Score
Gameplay:	6
Graphics:	7
Sound:	7
FunFactor:	6
PlasmaFactor:	4
Overall:	6

Viking: Battle for Asgard Review
April 22, 2008 by Jason Large

I have said it time and time again; I will usually try any game where you can dismember people. Call it a crude sickness, call it what you will, but there is something about dismembering enemies that gets me excited. Unfortunately, all the severed limbs and decapitated heads in the world can’t help Viking: Battle for Asgard.

GamePlay

Viking: Battle for Asgard puts you in the shoes of Skarin who is trying to save his homeland from Hell’s invading Legion. The forgettable story follows Skarin through 3 different maps, which have a very repetitive feel to them. Remember that word, repetitive, as it will no doubt be ringing in your head throughout your experience with Viking: Battle for Asgard.

You always hear about how games are built, they start with a philosophy and then go from there. Viking: Battle for Asgard’s philosophy must have been “let’s make this game as repetitive as possible”. To begin with Viking: Battle for Asgard, for all its apparent effort to not be, is your classic hack and slash. Combat is almost as basic as it comes. Basically all you do is use either the A or the X buttons and continue to stab and bludgeon your opponents, with various combos of course, until they either die or become dizzy. Once dizzy, you can dismember them using one of three finishing moves. Now to be fair, I will say that I did like the combo choices that Viking provides. Too often I feel that games either offer too many or too few combos, but Viking implements the perfect amount.

Similar to the combat, the missions are very flat and constantly repeat. Each island requires you to free some kind of weapons facility, free a specific amount of Vikings, summon a dragon and attack the base. To be honest, once you have played the first island you have done everything there is to do in the game.

What I would consider Viking’s biggest problem is also its most unfortunate. At the end of each map, you must initiate a massive battle sequence where you have to storm the enemy base with your army and eliminate key targets in order to achieve victory. There is so much potential in these grand scale battles, but unfortunately they are as repetitive just like the rest of the game.

Not only are they repetitive, but they are painfully easy. There is almost no way to loose one of these battles, and more to the point the whole game is really the same way. The only real challenge in Viking: Battle for Asgard is to finish it.

Everything in the game screams last generation.

Graphically Viking: Battle for Asgard is as ugly as the Legion soldiers you fight. I’m not a huge graphics person, but I must say that even I was thoroughly unimpressed. Everything from the character models, to the environments, to the cut scenes look like they belong on the Xbox and not the Xbox 360. Sadly, the best graphics in the game are at the main menu or on the loading screens.

The one positive thing about Viking’s graphics is that the frame rate remained fairly solid during the enormous battle sequences. There was some occasional slow down. Compared to how poor the rest of the game is I must say I was pretty impressed by how good the frame rate was with so much going on in the game.

Cheap Actors

With a bad story typically comes a bad set of voice overs and bad dialogue. In this respect, I can say that Viking: Battle for Asgard does not disappoint. If you don’t end up skipping over the cut scenes, what you will find is poor writing and even poorer voice acting. Although I will admit that the sounds of battle are satisfying, the dismembering of enemies was music to my ears. The large scale battles provided some pretty realistic sound effects. However, as a whole, the sounds of Asgard are not very appetizing.

Over and Over Again

Fans of hack and slash games will find some enjoyable elements to Viking, but any joy is short lived as Viking: Battle for Asgard sets a new standard for repetition. Whether it is the 2 button combat or the constant feeling of Déjà vu, Viking: Battle for Asgard is not very much fun outside of its initial stages. There are some elements that could be fun but they are stuck in between boring gameplay and poor design choices.

PlasmaFactor

Viking’s PlasmaFactor is the repetition, which I have mentioned many times in this review. It’s almost as if the game was actually designed to be as repetitive as possible. I might even go as far as to say that the game suffers from lazy design and development. Once you have finished 3 or 4 missions you have experienced most of what the game has to offer and that is in no way a good thing. I might be able to overlook the other issues with the game if it featured some variety, but unfortunately doing the same missions over and over again gets very old very quickly.

Conclusion

In the end, Viking: Battle for Asgard is as boring as it is poorly designed. Any positives that the game may offer are greatly overshadowed by repetition, technical hiccups, a poor combat system, a bad story and overall poor game design. I cannot recommend Viking: Battle for Asgard to even the most enthusiastic hack and slash fan. If you are truly curious, go to your local Blockbuster and rent it. I can almost guarantee that you will be returning it before you are finished before the due date.