Viking: Battle For Asgard

Knowing very little about Viking legends I came to Viking: Battle for Asgard without any elevated expectations of how good the story should be or how strictly it should stick to legends. This was definitely a blessing in disguise as the delivery of what should have been a very interesting tale is, to be frank, awful. After a very short (but superbly voiced) intro from Brian Blessed, you’re thrown into a land where there are very few people to interact with and therefore very little chance of character development.

Skarin, the main protagonist, comes across as nothing more than an errand boy for the entirety of the tale, seemingly purely existing to do Freya’s (the Heroin of the tale and the reason why Skarin has been brought back to life) work. Skarin trundles through the levels, never speaking a word to any of the other characters and displays no personality at any stage. The story is delivered through abrupt cut-scenes that do very little in the way of narrative and feature voice-overs with regional accents very similar to those encountered in Fable. Quite why it’s delivering a Norse tale with West Country accents is very confusing, and does nothing to improve the atmosphere.

Viking boasts an open-world experience with a total of three islands to explore, but it’s not as open as it claims to be. While you have free roam of most of the island at the start of each chapter, some of the island is still unavailable until you complete certain tasks. Some of these tasks can be completed in random order, but most are placed on the map in such a way that you’ll go about them in a logical order. Sometimes travelling and battling your way through an area before completing a task will only result in all of the slain enemies re-spawning as soon as you have left the area (one such occasion is the cave during the early part of the second island)

On your travels you have to collect copious amounts of gold in order to upgrade Skarin’s abilities and also free your fellow Viking’s. Unfortunately while these Viking’s are then able to assist you in the large middle and end battles, they often offer no assistance during other fights, and once freed they often teleport back to your base as soon as they reach a Leystone (which are used to make your travel around the island a less arduous task). These Leystones come in handy for travelling to and from the town and stocking up on items as doing so on foot would take an excessive amount of time due to the islands relatively large size and Skarin’s inability to do anything other than jog. Presumably being resurrected took its toll on his stamina.

While the large battles promise to be the games highlight, they unfortunately suffer from a lot of slowdown on the PS3 and can turn out to be fairly dull affairs. Due to a lack of lock-on and sometimes extremely dodgy hit-detection, the fights rapidly de-generate into button mashing affairs with a few stabs of the light attack button followed up with a block. There are very few occasions to let loose with one of the more devastating blows you can upgrade yourself with, as you’re so overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies that often there just isn’t time to use them. I had more fun participating in the smaller skirmishes than the large-scale fights, as they proved to be more tactical affairs and afforded the time to use the more advanced moves.

The large battles are also much more linear than they claim to be. Despite suggesting many tactical solutions to complete them, only one ever seems to work. Defeat an enemy leader, set the dragon (yes, dragons, although you don’t get to directly control them) on the Shamen, repeat, rinse and apply blue hair dye. They really are as simple as that…or they would be if the PS3 version didn’t suffer from game-destroying game freezes.

During the end of chapter battle at Darkwater, I was shown a Shamen that I had to kill in order to restrict the number of units that the enemy had to throw at me. Unfortunately the game crashed as soon as I got near him. After numerous attempts (well into double-figures) I decided to hit the internet and see if anybody else was having a similar problem; it didn’t take long to find out that they were. It would appear that the PS3 version of Viking: Battle for Asgard is as stable as a three-legged chair, with numerous people suffering from repeated game freezes. Some of them encountered just a handful of freezes. Others seemed to encounter them much more frequently. Unfortunately a large number seemed to suffer from freezes where they just couldn’t get past a certain battle (the two that seemed to cause the most problems were the Darkwater battle and the end of game battle) no matter how many times they tried. It would appear that many have got to the last battle and simply can’t complete it due to the game freezing.

I did finally manage to complete the Darkwater battle, but only by leaving the Shamen alone and taking him out using my dragon. So much for an ‘open-world’ experience. The dragons turn out to be a bit of an afterthought and aren’t as awe-inspiring as you might expect. Other than choosing the target and watching a cut-scene, that’s about as interactive and eventful as the dragons get. Having the ability to control them could have added a lot to the experience, especially considering that the Aeons in Final Fantasy X had more interaction and were much more impressive than these.

Outside of the main battles though, Viking: Battle for Asgard is an enjoyable albeit repetitive game and one that could have been much better than it ended up being. The tasks are mundane and the combat is a little light-weight, but it still has that something that makes it enjoyable in short doses and the XBOX 360 version is fully deserving of the 7/10 that Phil awarded it. If it had had more time put into game testing, if a bit more variety was on offer, if it had better presentation and didn’t have sound effects that didn’t always play, visual glitches that had shadows flickering, textures being drawn in before your eyes and voice-over work featuring accents that were completely at odds with the setting, I could actually see Viking: Battle for Asgard pushing for an 8/10. It’s therefore such a disappointment that Viking: Battle for Asgard turns out to be riddled with unacceptable bugs and a lack of passion from the developers/publishers to deliver a finished ‘next-gen’ experience. I doubt any of the issues would have required much additional time to resolve, and they could even fix them with a patch (but no announcement has been made thus far). To make matters worse the majority of these issues do not occur in the XBOX 360 version, making this yet another lazy port for the PS3.

Our rating

5/10