Viking: Battle for Asgard

The Short


Pros
- Visceral and bloody, hits feel heavy and register as such. Satisfying combat
- One-on-one combat gets very complex and deep by the end
- Takes ideas for many sources and combines them in a unique way
- Above-average graphics, quick loading times
- The water graphics look super snazzy
- Open world viking game combined with an adventure game and a massive battle game
- Surprisingly good stealth options
- No penalty for death; simply respawns you at the warp point
- Case sleeve is super shiny!
- Super cheap now (~$5 at Gamestop, used)

Cons
- Tries to do lots of things, but does them all only decently
- Battles against multiple enemies are a massive pain
- Short, but the game still feels too long
- One of the worst and unfair final boss fights I've ever played
- Cheap enemies/deaths near the end
- That easy respawn/checkpoint system can screw you over at times
- Feels like it could have been great, is only mediocre

That guy's not going to walk that off

The Long


Viking: Battle for Asgard is a difficult game to sum up in just a few paragraphs. Created by Creative Assembly, the group behind the fantastic Total War RTS games on PC, it is an attempt to blend genres and present something both unique and familiar to gamers. On paper, this game covers many unique ideas. You adventure in a world similar to Fable, questing in caves and towers and fighting battles in camps and open fields. As you go about you liberate captives in various camps (for example, liberating imprisoned vikings in a lumberyard or stone quarry) by either bashing your way in or sneaking in and busting them out (and getting to watch with satisfaction as your recently-freed companions murder all the baddies). After you gather enough troops and siege machines, the game switches to a massive-battle simulator, where you fight alongside hundreds of allies and enemies in these huge fights that basically are giant wars of attrition. Stacked onto that is a deep one-on-one combat system, a hefty amount of stealth (especially if you want to get all the achievements/trophies), loads of sidequests, and tons of secrets (in the form of cash money) to find.

On paper, this sounds like a dream. In form, however, it falls a distance short of its lofty intentions.

Viking starts this forte into mediocrity with its worst foot forward, specifically the early-game combat. At the beginning of the game you only have two moves: a weak strike (which is surprisingly slow and clunky) and a strong strike (which is more slow and clunky). You also have the (awesome) option of performing an instant-kill finisher if you are lucky to lop off any limbs of your enemies (which leads to me abusing this in the later levels). At the start, that's all you get: a weak, a strong, and a finisher. No jump combinations, no parrying, no block (as far as I could find at first), no button combinations, nothing. The combat is clunky, extremely difficult (I played through the whole game on Hard) and really obnoxious.

At the start, even one dude can seriously mess you up

After doing a handful of starter quests, the game allows you to buy moves from a move trainer (who won't shut up about Valhalla), and after that the game's combat gets...pretty fun, actually. It is still quite difficult, with enemies being particularly relentless and dealing high damage (again, playing on Hard; on Normal they drop health on death. On Hard they only drop health if you yourself are near death). But unlike at the beginning, you are quickly given more and more tools by which to counteract. You get a specials system, where you spend points gained by landing successful hits to strike with special moves. You get magic (which you only should use Ice, by the way; two hit insta-kills on just about everything including the boss-like Champions) which makes the annoying enemies more manageable. Just as they get shields, you get shield-smashing moves. The escalation works pretty well, and I'm reminded more of games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta rather than God of War, if only because your damage never really goes up, just your options. So you have to actually get better at the game in order to take full advantage.

Another Bayonetta/DMC similarity is the fact there is no XP gain in the game. Killing enemies gains you nothing save progression towards Achievements or the fact that you won't have to deal with that jerk again (which isn't true either; I'd had people respawn in areas that I'd killed just a few minutes before). Money is acquired by finding random bags of cash that are everywhere in the world (you can buy maps that put them easily on your minimap, making treasure hunting a cinch and strangely satisfying), but killing dudes...nothing. At least it's brutal, I guess. 

And it is brutal. Arms, legs, torsos, heads...this dude isn't afraid to lop stuff off. You are fighting agents of Hel, the goddess who is pissed off at your goddess, Freja, and they basically look like your guys only blue and sort of uglier. Yeah, great character design. There's also some plot going on that was completely boring and uncomplying, which is too bad because Viking mythology is some of the most interesting I've come in contact with. They also don't mine the mythological creatures bank as well as games like God of War; you basically just fight dudes, bigger dudes, and giants (which are, honestly, bigger bigger dudes). So expect tedium to kick in during the second of the three main areas you'll be liberating throughout the game.

Making an army and watching them kill stuff is pretty awesome. Too bad actually playing it isn't fun at all. 

So the general point of the game is to liberate these camps which, once you free them, their leaders force you to do some sort of fetch quest before they'll follow you. Yes, it isn't enough that I had to fight my way through like forty crazy enemies and a freaking champion in order to free your stupid vikings, you still want me to go recover your secret recipe from some random shack before you'll help me overthrow your oppressors. Awesome. This maybe would have worked if every other settlement I liberated (and there are lots) had required it, but when every single one in the whole stupid game requires me to run somewhere, pick something up, and then run back I feel like I'm just wasting my time. 

Once you have your army assembled it's time to kick Hel's dudes out of your main fort. Most islands have two you have to conquer in order to clear the area. Two forts, three islands equals six big battles. And let me tell you, that's about five battles too many.

The general idea behind battles is simple. You have a bunch of infinitely spawning dudes. They have a bunch of infinitely spawning dudes. Since you are the one dude who actually has a brain, you have to go murder their spawners (called "Druids"). Once you kill enough of them, you move a little into their fort/city/whatever it is you are taking over and repeat it. Do this about 4-5 times and you'll fight a boss (which is usually just a champion with a different model) and you've won. Hooray!

Except not hooray. While these battles are cool, the biggest issue with Viking rears its ugly head here: you have no moves for group fights. All your moves are designated for one-on-one battles. So, when you are out adventuring and have to fight only one to three guys at a time, usually you can manage. When you are surrounded by fifty enemies and none of your stupid soldiers bothered to follow you to kill the druid, things get frustrating very fast.

Luckily the game offers no penalty for dying, aside from having to respawn a distance away. The same goes for the adventuring part: if you die, you spawn back at your home base teleporter, ready to warp away and give it another shot. This helps with some of the frustration, but after I died 5-6 times trying to kill the same stupid druid on the final battle, I was ready to call it quits. In fact, I began dreading the army battles, since I'd much rather run around the world killing people in fair fights rather than endure those awful group fiascos. 

You DO summon some dragons to fight for you, making this game pretty much a reverse Skyrim

Something neat, however, is how the game does stealth. Yes, that massive burly viking you see in the screenshots and on the box is actually pretty dang good at sneaking up on people. Essentially how it works is this: the minute you are near enemies, your character will go into an automatic crouch so long as he hasn't been seen. This little feature also doubles as a great way to know when enemies are nearby. So long as you aren't seen, you can sneak up on enemies and (when you buy the move) do a MIGHTY LEAP from a good distance away for an insta-stealth kill that is really satisfying. If you aren't seen after that, you can keep on stealth killing to your heart's content.

A lot of game sites dissed the stealth, probably because it was really simple and sort of tacked on. But I honestly thought it was one of the best parts of the game. Before you invade the enemy forts you can actually go inside them (and they'll be chock full of bad guys) and sneak around. There are secret skulls that are impossible to find without a guide (but necessary if you want all the Achievements) that require you to sneak around this really well guarded fort, stealth killing people and being super careful. These parts are difficult but quite well designed; the forts are laid out in such a way that there is usually a clear path through them, and if you are sneaky you can get through undetected. It's surprisingly satisfying.

Probably the reason why I liked the stealth so much (tangent here...) is the reason most stealth games bug me is the fact that in these games your character is totally useless when he isn't in stealth. Get seen even once and enemies will blow you away. Another annoyance is the fact that your character might not sneak when you want him too, or pop out from behind something stupidly (like no secret agent would) and then proceed to get gunned down.

Viking fixes these problems by giving you a badass viking to play as. If I got caught it was annoying but ok; my guy fought these guys normally out in the world and so I was more than capable of taking them down. He was always in stealth if it was possible, automatically sneaking so long as he hadn't been seen. Stealth kills are easy and can be done from a distance away without worry; a big button prompt pops up when you can get an insta-kill, and the game strikes a good balance between smart enemies and a fair difficulty. These were my favorite parts of the game, and they were optional.

That HUD looks exactly like God of War. What a surprise. 

The last major issue I had with the game is the final boss. Now, I can rant and rave about this for hours, but I'll try to keep myself contained. Basically how it works is like thus: you have to destroy four totems of power (or something) in order to lower a flame barrier surrounding Hel so you can kill her. The totems are each in their own little section of the room, and between them are big flames you can't walk through. Enemies will continuously spawn FOREVER until these totems are blown up, and then the middle flames will lower and you can fight Hel for realses. 

Sounds decent on paper, but in concept it's awful, especially on Hard. The flame walls between the totems go on and off randomly, and are only off for a short time. Since it is completely random (I found no discernable pattern) when they drop, you could miss one entirely, or have one totem left that is right next to you and the stupid fire blocking you will never go down ever. Remember: during this time the game is continuously spawning groups of four progressively harder enemies, and remember above where I said the group combat is total balls? 

You resort to knocking enemies with your push move into the fire and praying that they die. Since they each can take off 1/6 - 1/4 of your heath in one swoop, and the game provides three healing potions that go away if you die and reload the checkpoint, you have to basically do a perfect run. Needless to say, it is frustrating. 

As an added bonus, after you blow up the totems it doesn't let you fight the boss right away. I had to fight through another 5-10 minutes of infinite spawns, praying I didn't get killed, before finally the game let me fight the final boss. It was tedious, unfair, and incredibly frustrating. I seriously only finished because beating the game would give me every Achievement in the game, and I didn't want to quit so close to completion. It was one of the worst gaming experiences of my life. 

Seriously, Hel, you are the worst.

But even before that Viking is just a game that is "ok." The ideas are unique, but repetition quickly grinds them into the ground. The overall feel of the game is good, but never strives to be exceptional like games like God of War. The main bullet points on the box (the group battles, exploration, etc) are decent at best, and the whole thing just feels like it was rushed out the door. Despite all this, I did play it pretty fervently for a weekend, and actually put aside other games in order to finish it. It's an easy 1000 for Achievement hunters (if you can beat that stupid final boss), and the visceral combat actually made up for a lot.

Overall? For the current $5 asking price, I'd say that's fair. I wouldn't pay more than $10 for it, though, and that's only if you are an action junkie and you've already beaten Gears of War, Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, and all those other, better action games. If I were to give it a star rating, it would be 2 out of 5. 

Also, I made it through this whole review without a "Viking: Battle for Ass-guard" joke, though oh wait I just said one there CRAP.