Viking: Battle for Asgard

Playing Viking makes me a peculiar sort of sentimental. Between the SNES and the Xbox 360, I was all about the PC, so I never played any of the typical console third-person action games. I did sort of brush up against a few of them when playing on other friends’ consoles, and I enjoyed what I saw for the most part, but I rarely felt like I was missing out in a big way.

Since I bought my 360, I haven’t played any games like that either. Gears of War, Army of Two, Mass Effect, Halo 3, Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto 4… these are all games I might as well have played on PC. Viking feels like a “return” to a “typical” console action game model… that I’ve never actually experienced. I’m not, however, ruling out that the feeling is based on a set of complete misconceptions about what most console action games are about.

So how about I start talking about the game that I have played instead?

Viking doesn’t really seem to be anything special in most regards, but it does one thing that I’ve never seen done anything near as well before, and if you don’t wish to endure my rambling on about the less interesting features of the game, feel free to skip down to the bold marker. Viking seems similar in structure to the parts of the Zelda games that I have played on my friend Torsten’s Gamecube or Wii, but stylistically, it’s more like God of War, with lots of combat moves and gore all over the place. It’s a fun game though – solidly constructed and with very powerful and easy combat moves.

The story is… adequate, I guess. Norse goddesses Hel (of the underworld) and Freya (of, uh, love) get in a fight and all but destroy the human world Midgaard in the process. Skarin, viking warrior, is killed by Freya’s former champion, now champion of Hel, Drakan, but resurrected by Freya and granted immortality as her champion in the fight against Hel.

As Freya’s champion, Skarin is off to take back Midgaard, one village, farm, quarry, or fortress at a time. Whenever you liberate an area, its ambience changes from dark, rainy, and sinister to bright, sunny, and green. This is what we call positive reinforcement, and it works pretty damn well. Most of the time, all it takes to liberate an area is to wipe out the enemies and free some vikings, but sometimes there are so many enemies you pretty much have to sneak around and take them out with sneak attacks before you can free the captured vikings.

When I say “you have to”, what I actually mean is “I have to because I’m really not very good at the combat, so I get wiped out if I fight more than 5 enemies at a time”. You can actually fight your way through these missions, and that’s highly beneficial for my opinion of the game because forced stealth sequences mix horribly with a checkpoint-based save system. Some of the infiltration missions can get awfully frustrating when you are spotted, killed, and have to start all over several times in a row – notably without having your items replenished because the game isn’t actually loaded, Skarin is just resurrected back at the camp (don’t ask me why you don’t get your spent items back despite the enemies respawning).

The stealth is pretty solid though, supported by the level design and thoughtfully designed patrol paths. Getting spotted is far from always an instant failure, only if you’re unfortunate enough to alert a hornblower to your presence (as I did in the last one – three times). If not, you can usually just dispatch the enemies who saw you and proceed. Furthermore, the sneak attacks at your disposal are not only potent, but also extremely satisfying (a leap forward to instantly close on an enemy and cut him in half).

Which is actually true of all the combat in the game: It’s very satisfying. Gametrailers say most of it was copied quite directly from the God of War games, but they agreed with me that it does work very well, so I find the apparent lack of originality acceptable (good artists borrow, etc.). The basic components of combat are a quick attack, a slow attack, and a block stance. As you spend gold in the arena to learn new moves from the spirits of your ancestors (I guess the living existing costs are pretty high in Asgard?), you can combine these basic attacks into sequences and combos that are especially useful against specific enemies. Killing enemies makes them drop a single red orb that increases your Rage when picked up, and if you take them out with a finishing move, they’ll drop three orbs so you get more Rage. You can spend this Rage to activate your weapon runes that add lightning, fire, or ice to your attacks.

It all works pretty well, especially because the animations are gruesome and carthartic. One particular feature lifted right from God of War is special finishing moves for boss fights, which are basically player-initiated quick-time events. I don’t particularly like quick-time events (in fact, like most sensible people, I really really hate them), but since I actually get to start these ones myself, they’re alright. They’re not optimal, but they’re alright.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of Viking is the structure of the game. I mentioned it was akin to Zelda, at least as much of the Zelda games as I know, which is admittedly not very much. The game is structured into islands, each of which has a number of objectives, some of which (the objectives, not the islands, try to keep up) will only be revealed as you find them or when you talk to particular NPC’s. There’ll always be 2-4 major objectives such as “Liberate the Quarry”, “Liberate the Farm”, “Locate the Dragon Runes”, etc., and to move to the next island, you’ll have to capture a major town.

And this is where the game really shines: When you have to capture a major town. I’ve captured two so far, and the process was quite similar for the two of them: First you sneak into the town to reach a particular objective (blow up the barracks, for example). Then you call in your viking army for an all-out assault. The assault is broken into stages where you pick certain objectives to achieve in order to obtain dragon runes that you can use to make your dragon handle other objectives. For example, you charge the enemy positions with your army, heading for the enemy shaman who is summoning soldiers on a nearby hilltop. Killing him (you have to knock out his totems before you can finish him off) yields two dragon runes that you can then use to call your dragon down on the enemy archers or the enemies guarding the main entrance to the town.

Once you’ve taken out all objectives (in my example: shaman, archers, entrance guards), the battle moves to the next stage inside the town. There will also be one or two boss fights (champions) throughout, each of which will yield another dragon rune. The final stage of the fight is an assault on the enemy portal, where you must summon your shaman (by tapping a button quite rapidly) and then defend her as she converts the portal to your side. It works extremely well thanks to technology that effortlessly renders hundreds of combatants in a scene.

The objectives give you a purpose and make you feel like an integral part of the fight, but at the same time there can be no doubt that you’d be wiped out in all of about 10 seconds without your viking army to help you clear a path to the objectives. The ability to let your dragon handle certain objectives is an inspired way to deepen the meaning of your choices: Without it, your only choice would be which objective to handle first (which is incidentally the type of choice you’re given in the adventure part of the game, when liberating the rest of each island), but the dragon lets you actually pick which of 2-3 objectives to handle yourself, and let your dragon take care of the others. Furthermore, the cutscenes where your dragon nukes your enemies are pretty cool to boot.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the best part of Viking is the big battles, and if the game was nothing but that, my money would’ve been well spent. It’s the best battle system of any action game I’ve ever played, as it makes you feel both extremely important and yet a part of something much bigger. But I’m also quite enjoying the more adventure-like parts of the game (exploring caves and ruins and mountainsides in the search of captured vikings to rescue and recruit), and the stealth is challenging, fun, and rewarding in spite of the occasional frustration.

I was expecting a mediocre game, but Viking has definitely exceeded my expectations.

Still waiting on an historical, realistic viking RPG, though. Surely it should be possible to secure government funding for such a project?

Excuse me… I’m off to write an application for the ministry of culture.