Viking: Battle for Asgard

Viking: Battle for Asgard

Rating: 6/10

Achievements: 9/10
If you are looking to boost your gamerscore I would suggest throwing Viking: Battle for Asgard in the Xbox. In the first three hours you should be able to earn approximately 350 G’s. Going forward the achievement’s are unlocked at a slower pace, but still come quickly enough. The majority of the achievements are unlocked simply by playing through the story. If you complete the story on the normal difficulty go back and complete it again on hard for a few more G’s.

Review:
What a mindless game and that’s no knock on Viking as this is a hack & slash title in its purest form. The story is serviceable enough to keep you interested and willing to pay attention to the cut scenes. We are introduced to the game with an army of demon warriors, led by the Goddess of Death Hel, attacking the Viking territory of Asgard. We initially see our main character, Skarin, crawl from the battlefield with fatal wounds, but is later resurrected by the Goddess of Light Freya, to free the Viking homeland and build an army large enough to take on Hel herself.There are three land masses that are unlocked as the story progresses, but all of the quests are basically the same. Free the lumber mill and rescue the prisoners. Repeat at the farm and the distillery, etc. There are a couple of side quests inserted along the way to lighten the monotony, but it is all pretty much the same for each region. Interesting enough for a game where you basically hack and slash all the enemies to death there are a couple of missions that stealth is stressed. I originally tried the stealth route, but bumbling Skarin always blew his cover, so I ended up just killing everybody in sight. I’m not going to lie; it was fun.

So now that we have the story down let’s get into the actual game play. The graphics are decent, but nothing special. However, when battling an enemy there is a finishing move that slows the action down and we see the bloodshed more clearly. During battle you can hit A for a weak quick attack, X for a strong slow attack. Each stage has a Battle Arena where you can unlock combination attacks; go there early an often. You can also press the Y button to dodge an attack, but you will most likely only need to take evasive action when fighting a Demon Champion or Giant, which is surprisingly rare. Oh, and that finishing move that I mentioned earlier…it’s the X button. Don’t worry; the controls aren’t as confusing as they sound. I hope you are picking up on the sarcasm. I almost forgot about the charged attack that can be used once you upgrade your sword. I forgot, because this option could have been much more exciting to use since it had some flaws. You have the choice between upgrading your sword by infusing it with lighting, fire & ice powers. As you massacre demon warriors some will leave red orbs that you can collect and charge a special attack meter. Once the desired amount of orbs have been collected the special attack can be initiated by hitting the right bumper (RB) and then either X, Y, or B. Again, real complicated, but here is where the special attack came up short. Once the special attack is initiated you can not turn it off until your attack meter runs dry even if all the enemies are now nothing but discarded limbs. Also, it takes longer to charge the meter than it should. My advice is to save the special attack until the final battle on each stage and once initiated your special attack will also power up your allies in battle as well. It was enjoyable & beneficial to use, but just couldn't be used enough.

The music is about as exciting as the controls, so you may want to turn on some background noise. Maybe a stereo, baseball game, or even a washer & dryer would work out well. Who says people who play video games aren’t productive? There were portions of Viking where I was roaming the countryside with no music at all and the sound effects of Skarin thumping through the grassy plains made me want to grab a pint of the delicious mead that Skarin would find while traversing the Viking lands. Oh wait; I wouldn’t know how the mead tasted, because our hero never got to drink any of it. We would find the stuff and then sell it to the local inn, but whenever we wanted some the Inn Keeper was conveniently sold out. Isn’t that a kick in the stones…

Even though the game did not require much brain power or have complex & exciting controls I still enjoyed myself. After I learned enough combination moves I even started talking trash to some of the demon warriors as I decapitated them, or chopped both their arms off. That may say something about me, but I am not going to dwell on it. Viking is a fairly short game, but it took me a bit longer than a rental period to beat the game, but what’s a dollar restocking fee for returning it late anyway? I also have seen this game at a local retailer that has a target for marketing purposes (figure it out) priced at $29.99. Both options are a fair price and worth checking out.