Shallow Slasher

The Viking genre in gaming needs a firm kick up the arse.
There's so much to draw from that hasn't been explored fully by the gaming world; a detailed mythology, a rich culture and a varied and exciting history. Why is it that every game that happens to mention Vikings has to concentrate on the horned helmets and their ill-deserved reputations as vicious marauders?

Ho hum, on with the review. Viking – Battle for Asgard doesn't deviate from any of the standard Viking clichés. You play Skarin, a warrior chosen by Freya, the Goddess of Light to wage a bloody war again Hel, Goddess of the Underworld whose nefarious minions are enslaving people and cluttering up the countryside. There's definitely potential here then, but actually the story is wafer thin and the gameplay amounts to nothing more than a repetitive series of button-mashing battles.

The gameplay for Viking is enjoyable for a while but quickly peters out when you realise that there's not going to be any really progression or development. You control Skarin from a third-person perspective and are released into the countryside to perform a series of unfulfilling fetch quests whilst chopping through swathes of bad guys.

Most of these quests involve running up to enemy encampments, slaughtering all the baddies in there and then repeatedly tapping the B Button to open a wooden cage filled with captured Vikings . Quite why Skarin feels the need to pull these down with his bare hands is a mystery – the man spends most of the game carving through his enemies with a sword and an axe. Other tasks involve the standard “go here, get this” fetch missions which generally involve tapping the B button to open a chest (are you starting to see a theme here?) and offer no real reward other than gold, which is easy to acquire in any case.

Once you've freed enough of your countrymen, you're free to attack the enemy fortress, which features literally hundreds of fighters on screen at once. There's no possible way you can push back the enemy forces by yourself even with your comrades, as the enemies constantly respawn, so the only thing you can do is run through the horde and slaughter the enemy shaman.