Sega Nerds

Review: Viking: Battle for Asgard (Xbox 360)

by Graham on March 24th, 2008

Anyone who knows me will know that the one game I have been waiting most for this year, from any developer/publisher (not just Sega), has been Viking: Battle for Asgard.  The trailers showed promise of blood, guts and some massive, intense battles.  But does the game live up to the trailers?

Well let’s just say, it has been a while since I sat and played a game for nearly 12 hours straight…

The general story of the game comes partly from Norse mythology, and a little of The Creative Assembly’s minds, I believe.  The main plot revolves around Norse gods and goddesses, in particular Freya and Hel.

Hel is a goddess, who was banished to the underworld by her father Odin (king of the gods), for trying to overthrow him.  Hel now seeks revenge upon the gods, and raises an army of dead Vikings to take over the lands of Midgard (the human world the game is set in) and bring about Ragnarok in a bid to destroy Asgard - the realm of the gods.

However Freya, who is like the protective goddess of the Vikings and Midgard, obviously, wants to prevent this and so saves a Viking warrior, Skarin (who you play as), from death and gives him her blessing to make him her champion on Earth - giving him the power and potential to stop Hel’s forces.

That is basically the entire story.  There are some little extra bits that crop up, but overall the story is really not that complicated.

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The game is set across 3 large islands, which act almost like levels.  As you complete the first island you are then transported to the second one, with no way to go back, and then onto the third and final one.  To give some scale to the game, the first island, I am told (by the developers) is over 1km square and the second island is more than twice the size of that, with the third being just a little bit bigger than the second.  The second island, alone, is easily bigger than the main world (without the dungeons) you see in Zelda: Twilight Princess.

But for anyone worried about running back and forth through a giant landscape, don’t worry.  The islands contain lay-stones - which act as teleporters … kind of like Fable.

So what do you actually do?

The gameplay premise for the game is really quite simple.  Each island has been taken over, and corrupted by Hel’s forces.  The undead have killed many of the Vikings and enslaved the rest, with a few pockets of free Viking warrior dotted around.  It is up to you to help free any captured Vikings, and kill off the undead plaguing the lands.

That is literally all that you do during the game, but you will be surprised by just how fun that can be.

Ok, simple enough, how’s it play?

I think the best way to describe the game would be like a cross between Fable and Zelda.  The general controls and fighting reminds me quite a bit of Fable, as does the look of the game in some areas, but with the free-roaming, open world of a 3D Zelda game.

Players are basically thrown into the game, starting off in a small village, your Viking base, where you can chat to a couple of people, but then it’s off on your quest to kill undead Vikings.

One thing that I like about the game is that it does not try to be anything it’s not.  The game is an adventure/hack N slash game, and does not pretend to be anything else.  If you look at the Zelda games, they are meant to be adventure games, but always have lots of RPG elements thrown in (which is why so many class Zelda as a RPG franchise).

Viking: Battle for Asgard (Viking from now on), does not contain many (if any) RPG elements in it.  You have maybe one or two small side quests players can do, so no phaffing around looking for hidden quests.  You have some hidden items around the world, but they are easy enough to find with a little searching.  And in the towns/villages where humans reside, you have maybe 3 people you can talk to, but don’t have to, and 2 of them are shop keepers.

This means that players are not constantly walking around, trying to scrounge information from people, who feel the sudden need to give you their life story, when all you want to know is how to open a gate.  In the first village there is just one person you need to talk to, who basically says “Hello, go kill some undead Vikings, please” and this opens the main gates to the village, and allows players to leave.

From then on the players are free to explore the island, and kill whatever they see, which gets me to one of my favourite parts of the game, the fighting.

The fighting in the game is so damn simple, it’s brilliant.  Skarin automatically locks-on to the nearest enemy target, and then players have two main buttons to press.  Quick attack, which allows players to strike at enemies fast, but not very effective against tougher enemies, and then you have the hard attack, which players can hold down to deal more damage.

You can learn a whole array of combos and special moves, but the general fighting revolves around the two button presses.  This might sound lame to some people, but it is the controls which are simple, not the moves.  The combos you see Skarin pull off are quite spectacular, severing limbs and cutting deep into enemy flesh with every strike.

Once players wear down an enemy enough, or wound them badly (maybe by cutting off an arm or hand), Skarin can then do a fatality move.  As the enemies stand there wavering twix’d life and death, Skarin can pull off a brutal finishing move, which may just involve stabbing the enemy, or he could cut off the enemy’s head and then take off both arms.

To be honest, this is something that I really never got sick of when playing the game.  It felt, and looked, so damn cool fighting enemies, and seeing body parts being hacked off.  Call me sick if you want, but it just felt…. manly.  Grrr!

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Players don’t need to do the fatality moves, they can just leave the enemy to collapse and die, but the fatalities offer two things.  1- It makes Skarin look badass in front of his friends.  And 2 - Every time an enemy dies they leave some magic energy behind - by performing the fatality more of this magic energy is left.

What?  He does tricks now does he?

At one of the shops, in each Viking base, there is a guy who sells upgrades to Skarin’s sword.  Skarin can imbue his sword with magical runes, which give him the power of ice, fire and lightning.  Now, Skarin does not run around throwing fireballs at enemies, so all Harry Potter fans can put their wands away.  What these runes do is give your sword the power, so if you use your fire spell, with every strike of your weapon, the enemies around you will catch fire.

What is great about this is that if you unleash your magic ability with some of your Viking brethren nearby, they too will be able to use the power.  There is something quite brilliant about seeing Skarin strike an enemy with the ice spell, and seeing the undead Viking freeze suddenly, and then hitting them again to see them shatter.  Now imagine that, but with hundreds of Vikings charging into battle, all using the spell…. it really is quite spectacular.

Other controls?

As with the fighting, the rest of the controls are very simple.  If Skarin comes across a small fence or ledge he will automatically jump over, or climb on it.  But if the ledge is too high, and you can climb it, you also have a jump button, which is also used to jump across gaps.

But, as I said before, the game does not confuse itself with other genres - it is not a 3D platform game.  You have only a few sections of jumping, and even then it will be just jumping across a broken bridge, and then continuing onwards.  You do not have long sections of jumping.

Also if Skarin is running along near the edge of a cliff and you get too close, he will stop and balance himself.  This is very handy, as sometimes players will find themselves fighting near cliff edges, and the last thing they want is to suddenly fall off.  Although, be warned, if you do a fatality move too close the edge, there is a chance of falling.

If players feel the ledge is not that high, and wish to drop down, they can always jump over.  But Skarin will stop on the side of ledges where he thinks he will get hurt if he falls.  If the ledge is low enough, he will happily run off it and perform a roll at the bottom.

Climbing, players can, and will, climb ladders and even vines on walls - standard stuff really, but I thought it was worth a mention, as the vines really look like part of the scenery and when I first climbed them it was by accident.

One other action Skarin can perform is shimmying.  Fans of Tomb Raider will know this, Skarin will grab the edge of some ledges and be able to shimmy himself along, until he can find a place to pull himself up.  But, as with the jumping, these segments are few and far between… in fact I don’t think there is a single moment of this that players actually need to do, they were entirely optional.

Main gameplay segments.

Now I only really touched on this before, but the game has two main elements of play.  One you have the exploration and freeing of captured Vikings.  The other is the epic battles.

The exploration and Viking freeing segments take up most of the game.  Players can go off and search for camps of Undead, which usually hold some captured Vikings, or they can go to main mission areas, where Vikings are known to be enslaved.

Players will find that they can usually go about freeing the Vikings in one of two ways, either be a real man and charge in taking on the undead as you see fit.  Though this is quite a challenge really, but still doable.

The other method is using stealth.  There are quite a lot of chances for stealth in the game, and players can sneak around, taking out enemies quietly, before freeing their friends.  Or sometimes you can actually free your friends without killing anything (but where’s the fun in that?).  Players will need to look around at their surroundings, and see different routes to take to free any Vikings.

One of the fun things about sneaking into an enemy camp is that if you make it to your caged friends, without killing many enemies and set them free - your Viking friends will then get out their weapons and help you dispatch any remaining enemies.  This is great fun, as you watch to see the undead being over powered by angry humans.

One of the high selling points for the game is the epic battle scenes.  Quite frankly, I would say these are easily as much fun as the trailers make out.  You, indeed, have hundreds (I think maybe thousands) of NPCs all running into battle, all fighting separately of each other, some help you out, some decide to do their own thing.

The massive battles only come about once you have completed enough of the necessary missions on the island (usually involves freeing enough warriors), and then you can call your army into battle.  The first island has one epic battle, while the second and third both have two (much bigger) epic battles.

Unfortunately there is no real way to command your troops instead you just need to help them out as much as possible, so that they will help you out when you need it.  For the most part they will tackle as many undead warriors as possible.  However, on the battle fields there are greater threats which you need to deal with.

Hel uses dark shamans to resurrect undead warriors, and even if you and your men kill thousands of enemies, they will continue to appear.  So one thing you need to do is take out any shamans on the battle field, to win the battles.  Also players will face Champions - big warriors with lots of armour and a big sword - and Giants who are so much fun to take down.

To kill Champions and Giants a player has to wear them down (usually by hitting them lots), and then having to enter a quick time event (which will piss off Yahtzee no end, I’m sure) - and watch as Skarin does some pretty sweet, and very violent actions, which are usually more complex than what he does when normally fighting.

The one last thing to mention in the big battles is the use of dragons.  Players call upon dragons to help them destroy difficult opponents, such as shamans or groups of archers.  However to use the dragons players need to (sort of) prove themselves to the dragons, by taking down large targets on the field - like the giants - and earn a dragon token, which they can then use on the targets.

The best looking guy in town?

Visually Viking is fantastic.  However, there are better looking games out there.  When you look closely at many of the objects, like trees, rocks, buildings or even the ground, you can see some areas containing low textures and detail.

But, here’s the thing, I don’t think anyone can really say the game has bad visuals at all.  While it may have some areas of low quality textures, the sheer scale of everything is immense.  I ask anyone to try and not be impressed when they are walking along and see the mountains looming in the distance, or seeing the fires of a fortified town glowing through the fog from miles away.  Not to mention seeing Hel’s fortress for the first time - a giant tower above a lava pit.

Seeing so many NPCs on screen in an adventure game is brilliant.  But not only that, the landscape looks great.  When you stand up on a hill or the side of a mountain trail and look down upon your surroundings, I don’t think anyone wouldn’t say “wow!”

Also when hacking into enemies, you actually see the bones and guts, as they spill out.  The islands are filled with lush greenery and trees (apart from isle 3, which is snow and lava covered). 

Sound.

The game has some great sounds in it, the fighting sounds almost real, especially in the large battles.  The music was performed by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra giving some great, powerful orchestral music to coincide with the battles.

However, for some odd reason there is no music during the free-roaming side of things.  Players will find themselves wandering the lands, listening to the sound of the wind, or trees rustling.  The only time you hear music is when enemies are nearby, and often it is quiet and more of a background, mood setting tune.

It is a bizarre choice, but when the battle music comes, it really makes more of an impact on the player.

Outweighing the good and the bad.

I’m not going to lie to anyone, (because lies make baby Jesus cry), but there are certain bad points to the game, which I think will annoy many people.

As I said before there are not many side quests at all.  I think it suited the game quite well, but I can imagine that others will find it annoying.

The tasks that you undergo are quite repetitive.  You find yourself essentially doing the same things on each island.  However, due to the fantastic combat, I wasn’t so bothered by this at all, but (again) I can easily imagine that some people will find it a bore.

The game might also be too easy for some people, as you basically have unlimited lives, and are just resurrected at your main base camp, free to run back to where you were and fight again.

Lastly, and this is one thing I wish the game did have, the lands feel kind of empty once you have killed off Hel’s forces.  The main occupants of the lands, outside your base camps, are the undead Vikings.  Once you have despatched of enemy forces in an area, they don’t return.  That’s good, because I hate it in games when enemies re-spawn for no reason, but it’s bad because there is nothing else to do in the area.

The one thing I wish The Creative Assembly had done would be to add in wild animals, like wolves or bears, just something to make the islands feel livelier, and something to distract players with when exploring.

But there are plenty of great moments in the game, such as combat, big battles, exploration etc… which outweigh the bad stuff.  Even smaller things, like enemies that hide in bushes or trees and jump you when you get close or finding a new route into an enemy camp, make the game more than a worthwhile purchase.

Summary:

Overall, while the game is not perfect, it is great fun.  As I said, I spent the first 12 hours constantly playing the game.  I only had to give it a break because my eyes were hurting.

At times you feel like the repetitive missions make the game start to drag, but then you come to the epic battles and all the bad feelings wash away as you take on Hel’s legion army.  Also the stealth (if you choose to go that way) works really well in the game, creeping into an enemy stronghold gives you a great thrill.

And I can tell you there is something quite brilliant and, frankly, frightening about walking through the lands of Midgard and seeing one of Hel’s undead patrols, consisting of 100 Warriors, just marching past as you hide on a ledge above them.

Final Thought:

A cracking title with some fantastic combat and great gameplay, but with the high levels of gore, perhaps not one to show the parents.

To sum up in one word… “Brutal!”

8/10 - Great

~G~

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