Viking - Battle For Asgard Review - PS3

7

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 7
Audio: 7
Innovation: 8

Introduction

The role-playing genre has traditionally offered one of the most complicated and knowledge-intensive gameplay experiences, requiring an in-depth understanding of itemisation and tactics to equip a character and complete the game. However, every once in a while a developer forgoes the complications of the genre and instead designs a simple, elegant, straight-shooting RPG that focuses on entertainment rather then intense involvement.

Viking: Battle for Asgard, developed by Creative Assembly, is one such game. It skips the complications of armor, weapons and talents and allows the player to get back to basics and concentrate on what matters - having fun hacking and slashing. The game allows players to enter the brutal world of Viking barbarians as they struggle to survive a feud between the gods that unleashes a horde of hellish minions on their lands.

Gameplay

Viking gives the player control of the young warrior Skarin, a fallen Viking barbarian resurrected and blessed by Freya to fight the forces of Hel (Queen of the Underworld). You start off in a small encampment and must speak with people in town to learn what has happened and what is going on. The progression of the game revolves around this system, as you must complete quests to continue the fight and the story.

These quests range from clearing an area of enemies to acquiring an item from a boss. However, nearly all of them involve freeing captured Vikings to aid your cause. Why? Each section of Viking is broken up into areas of the land controlled by a key point. Your character's overall objective is to free enough Vikings to launch an assault on this key position and return it to your hands, and once done you move onto the next area that is in need of your help.

The quest system done here is really quite interesting. It's simple without being boring, and since all the quests in the immediate area lead to a final objective, it holds your attention quite well. One flaw of usual RPGs is that the entire game leads to one, single point. Viking, on the other hand, takes it step by step, and gives you a "final" objective after every couple of quests, which keeps you eager to progress.

Once you have freed the required number of Vikings, and completed a few side quests to aid in your fight, it comes time to assault the key position of the area. This involves rallying troops for an all-out attack lead by yours truly. At the start of the game, the target is simply a large outpost, but as the game progresses it steps up to wooden forts, to stone keeps and finally massive castles. This is where the game really starts to shine. While much of the game consists of the main character single-handedly fighting between two and ten enemies, the siege assault sees the character leading hundreds, even thousands of Vikings against swarms of enemy soldiers. The sheer scale of the warfare is nothing short of impressive and really gives the feeling of an (continued next page)