Though the game boasts a familiarFable feel, Viking: Battle for Asgard only surpasses it in some regards. From the start of its nonsensical resurrection story to the hellishly frustrating finale, the 20-30 hours of slicing demonic blue baddies never really gets old. The combat is repetitious, but progressive upgrades help ease the frustration of tapping the same slash button repeatedly and elemental magic mixes things up by super-charging not only your weapon, but those of your allies around you.
Bringing these allies together requires a bit of work though. Whereas its obvious inspiration in Fable lends itself well to its basic idea of “run around and chop dudes apart,” Viking is unnecessarily expansive. Three separate worlds feature gigantic plains, towering mountains, deep caves and Viking-filled towns, but the immense distance between any one of these places means that our hero will be running (quite slowly) across empty fields.
The odd patrol of Orc-like enemies will show up from time to time, but not often without a legion of cohorts to back them up should you decide to shove a battle axe in their demon-testicles or chop their arms off after decapitation. So you’ll find the majority of the 20-30 hour adventure is spent wandering aimlessly trying to rescue and rally a ton of rough-and-tough Viking friends who were silly enough to get tied to wooden posts and locked in bone-barricaded prisons.
Most of Viking’s missions consist of bringing together a horde of men before laying down an assault on a key captured city, which inevitably devolve in to the Brad Pitt lookalike hero summoning a dragon to fry evil priests or armies of enemies. The epic battles, while sometimes low on the framerate, are loads of fun and a great diversion from the monotony of wandering giant, beautiful worlds to locate simlarly placed towers and farms full of freeable friendlies. The distinct lack of variety is a total bummer, but somehow I was still enamored with Asgard to play it to the end — and want to start it again.
It’s tough to call it a great adventure, because it really only consists of three verily similar worlds with near-identical objectives that eat up 10 or so hours apiece. Yet there’s something about it that makes it fun adventure, which it feels like more so than an action game. There’s plenty of slicing and dicing, but the amount of time required to get there will drive impatient gamers batty. For the rest of us, the simple and upgradable combat and gigantically fun battles of Viking: Battle for Asgard will help ease us through the gold-lootin’ hack-and-slash that manages to be as impressively large as it is pointlessly slow.
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