I imagine it will be due to the recent gift of Total War: Shogun 2 on Steam and the presentation of the next Assassin’s Creed Photoshop Valhalla, but the fact is that I got a monkey from Norse mythology by Creative Assembly. And the result is Viking: Battle for Asgard , that action game with massive battles that debuted in 2008 and that I liked so much until it was one of my favorites.
At the time I was quite surprised by the change of register of the English studio , so used to strategy with massive wars since that Shogun: Total War in 2000 , where that legendary saga emerged on PC. Through SEGA, with Viking: Battle for Asgard we went to a hack & slash that seemed to inherit part of that spirit to impress the player with high-caliber battles and without giving the feeling of facing putties. All this under a setting based on Norse mythology where the touch of fantasy was not lacking.
Going back to Asgard makes me toh Loki
It is true that Creative Assembly had already developed a totally action spin-off of Total War , which it called Spartan: Total Warrior in 2005 , but Viking: Battle for Asgard was the first that interested me due to the attractiveness of its setting, where it was not references to the deities Odin, Freya, Loki or Hel were missing.
Embodying the warrior Skarin , our duty was to stop precisely the latter, the very Hel, daughter of Loki, after being banished from Asgard for defying Odin. Because he intends to free Fenrir, who, according to legend, will bring Ragnarok with him to destroy all of Asgard. And of course it will not be an easy task for Skarin, since he alone cannot fight his army of resurrected Vikings , hence he needs the help of other settlements.
That was part of the grace of this risky work by Creative Assembly, since many soldiers had to be released to join our cause and to be able to carry out sieges to fortified areas to have a greater guarantee of success. Some battles where hundreds of soldiers were gathered fighting at the same time and where there was no hint of pounding buttons. Because this was not a musou , but it was necessary to draw up different strategies.
It was vitally important to master defensive movements, such as blocking and dodging , to get out alive from the multiple attacks of the opponent, where we rarely faced a single enemy. There was no type of orchestrated choreography, but they could attack us all at the same time, for which it forced us to be constantly on the alert and have a lot of patience to reduce little by little the enemy presence in the area. And freeing up more allies to help us later.
Viking: Battle for Asgard, the misunderstood
Viking: Battle for Asgard was a bit tough with control at first , until we got used to its rigidity to perform certain movements, but later it became a fairly consistent action game highly satisfactory in those spectacular massive battles typical of Total War .
Being set in Norse mythology, there was no lack of magic or epic fantasy with dragons , whom we could invoke in those wars as a final culmination. All this under a fairly explicit game in terms of dismemberment and blood is concerned, with final QTE that tasted like glory and gave us a few seconds of respite, especially against the bosses.
Okay, technically it left something to be desired , especially with its subsequent conversion to PC in 2012, but it does not mean that it still seems to me a game that gets hooked without you realizing it as you prepare the next rival siege and improve Skarin’s skills with money and mead.
Today its formula has been widely surpassed , as in the fantastic Middle-Earth: Shadows of Mordor by Monolith Productions, with a sequel (Middle-Earth: Shadow of War) that curled the loop with everything related to the Nemesis . Even if we talk about Norse mythology in general, there is no game that coughs up the God of War of 2018. But none of that prevents me from continuing to seem more than vindicable this Viking: Battle for Asgard knowing that it came out in 2008, a year of Great games like Gears of War 2 or Metal Gear Solid 4.
- Platforms : PS3, Steam and Xbox 360
- Multiplayer : no
- Developer : Creative Assembly
- Company : SEGA
- Released : 2008 (PS3 and Xbox 360) | 2012 (Steam)
- Price : 14.99 euros
