Viking: Battle for Asgard (360)

Right after blazing through Dark Sector a couple of times, I rolled right into and through Viking. I picked it up somewhat on a whim; there was not too much else out that I was really looking forward to playing. I love me some third person action, especially when it features bad ass characters hacking each other to bits with swords and whatnot. It only took me a few screenshots and a quick perusal of Viking's concept art to seal the deal.

Viking is a pretty neat game. There are three islands of Asgard which have been taken over by a 'roided out army of evil monster men. These guys are bad news: the have taken over and set up shop in the major Viking forts and settlements, enslaved the viking population, and generally rained on everyone's parade. (No joke; where ever these guys go, bad weather follows!) Your job is to go about killing baddies, freeing vikings, finding gold, and collecting various artifacts that will aid you in your quest.

Initially the game has a sort of "Zelda-meets-GTA-lite" type flavor while you stomp and sneak about the island as you please, looking for and finding trouble with small squads of enemies. NPCs will give you objectives such as "Liberate the quarry," or "Summon a dragon," or "Sneak into the fort," which will then lead to fetch quests for this, that, and the other chotchkie of worth. With each successful mission, the clouds will part, the sun will shine, and your viking army will grow and grow. Eventually you have large enough numbers to lay seige to one of the major forts the monsters have taken over.

The seige sequences are a nice change of pace and pretty impressive to behold. During a seige, there are HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of characters going at it as you hack and slash your way through the hordes towards the boss characters. There's some light strategy involved in terms of which points to attack when and where to sic your dragons, but it is thankfully fairly superficial and extremely easy to manage. Pretty cool stuff indeed.

Avatar level game play has some amount of depth, but its systems are easily absorbed and not overly complex: Training your character unlocks new moves, each of which has an optimal usage case based on enemy type and numbers. Hacking through enemies yields a single orb which feeds your berserker/power guage. Taking time to deliver a fancy killing blow renders three orbs. Berserker rage allows you to power up and wipe out foes much more quickly. Engaging more than five enemies while solo typically leads to be being overwhelmed, so there are simple stealth mechanics that permit you to thin the heard silently and formulate a more measured attack.

The graphics are serviceable, especially considering the size and scope of the open world type levels. The wave motion of the ocean is well done, as is the lighting and texture detail of the world objects and terrain. Frame rate does chug from time to time in seige sequences, but it was not overly detrimental or annoying. Killing blows feature levels of gore and violence suitable for a Norse saga with decapitations and dismemberments rendered in pretty surprising levels of detail. For example. cutting a guy in half with cause his lower section to stumble about aimlessly as his torso pirouettes through the air, entrails flapping behind.

On the whole, Viking is a pretty solid game, but there are a few low spots.

The blue light: Immediately upon starting the game, I was distracted and annoyed by the Viking's little blue orb. It dangles from his back, lighting up his immediate area and generally making him look pretty poor, as the light illuminates the model's backfacing normals. My theory for this light it was not originally part of the character's design, but was added during development once the dev team saw how easy it was to lose the character in the throng during a seige. Heck, even with the blue light the Viking gets lost during these sequences.

The sound: TERRIBLE. Music is almost nonexistant. Sound effect calls are obviously missed throughout, and if they do fire off, are so quiet that they really loose any impact. This is especially noticeable in combat as fighting really lacks any "ooph." When the Viking lops off a guy's arms, one might expect some amount of screaming and yelling to ensue, but sadly this is not the case. The Viking sound department needs to sit down with Dark Sector and go to school on its sound.

Tedium: By the middle of the final island, game play started to feel a bit repetitious. Thankfully the game is not overly long so a little bit of drudgery at the end did not ruin the experience.

Boss: The final boss is quite possibly one of the lamest things I have ever seen. Ever. I will not ruin the surprise, but suffice it to say that it is so comically weak that it should be seen to be believed.

So all things considered, even though it is not triple A quality, Viking is a solid purchase. It is fairly trivial to go 1000/1000 on Achievement Points within a playthrough if you play the hard difficulty, which really did not seem overly difficult. So there is always that. I hope it does well for Sega and they order a sequel, or another game that builds on the mechanics and technology. I would like to see how the developers refine and expand upon the concept.

Score: +2