Viking: Battle for Asgard

Viking: Battle for Asgard wasn't a bad game at all.  I had quite a few problems with it though.  I'll get those out of the way first.

Viking was a repetitive game.  The combat was button mashy, and you hardly ever had to use the skills you learned to advance.  The missions were recycled themselves over and over again.  There wasn't enough character models, so you'll fight the same Vikings over and over again, or see 500 of the same Allied Vikings on the battlefield with you.  The world wasn't very imaginative at all.  You'll find caves, an ice area, a fire area and a wooded area.  That's about it.  The story was pretty much forgettable.  The sound was completely off too.

However,  I loved how open the world was.  I loved how there were hardly any load times.  I loved the non-linear take on the missions. The massive army battles were fairly cool.  The gore was over the top and fun.  

Viking, even with all the problems, is still a super fun game.


----------Battle System----------
Viking is a standard God of War-inspired Hack and Slasher.  Your character, Skarin, only equips a sword and an ax.  He doesn't equip anything else, but he can eventually upgrade his sword a couple times.  You can learn new skills at an arena, each Island has atleast one arena in it.  There are only 14 skills in all though.

When Skarin kills someone, he will get red power orbs.  These orbs charge Skarin's power meter.  When you have some power, you can unleash up to 3 magic Rune attacks.  These attacks power up your sword with an element, like Ice, Fire and Lightning.  If you're surrounded by allies, then they also gain the Rune power too.  

Most missions require you to recapture land from the evil Vikings and to rescue your captured allies.  When you rescue an allied viking, they join your army.  When your army is prepared enough, you can unleash an attack on the bunkered in opposing army.  This war is pretty cool, and from the outside looking it, might seem like a Dynasty Warrior game, but it's closer to the battlefield in Kameo.  Your peon allies really don't add anything other than eye candy.  If they die, then they're regenerated to fight again.  You usually have one goal and that's to kill a Shaman that is regenerating the evil forces.  However, once you do this once, you're forced to do it again and again and again.  During the game, you can find Dragons that will help out in these parts by showering the battlefield with flames.  

There are a few God of War-isms that annoy me.  If you fight a Champion or Giant, then it's a standard basic God of War fight.  You melee attack then until they're weak, then you can grab ahold of them for a Quick Time Event.  The QTE is easy and predictable, and there is hardly a punishment for messing up.  Another God of War-ism, and the most annoying one, is button mashing to open chests, opening doors or to active warps.  I can understand the chests and doors, but when you're activating a warp, there are NEVER enemies near you.  It's just a waste of button tapping energy and it's annoying.

There is no possibly way to die, and no real penalty for dying in this game.  If you're in the middle of a mission and get overwhelmed by enemies and die, you get warped back to the start of the island.  However, they place convenient warp stones across the entire map, so you can warp near your last mission pretty easily.  While they do regenerate all the enemies you killed, you get to keep all the loot you find during the mission.  

This game also uses alot of stealth too.  Stealth in this game is super simple and only just adds to the gore factor of the game.  Basically all you need to do is sneak up behind a character, and since Skarin NEVER MAKES A SOUND EVER, he can kill whatever is in front of him.  Sometimes, he can dismember a character 2 feet from another Viking and they don't even notice.  The AI in this game is just plain DUMB sometimes.


----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Skarin, a fallen Viking revived on the battlefield by Freya, a Goddess of Love.  Hel, the Goddess of Death, is on a quest to take over Midgar.  Skarin is granted immortality by Freya, so he can put a stop to Hel's take over.  Skarin has to re-conquer each fallen piece of land one by one before he can challenge Hel.

Holy crap the story is awful.  The plot sounded ok, its just how they place the storyline in the game.  Skarin is a silent protagonist, so he doesn't have a personality.  You can talk to NPC in towns to get quests, but they never have anything worth saying that advances any storyline.  Most of the "storyline" is advanced by Freya when she speaks to you from the Heavens.  The storyline is completely generic and forgettable.


----------Graphics----------
Ehh.. The graphics are touchy.  I can see some impressive ideas, but aesthetics of everything seems boring.  I'll start with the good.  I'm impressed about the lack of load times.  Besides the main load screen, you won't see another load through out your game play.  I love how they masked it.  Sometimes you will see textures slowly pop in, like trees or blades of grace, but it's not a big deal.  The draw distance is HUGE.  I also love the fact that you can scale a mountain, and still see little ant like Vikings walking around.  The gore is over the top and fun too.  The massive armies clashing is really cool aswell.

On the darkside of things.  The character models of everything, including Skarin, are just plain boring.  You'll see alot of repeat characters in your towns.  You'll fight copies of the same enemies over and over again.  There are only 5 main types of enemies, and about 3 rare mini-boss type creatures.  The final boss is basically a recycle of two of the mini-bosses. Lame.  

I liked the world layout, I just everything about it looks about Xbox quality.  They didn't put enough effort into the "art" side of things, obviously.  It's just boring to look at and easy to get lost in.



----------Sound----------
Oh man, the sound.  The music is basically what you would expect in a Viking themed game.  Alot of drum pounding and crap.  It's pretty forgettable actually.  The voice overs are ok, but I hate talking to an NPC and you have to manually click the text over, but the voice doesn't stop talking.  So you can lose your spot in the text bubble.  Not a big deal though.

My weirdest complaint is there isn't any sound effects for your main character.  He'll grunt and you can hear his weapons clashing, but there's no sound of him running.  He can run through water and you wouldn't hear a thing.  It's just weird.


----------World Map----------
The world map consists of three giant islands.  What impresses me the most about the islands is there is no load times while you're walking across them.  You can walk from one end to an island to the other end without seeing a load time.  That is freaking sweet.  However, once you beat an island, you can never go back to it, which pissed me off.  There was no warning of such either.

The map is pretty basic though.  You start off in a town on each island.  You can shop a couple places, and talk to a handful of NPC.  They will give you a couple quests.  When you open your map through your menu, you can view all your quests and where to find them on the map.  If it's a red dot, then that means you need to complete that quest on the map, if it's blue then that means you're done.

One cool thing about this game is they give you a ton of freedom to do what you want.  While you do have to complete certain tasks to advance the story or to unlock more of the island.  You can do most quests in any order you want.  


----------Time to Complete Game----------
??:??

No idea how long this took me.  The game doesn't record your time, which is so freaking stupid.  I spent my sweet time searching for all the times and stuff, so it probably took me about 13 hours at the very most.  No bonus for beating the game.