| Product: |
Viking: Battle for Asgard (X360) |
| Date: |
06.05.08 (96 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Large-scale battles are awesome, stunning visuals, great free-roaming design, satisfying fatalities.
Disadvantages: Can grow repetitive, wooden acting and an almost complete lack of music, no Live support.
Back in 2005 Creative Assembly teamed up with Sega to release Spartan: Total Warrior for the consoles of the previous generation. While it got some great scores, the official PS2 magazine gave it a 9/10, I believed it was a bit of a disappointment. The limitation of the system, the lack of evolution in the game and a number of other quirks and poor design choices kept Spartan from being great in my mind, and certainly not a competitor against God of War. Now, just under three years later we have Creative Assembly's second attempt at a hack and slash game in the form of Viking: Battle for Asgard. With the power of next-generation hardware and the chance to change past mistakes, is Viking a meal fit for a meal in Valhalla or will it cause food poisoning?
-(The Story)-
Vikings: Battle for Asgard tells the tale of the battle between two Norse gods-Hel and Freya. Hel wants to destroy the world with her army of evil Legion which are blue skinned demons, Freya doesn't want that to happen but like most video games involved with fighting gods they can't fight each other so Freya puts the trust of a nameless, faceless, voiceless bland brute known as Skarin. He must travel through the Viking world, freeing fellow Vikings from capture and completing other objectives to free the three islands you travel on. This plot is pretty untapped, as it doesn't add much to the game with thanks to bad voice acting. The Sin City cutscenes are beautiful, but the acting is ear bleeding.
-(The Controls)-
Viking controls really well. The D-pad is unused in Viking, which sounds like the perfect place for hotkeys. But Viking handles these very well, as you simply hold the right bumper and press one of three face buttons to select the item. The same goes for Elemental powerups, though instead it's the right trigger. It's all easy in Viking, plus you can still do an attack while in your hotkeys which means you can defend yourself while selecting. The main controls are fantastic. The face buttons are used for combat, interacting with the environment and jumping. The triggers are used for selecting powers and blocking and the bumpers are used for inventory selection and turning on the rage mode. You can call up your inventory with the select button which you'll be using often. Viking controls very well, with little quibbles. They're simple and responsive.
-(The Gameplay)-
Viking: Battle for Asgard revolves around you exploring a huge world, freeing trapped Vikings to join your army as well as other tasks like upgrading your weapon and finding an item. The game sports an open world, or worlds would be more appropriate, as you're constantly changing to another island. The game definitely allows for freedom, as you can explore all the islands you explore as much as you want but unfortunately Creative Assembly have seemed to not taken all the advantage of it, as there is actually little reason to explore. The world lacks hidden items to find, and the only temptation to explore is to find hidden Vikings that are tied to a skull which isn't really worth it. The islands are also slightly sparse and un-interactive, as you can only talk to key pedestrians and there aren't a lot of wild animals wondering around like Elder Scrolls IV, which would have been cool. There is just little reason to explore. I won't bash the free-roaming design too much though, as there are little hack and slash games like this plus the free-roaming design works well as it's easy to find the objectives plus with portals constantly placed around the world walking isn't much of an issue.
The objectives are a little repetitive unfortunately. The game usually revolves around one of three things. The main mission type is where you have to go to camps, kill all the enemies in the camp and then free the fellow Vikings trapped in a cage. They will join your army sometimes straight away, but mostly after doing a task for them (like saving their souls wasn't enough!) which are mostly revolved around collecting something for them. The other objectives are usually collecting missions or revolved around something else. Sometimes you'll have to travel to a gorge with giants in it to upgrade your weapon. All the objectives revolve around becoming powerful enough to assault a part of the map, which I'll explain about later. The reason the mission objectives get repetitive is because they don't vary much. As I said before, the assaults on the camp will pop up frequently, sometimes eight times in one section of the map!
Thankfully, the combat itself is constantly fantastic. At first it's not that deep as you only have two types of attacks. You could mix the moves into the combo, but it will seem shallow at first. But once you buy some new moves, master using fatalities and unlock the ability to use the elements, hacking and slashing in Viking becomes amazing. You unlock new rage moves, which when held with the left bumper and an attack button is pressed will be a bigger, better attack or combo. You can't just use these moves though, as you must use standard attacks to be able to use Rage moves. This means you must strategise as better moves use more power. The other key moves in Viking are elemental powers. These are when you can either use Ice, Fire or Lightning to do more damage. If you're using Ice it will freeze them, Fire will burn them and Lightning will electrocute them. Like Rage moves, you must have enough magic orbs to use these which can be earned by killing enemies.
The best thing about combat is Fatalities. If you do enough damage to an opponent they will be groggy with a giant X button icon hovering above them. This means you can do a fatality on them, which will draw some comparisons to Mortal Kombat. In Vikings, these are bloody satisfying as these are not only incredibly violent but cool. Whether it's chopping a head off, cutting someone in half or even ripping someone's face clean off, the moves are bloody violent. These also translate into stealth kills. There are some missions that have so many enemies you will die trying to take them on. Instead, you need to use stealth to infiltrate and do your objective. You could sneak by them or use stealth kills. While the kills are good, the missions are not as it's frustrating that you'll get spotted behind an object. If you get spotted, you're as good as dead.
The quality moments in Vikings come from the large scale battles which you'll find throughout the game. Once you've gained enough men and done what else is needed to be done, you can assault a place filled with Hel's legion. These are quality moments in the game, as there are tons of enemies onscreen fighting at once, and it gets especially cool once Giants are introduced and dominating the battlefield. The objectives are a little dull though, usually requiring you to kill the Shaman that is respawning the enemies. The only other alternate to this is to kill the giants. The simple thrill of the many people fighting overshadows this. You'll have to slash your way through lots of enemies. Plus, Dragons will also come into play as you summon them to decimate a target, whether it's archers, a giant or a shaman. The epic battles are the best moment in Viking, though more would be appreciated.
The game can be quite hard at times too, sometimes frustrating. These usually come into the stealth missions, as when you're randomly spotted behind a house, it's hard not to get upset. The game can have some really frustrating missions in the game, and it's sad really considering a lot of Vikings' difficulty is just right. Unfortunately, the frustration somehow slipped into the end of the game, with perhaps the most frustrating final levels in gaming history. As you are spawned in, enemies crowd around you and kill you. As you start climbing the stairs, you are killed and must fight the two groups of enemies again. It is quite long too so die after a while of gameplay and its back to the beginning. And don't get me started on the final boss fight, where fire is spewing around you and enemies are spawning as well as the boss. It's a disappointing end to what was a great game. Still, the battle before it was excellent, and if you're good at games you'll get through it.
There are also two huge issues with Viking. The first is repetition, and the other is inconsistency. Viking is far too repetitive, with you summoning a dragon, liberating a mill and clearing out a watch tower three times in the game as you go from island to island. The huge battles, as great as they are, also don't change much as you go through epic battles more than four times. It's easy to forgive repetition-DMC4 suffered from repetition but that is still a fantastic game, but the inconsistencies are immensely frustrating. There is no consistency between standard battles and the bigger fights with hundreds of fighters. You can never use your army to siege some of the locations in the game, you can't use your dragons to kill a large group of Legion marching down the road and other annoyances make you wonder if the epic battles were shoved into the game or something like that. Also used a lot are quick-time events, where you must press the button on-screen. The gory finishers that use quick-time events are shameless stolen from the God of War series, but they're welcome here, but having to mash the B button while opening a chest, holding up an amulet and other menial tasks is annoying.
Viking is rated 18+ for issues mentioned before. While the game has no language, sexual references or anything like that, the violence is incredible. Heads chopping off, bodies being sliced in half, faces being ripped off-it's incredible. It's all close, sometimes in slow motion, and while it is satisfying it's definitely not for younger players. And the frustrating moments will annoy younger players, so this game is pretty much for the older audience.
-(The Graphics)-
With Spartan on the PS2, you could tell ambition was there in terms of graphics. For the cost of detailed characters and environments, Spartan could handle lots of characters onscreen at once with no slowdown. It was good that it could do that, but I did want more. Now, with the next-gen hardware of the Xbox 360, Creative Assembly has created a stunning game. Detail in Vikings is immense, with gorgeous environments and characters. As you travel through the countryside, your mouth will drop as you notice the stunning details like the water effects and the draw distance. The game handles lots of characters onscreen at once, though the characters do get slightly repetitive. While standard battles have maybe ten people at once, the massive battles could have up to fifty people all killing each other with fluid animation. There's also a nice effect where going from friendly territory to hostile territory changes the weather effects from sunny to dark. This does push the system a bit, and as such the game will slowdown at times and there is some nasty pop-in at times with the grass stubs but as a whole, Viking is a stunning game on the system.
-(The Sound)-
The sound, on the other hand, is pretty weak. The biggest issue in my opinion is the music, or lack of it. As your going through the countryside of the game world, you'll hear birds chirping and the wind but no music at all. There are lots of moments in the game where there is almost no music to speak of, which is fine if you're trying to be tense like a horror game, but not when you're going for an epic feel. Sure, in the game's biggest battles an epic score comes in and gets your blood pumping, but these moments are really the only times music is even in the game. It's too silent, though not as bad as the thrash rock from Spartan. The voice acting is quite weak too, with lots of hammy acting and bland dialogue. The only saving grace is the effects, which are quite satisfying. As you're cutting heads off or chopping bodies in half, the sound effects are near perfect with the blood squirting, the squish of bodies cutting and more. Its not enough to make the sound great, but it certainly helps it rise from mediocrity.
-(The Replay Value)-
Viking: Battle for Asgard is of a good length for a hack and slasher as any longer and it would have been extremely tiresome. At about 10 hours it's good enough to satisfy but not too long to bore you. That said, there is only the single campaign to play through, and once you're done you probably won't play through again. The achievements don't really help, as I got about forty of the fifty achievements on my first play through. That said, they are good achievements where you are rewarded for doing a number of kills/fatalities as well as killing certain types of enemies and completing the last level without dying which is no easy feat! Xbox Live support would have helped greatly as the ability to download new missions or show your skills in multiplayer modes would have been cool, but sadly it's not to be.
-(The Score)-
Controls=10-Solid controls make combat simple.
Gameplay=8-Brutal combat and a unique free-roaming design which is sadly untapped.
Graphics=9-Lush environments and huge battles.
Sound=6-Wooden acting and sparse music.
Replay Value=7-Good length but not much after that.
Overall Score=8.0
-(The Ending Comments)-
Battle for Asgard is definitely a step up from Spartan, even if it doesn't quite outclass God of War. The whole free-roaming aspect is a breath of fresh air for the genre, as there are very little games that let you go through an open world killing enemies. It could have been fleshed out a bit more, like respawning enemies around the world to give you a reason to explore, plus maybe more hidden items around the world .Those quibbles aside, the free-roaming aspects are definitely welcome. The core combat is bloody fantastic, with tons of gore, cool fatalities and moves. It's not quite up to the depth of God of War, but who cares? Plus, stunning visuals definitely help with detailed characters and environments and tons of enemies on screen, despite slowdown and pop in. The sound is a little sparse, and like most hack and slash games this gets repetitive but if you're looking for bloody violence then this is a perfect choice.
-(The Extra Info)-
This was published by Sega and developed by Creative Assembly.
This was released on March 28th, 2008 and is also on PS3.
This is available from Amazon for £34.98
Summary: A surprise in 2008.
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