Viking: Battle for Asgard

March 6, 2008 - Viking: Battle for Asgard Progress Report
We cut off arms, heads and hands in our quest for glory.

Viking: Battle for Asgard stole our hearts when we ran up to an
unsuspecting enemy, swung our sword, cut the dude in half and watched
as his entrails dangled from his tumbling torso -- but jumping on a
giant and stabbing him over and over again in the head, hacking off a
guy's arms and head and setting a group of bad guys on fire didn't hurt
either.

They can invent music television, wheat bread and purple pens, but violence is still tops.

It's been about a month since we touched base
with Viking, but things seem to be going well for Skarin, a warrior who
looks suspiciously like YouTube's Techno Viking and who you control on
his quest to take down Hel, queen of the underworld. Today, we visited
SEGA's San Francisco office and got to dig into one of the Viking's
islands along with the missions, quests, weapons and magic the landmass
contained.



Our time behind our warrior's blade began in his Viking encampment.
There, we could mill around the other inhabitants as they tended their
makeshift homes, took in some flaming archery practice, ate, drank and
acted merry. By pressing the Back button, you call up the island map
and are presented with a detailed layout complete with colored icons.
Red ones seem to indicate places we could go for battle while blue ones
were home to our allies. We choose our objective -- free some comrades
who had been captured -- set a marker that was then displayed on our
HUD and took off.

The first thing we noticed as we made our way through the camp and into
the woods was that there's an impressive draw distance to Viking.
There's action all about the camp as the multitude of NPs bustle with
activity, and when you get out into the open, the wilderness is filled
with lush grass and tall trees that cover the expansive and rugged
ground space.


Buy some tanning oil, stretch.

As
we moved toward the objective -- you can't leap from spot to spot on
the map, but the jaunts through the forest aren't all that long --
Skarin would drop to a crouch when in the vicinity of an enemy as a
visual clue to us to stop screwing around and put our game-face on. If
we got the drop on the bad guy, we could sneak up behind him and pull
off a one-button finisher, but if we swung the camera the wrong way and
the enemy got us, Skarin would block the initial blow and then be ready
to rock.

If you missed the first preview, combat in Viking is simplistic but
satisfying. There's a light attack, heavy attack and block, but you can
also take advantage of the trigger/bumper weapons such as explosives
and throwing axes as well as magic that turns enemies to ice or
electrocutes them. Of course, using the magic whittles away your red
magic meter (following the button prompt and finishing an opponent
yields green health orbs and red magic orbs) and using an item erases a
unit of it from your inventory, but it's totally worth the loss to
burry an axe in a guy's chest from a few yards away.

Anyway, after traversing the grass and basking in the bright sunlight,
the skies turned dark and rain began to fall. This meant we were close
to our objective. See, Creative Assembly is using the environment to
let you know what is up in Viking. When the skies go dark, you're in
enemy territory that is in need of a good cleansing. Beat the foes
squatting on the property, and Mr. Sunshine pokes his head out from
behind the clouds. We came upon the camp and dispatched some ghost
white brutes, and then a glowing, hulking dude covered in some serious
armor walked up to us. He is a champion. Certain levels/areas will have
these baddies and you'll need to ice them before you can move on with
your mission. We went toe-to-toe with the lug, who was swinging this
gigantic sword and doing some wicked damage, and after we laid him out,
we walked to this rib-cage jail, tore off the front door and let our
people go.

Those Vikings joined our army.

Adding men to your regime is not only crucial, it's mandatory. See,
before we could spread our wings and see what was going down on the
other side of our island, we had to go through a massive battle at the
Gorge. To do that, we had to accomplish a number of prerequisites and
chief among them was gathering more men. Once all that was done, we
marched our troops into battle and went at it with a screen full of
enemies.

Blood spouted into the air, flaming arrows rained down upon us, and our
independent allies died or killed in their individual battles. We
helped clear out the fodder that got in Skarin's way, but more
important to us was figuring out if there was a champion and how to
disembowel him.

When you get to these key enemies -- or even some of the tougher
members of the general population such as the super-quick blade
assassins or the shield-packing goliaths -- you'll find yourself using
whatever special moves you've purchased. Throughout the game are arenas
where this Viking spirit is up for teaching bone-crushing moves such as
Njord's Wrath and Odin's Will. Basically, you'll enter the arena, it'll
glow gold, and you'll have a list of moves to choose from. Each move
has a price attached to it that you'll need to pay to learn the
deathblow. Once you've learned the method, pulling the move off will
consume a certain number of Rage Crystals -- little icons that reappear
when you beat enough people -- when used.


Burning Man 2008.

When
we last touched on this title, we worried about how much depth the
final game would have due to its hack-and-slash nature, and while we're
not ready to lay that concern aside, it certainly is fun to rip people
in half and the game looks good no matter what system it's being played
on -- although the PlayStation 3 version does appear to be less sharp.

There are dragons to call in for attacks from above, gruesome
finishers, pigs roasting on spits and a female villain born from
hellfire and dressed provocatively. Madness? No, this is Battle for
Asgard.