Viking: Battle For Asgard was developed by The Creative Assembly, a UK-based team that’s best known for their Total War series of games. Viking was published by Sega, and was released during the week of March 25th, 2008, in North America, Australia, and Europe. Viking is available on the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 — as always, my review focuses on the XBox 360 version.

Story: The Goddess of the Underworld and Loki’s daughter, Hel, seeks to wage war against the god-realm of Asgard. To do this, she plans to unchain the ancient wolf-god Fenrir from his bonds, thus starting “the final destiny of the gods” — Ragnarok. The struggle spills over to the mortal realm of Midgard, and Hel’s warriors quickly overtake the land. The goddess of love and war, Freya, appoints a Viking name Skarin as her champion, tasking him with ridding Midgard of Hel’s soldiers and ultimately the rogue goddess herself.

While the story does indeed sound epic, it mainly takes a backseat to the game’s action. However, the portrayal of the Vikings is actually quite good, choosing to show them not as uncultured bloodthirsty savages as they are often incorrectly identified as, but rather as a functional and intelligent society. Still, though, I was disappointed that the game barely scratches the surface of a rich and vibrant history that has yet to be fully explored in the gaming medium.

The game’s protagonist, Skarin, is woefully underdeveloped as well. We learn nothing about him, save that he possessed some quality that made Freya choose him as her champion. He falls victim to “silent hero” syndrome as well, as he never speaks or gives you any insight as to what he’s thinking. He ends up being “just a guy” that you control, uninteresting and unrelateable.

Graphics: Midgard’s three playable islands look really nice, and each one is distinctive and interesting. In terms of characters, the game stumbles because you’ll see the same enemy models over and over again. However, combat animation is top notch, providing plenty of brutal depictions of dismemberments and beheadings. That’s right, kids — this game is bloody.

Gameplay: Viking is a straight-up hack-n-slash affair, and by the time you’re through, you’ll have killed enough… trolls, I think they are, to fill a few football stadiums. With a sword in one hand and an axe in the other, you’ll carve your way through three islands, liberating Viking camps, tactical areas, and helping out in various quests until you have a sizeable army under your control. While the combat is fun and wonderfully brutal, the most fun Viking offers are the large scale battles you and your army can fight in. These battles feature you and hundreds of your allies fighting against hundreds of enemies all at once. To end these battles, you have certain targets you must eliminate — most likely enemy shamans who can summon new troops to the battle. You can battle your way to them and kill them, or you can summon your dragons (providing you have enough dragon runes to offer as a tribute to them) to instantly vaporize them with their destructive flame attacks.

By finding treasure scattered about the landscape, you can buy items to help you on your missions. You can also spend your gold on upgrading and learning new techniques in the battle arena. These techniques are crucial to your progress, as you’ll definitely need the evasion and stealth kill moves.

Since this is a hack-n-slasher, fighting may become repetitive. There are a few problems with the combat mechanics as well. For example, your blocking ability doesn’t always work as it should, and enemies have the uncanny ability to leap at you from twenty feet away and hit you, even though they can only run at your pace. Until you learn your better techniques, the combat is tough, especially if you’re unlucky enough to be surrounded by more than three enemies. Lastly, while you can stealthily sneak around and take out enemies, they will sometimes spot you through solid objects, such as trees and rocks.

Sound: Even though I just played this a week ago, I honestly can’t remember any of the score. Since that’s the case, I can only assume it was blissfully generic and didn’t get in the way of the action. The sounds of chopping goblins’ heads off are good and appropriately squishy. There’s plenty of voice acting, but none of it’s that good — you’ll notice that the Vikings have a strange mix of English and Scottish accents. In between game chapters, there’s also a hilariously over-the-top narrator trying to pull off a Christopher Lee impression. I would’ve loved to have seen the recording session on those!

Multiplayer: Viking is strictly single-player only.

Achievements: Viking has a really good mix of achievements, based on cumulative kills, completing areas, and other fairly easy criteria. Assuming you begin play on the hardest difficulty, you can net the full 1000 points in one playthrough. The only real bogus achievements — and the only I missed — are finding hidden skulls on each of the islands. The problem is not that you have to collect meaningliss trinkets, as every game does that nowadays, it’s that there is no indication that they’re there. Take a loot at XBox360Achievements.org for the complete list of Viking Achievements.

Intangibles: The last bost is frustrating, simply for the fact that you have to fend off waves of grunts in a very small, fire-enclosed area. Up until that point, battles were in wide-open areas, so camera angles weren’t a problem. But in this small area, the camera works against you.

- Yeah, the mythology is all screwy. If you want the real version, read a book.

The Bottom Line: In a lot of ways, Viking reminds me of another game I reviewed, Bullet Witch. It was a game that had a ton of potential but just didn’t quite make it because of poor execution. But despite the flaws, it was still a game I enjoyed. It’s the same story with Viking. Some of the segments were truly good, such as the large, epic battles. But flawed combat and pitiful story and character progression really drag this game down. Viking’s hero, Skarin, could have been the next Kratos, but is instead a dull-as-dishwater random dude. If you’re a fan of single-player slashfests, Viking may tide you over for a weekend. Otherwise, despite having enjoyed this title a bit, I can’t recommend wasting your hard-earned cash on it.

6/10, because of combat issues and poor story presentation, but otherwise enjoyable if you can work past those issues.

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