. See, Skarin was killed in battle and was resurrected/chosen by The Goddess of Light to keep the land from becoming the newest Valhalla and... In all honestly I stopped paying attention to the storyline. It was dull where it should have been rad. Nothing special or new where I felt I HAD to finish the game in order to see what would happen next. If I hadn't told dot i'd review it, this game would've been returned to Gamestop a week ago.

Here is gameplay in a nutshell. Run around on the map and slice up some of Hel's minions, do a couple mindless tasks, run around some more, free captured vikings, hack some more minions up, call a dragon to help your weak ass wussy army out, and take over a fort. After Heavenly Swords awesome battle system, the bar was raised for hackenslash. Viking came nowhere close to it. Skarin's actions seemed forever jerky and just a bit too slow, even for a Viking. Many moves seemed repetitious and don't even get me started on how horrible his block move was. The map is total weak sauce, but needed with the open world game play for obvious reasons. Exploring was a joke and pretty much just wasted time on the boredom clock. As far as soundtrack, you might as well play in silence, because never once did I notice it. Yet another problem with Viking is the camera. On the first island you fall into a room to do battle with two of Hel's undead. The camera actually moves to block your view of the battle at points leaving you open to crushing hits as the wannabe zombies gang up on you. Even when trying to put the camera at a viewable angle it still hits the walls with restricted view. Probably the most irritating thing ever. Supposedly the battles were going to be intense, but I just ran around until I found the forts Shaman, killed him, and went on to fight a mediocre boss.

It's not entirely horrible to play though. The massive battles look pretty cool(when the game doesn't lag out) and finishing moves provide enough gore and violence to feed a serial killers blood lust. Really, who doesn't love axing undead apart? With a total storyline overhaul, and maybe a few more months of programming to fix the camera problem and battle lag, this could have been one of the best games released this year. Unfortunately they didn't and it wasn't.

I learned a very important lesson from playing Viking. Just because a trailer looks wicked cool, it doesn't mean the game is going to be worth the plastic case it came in and may be even less exciting. Sorry Viking fans of the world, but my final answer is shelf it.

Massive battles look pretty cool

Buggy game, lacking quality gameplay or storyline

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