Hateful Gamers

You’re going to see this a lot:  games reviewed nearly a year after their release.  Why does it take us so long? Well, because we don’t get review copies.  Why don’t we get review copies? Well, no one reads our blog… and we are generally mean to every game we play. While I personally have a sadistic enjoyment from playing “bad” games, I hold no reservation with admitting they’re bad, thus ensuring no publisher will care to let us in early on the goods.  Still, the main reason we wait is because generally, in my opinion, these games just aren’t worth 59 dollars.  We wait 8 months, and get it for 1/5th it’s retail release price.  Games depreciate rather quickly for the most part, except for Atlus and a few others publishers that sometimes release very minimal pressings of games they expect to be niche.  Lucky for us, Viking: Battle for Asgard’s developers are owned by SEGA, and SEGA is a big dog, and tend to make big runs of their games, ensuring that an eventual price drop will see almost all their titles. 

Viking: Battle for Asgard! You’re speechless blonde Norwegian hero who refuses to wear armor no matter how many times blonde Norwegian mom tells him to. You’re charged with saving the world, because seriously, what Viking has ever tried to destroy things?  Battle the forces of evil, fighting 12 different enemy models across 3 islands!  THIS IS SO METAL!

So, to understand Viking: Battle for Asgard, we need to know where it originates.  Viking is a work from British development house, “The Creative Assembly” the guys have been around since 1987 and are most famous for their Total War series. 

Total War, totally

Total War was very well recieved. It was basically a Real Time War Strategy game that removed the micromanagement of building troops.  You just had your armies, and instead of individual units, you controlled multiple regiments of units. They were of the standard rock-paper-scissors flair, but you had to time when the unit hit the other units, what angle they attacked and their formation.  It was all about the strategy of meeting in war, and something I don’t think RTS games had done up to that point.  Their engine allowed many units to be drawn at the same time, creating a “Total War”.  It drew massive battles where formation and timing were key componets to winning.  The RTS guys ate it up, and it had quite a following.  Personally, I hated it.  I felt the troops reacted slowly, and I felt like I had little control of the game, after you gave your initial commands you basically just watched it unfold, selecting when to retreat, to try to route the enemies, etc.  I felt the frantic split second control of C&C or Age of Empires was far more enjoyable, but each to their own.  One thing they did really well though, is drawing massive war on your screen, I think Total War had the most units I’ve seen in a RTS, so, keep that in mind as we go forth, because what they learned here was definately implemented into their Viking engine.  

Having been absorbed by SEGA in 2005, they began work on a single player action hack/slash, Viking.  Now, remember, these guys got big into Total War, they released 5 games in the series.  As far as I can tell, Viking was their first Action game, so I’m not expecting perfection or anything, but it’s worth a note that they did attempt to shoehorn some of the Total War engine into this game.  Whilist the game’s main focus is on you, solo, fighting 1 to 5 enemies at a time, once you reach certain milestones in the game, you get to fight massive scale battles.  It’s not the same as Total War, you don’t control massive amounts of units, you’re controlling one man in a huge army, but they are obviously using the tricks they learned in total war to help render the enemies on the screen without a complete slowdown.  This is for the best in my opinion.  I’d rather control one guy well, then have a Total War-esque “Send your troops in and watch” feeling, that I feel was too passive.

Now that you know how they got here, lets break it down, Kotaku Style:

Play Vikings? Let me put on my enjoyment goggles.

Nice Open-ish world. - While the game is linear, it gave me a bit of freedom to explore.  The world was fun to look at, and I could do things somewhat out of order.  Unlike some action games, that you’re basically going through a tube ( Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden), you had the freedom to peruse the island unabated, unfortunately, this also lead to the problem of Running… 

The Stealth Tenchu-Z game - Ususally I’d complain about something like this.  When I expect something from a game, and get something else, it’s ususally a point of contention, but this was a pleasant surprise.  The game is basically Stealth Viking Assassin Creed Tenchu-Z extreme legends.  You do quite a bit of stealthing in this game. You’d think a giant viking, would be screaming from a quarter mile away in a insane rage as he charges his enemies, but no, our hero stealth kills fools with a long sword and a axe.  On hard mode, especially at the beginning when you have so few moves learned, it’s pretty much requierd, that when you’re liberating a settlement, you go in quiet, and thin the heared.  For what it’s worth, it was fun working your way in and out of a camp, cutting the numbers down, and the stealth dynamics weren’t that hard.  You auto-stealthed, and as long as your were in the back 180 degrees of your opponet, he didn’t see you coming.

Total War! - While I hate that this was shoe horned in, and wasn’t used a bit more often to give the game a more epic feel, the war scenes when you were overtaking an island were fantastic.  See, primarly in the game it was just you, preparing for war to recover the island’s capitol.  The majority of the time, you were alone, fighting a range of 1 to 5 enemies at a time, but at the climax of each island you’d get to go to war, and be a Dynasty Warriors style badass amoung hundreds of other soilders running around, pushing through a city to reclaim it.  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t perfect. The war basically moved itself, your effect on it was little, other then it couldn’t move to the next section until you, yourself killed a shaman that was warping in soliders, thus allowing your armys to advance (Shamans, by the way, were another repetition factor.  Make some other bloomin’ battlefield objectives other then “kill the enemy shamans” ffs).  That all being said, it was still fun to be that one man in the army, very few games give you that, and it was an epic feeling.  Now and again you’d run into their side’s champion, or a giant, and your men and theirs would give you two space as you squared off, creating that leader vs leader feeling, which was quite fun. 

Achievements - They were good. We here at hateful like achievements that can be done in one playthru.  There is a “Beat game on Hard” and a “Beat game on Normal” achievement, but they stack, so one playthru of hard got us both.  Nearly all achievements were game progression based, except for some easily found hidden skulls and a few simple Kill X achievements.  Low stress factor for the achievements = more enjoyable game experience.

HURCH!

I Tapped that shit, UGH! - The game designers had this B button fetish, where they wanted it constantly tapped.  Found a warp stone? TAP THAT SHIT!  Found a chest? I’d tap that.  Vikings are tied up, lets TAP THAT!  Basically, almost everything you interacted with required a rapid, 5 second tapping of B.  From the developers perspective, I understand it, they did it so you wouldn’t interact with chests, or try to warp escape, or free your men, etc, while fighting monsters, because inevitably, within those 5 seconds, if a monster was chasing you, you’d be hit, and the tap would be broken.  It would have been better to just make those objects so they can’t be interacted with if in combat like every other game, instead of adding an annoying action and reinventing the wheel. 

 

 

The Beer keg syndrome - Did you know Vikings, when they wanted some spirits, simply went to the coast and searched for Beer kegs?  It’s a joke, but this game has Beer Keg Syndrome.  On the first island, you find beer kegs as a quest, neat!  But that quest is repeated on the second and third island.  You have to liberate a dragon on the first island to help in your war, you do the same on island two and three.  Every, single, thing you do on the first island, is repeated on the second and third island.  They could have switched it up, but it’s like they made one island, then just redid it twice, creating each slightly bigger with different terrain texture.  I mean I don’t expect the game to turn itself from a fighting hack slash to a Viva Pinata Viking Pet Collector, but hell, change the kegs to swords and spears, switch one of the islands up so it doesn’t have a dragon.  Change the takeover island formula from: Liberate cities/Find Kegs/Power Weapon/Free Dragon/Find Skulls/Take over Capitol, three times in a row, the exact same formula, really?

Another game, same old story - It’s a game based on Norse/Viking/Norwegian mythology.  It’s your Freyja, it’s your Odin, it’s another developer who couldn’t create their own story from scratch. Enough said. 

 

Cardboard gets all the love

Summary -  All and all, it’s a decent game.  Need an Action Hack/Slash fix? It’s a good fit.  Creative Assembly gives the normal offerings while adding in a twist of from their “Total War” background.  If you enjoy linear semi-open world Action, go for it.  Looking for a low stress achievement grind, this is also a great candidate.  Would I buy this at release?  I’m a cheapass, of course not, but really I don’t think it’s a 59 dollar value.  If you find it for 20 or less, snap it up, it’ll give you a good weekend and a half of enjoyment, there are worse games you can play.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 11:06 am and is filed under Reviews, Xbox 360.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.