Viking: Battle for Asgard

The vicious combat is a lot of fun, and building your army and laying siege to the enemy is a compelling experience in an action game setting. If it didn’t run out of ideas so quickly and had a smoother presentation, Viking could have struck an even mightier blow.

An extremely uncomplicated title that has its fair share of fun due to the hilariously brutal combat animations.

The game is flawed and introduces nothing new to the genre but the outcome is pleasant and worthy of your playtime.

Viking: Battle for Asgard is beautiful as far as offering a hurricane of blood and gore can be beautiful, but it's easy to get bogged down in the repetitive combat.

There's some solid innovations here as well as a good looking game, and if it wasn't for the stifling lack of variety, almost silent musical score and patchy framerate, it could have triumphed over being "decent” and transcended into the hallowed halls of greatness.

Viking: Battle for Asgard may lack a bit of spit and polish in places, but the combat is incredibly addictive despite its relative simplicity.

The whole thing pretty much boils down to a lot of rinse and repeat, but I still played the damn game because I like Vikings so much.

The action does deliver its fair share of thrills, but its repetitive and simple nature quickly wears thin.

As entertaining as the game is, it's abundantly clear that things could have been a whole lot better.

It is a shame that you can’t simply fight the standard troops well enough for your friends to flood the main enemy and help you out there, but it seems to be a one man band at each Shaman or Champion, your allies acting as background help rather than making a real difference to the battle.

Viking is a great game, with some great promise, but this feels like a trial run. Hopefully it will sell enough to garner a sequel, one I would be very anxious to pick up on day one.

The battle sequences display commendable ambition and technical brilliance everywhere except in the gameplay. [May 2008, p.102]

Viking does have a lot going for it. It's vast, fun and full of gore, there's just nothing outstanding enough to really write home about. [Issue#32, p.80]

At some point, you realize that looking back at each of Viking's qualities, it's hard to really put your finger on anything that's truly standout -- and yet it's compelling.

It's perfect for action junkies who love visceral and brutal fighting but hate to think about things.

Overall, the game was enjoyable to play. Difficult and frustrating at times, especially some of the areas where it was key to use stealth to infiltrate Legion camps and achieve a goal.

Viking is a weekend of relaxing ultraviolence, giving Xbox owners an easy thousand points to chase.

Viking had its moments and bordered on enjoyable at times, but these enjoyable moments were interspersed with too much tedium.

The battles stumble thanks to chug, the worlds get repetitive, and when you're not really interested in the story or your ultimate goal, hack-and-slash gets on your nerves no matter how many times you cut a guy in two.

But the real stars of the show are the battle sequences in which you lead an army of literally hundreds of NPCs into full-on raging wars. It’s just a shame that there’s so much filler between the fights.

There may be a good game in there somewhere, but it falls into a standard hack-and-slash rut of boring and uninspired gameplay that leaves you wanting more from the experience.

For a game that promised so much, Viking really doesn't do much in the way of delivering.

For a hack and slash it is good, but for people wanting a good story and a reason to play, they should stay away at all costs.

There are two types of people who will enjoy this game. People who like very accessible and simple to pick-up games, and people under the age of 18.

Viking's a decent game, thanks to over the top combat moves and a sprawling fantasy world, but its lack of drama and a few design issues make it inferior to Sony's exquisite "God of War" franchise.

Although initially slovenly and unresponsive there’s some fun to be had taking on multiple opponents and enjoying the resulting spurts of viscera. There’s some fun in sneaking around watchtowers and exploring caves, too, but Viking’s problem is that what fun it provides is heavily watered down to give it a fake epic feel.

The problem is that everything is counterbalanced by a quest that quickly grows stale and repetitive after its first third. Even the final boss fight is just a minor twist on an encounter you’ll have done at least five times before.

Viking’s shortfalls just seem so peculiar when compared to the surging competency of its strengths. [May 2008, p.90]

In the end, the repetitive nature of the game kills what could have been a stellar title.

A quintessentially average 'alright for a one-night stand but don't even think of proposing' game that your Xbox 360 has had the pleasure of experiencing at least a couple of hundred times before.

While Viking isn't a total disappointment, the biggest problem here is a matter of the game feeling wholly and entirely unfinished.

Ultimately Viking: Battle for Asgard is almost a complete waste of Norse mythology. It’s bloody and epic, but the boring, repetitive combat and hours you spend doing un-Vikingly menial tasks leaves a sour taste in the mouth, washed down with a swig of bitter, pointless stealth idiocy.

Unfortunately the terrific visuals simply aren’t enough to save the game from its increasingly monotonous gameplay.

If you want gory action, then you have found the right game for your collection with Viking: Battle for Asgard. If you want a game with Nordic myth or good gameplay - then buying this game might be not as wise as you think. Personally I love this game and the brutality of it. In a certain morbid way I even had fun with Viking, but that might be because of my personal Hack'n'Slay-preferences. Jerking camera, stupid AI, repetitive gameplay - this game could have turned out really great. What a shame!

With so many problems, unbalanced combat, and no multiplayer, it is hard to recommend anyone to buy this game, let alone rent it. Give it a try if you are a fan of the subject matter, if not, there are plenty of better action titles out there for you to enjoy instead.

The best thing you can say about the game is that it's technically impressive, and the openworld structure is a good idea - but that's it. The game's central purpose seems to be to make dismemberment as easy to pull off as possible, but as soon as that novelty has worn off you're left with a hollow, repetitive experience which quickly loses its initial appeal.