Viking: Battle for Asgard (Xbox 360)

[Goza]

Stumbled upon this by accident, but it's awesome.

Scrap the story, nothing to see there: Help Freyja defeat Hel and her evil forces, blah blah blah. It's an action adventure, ~ mini-Fable with gore and a touch of LotR. You play your Viking warrior, chopping throu enemy forces, rescuing captured warriors to enlarge your army.




The clue is the consistent world (three isles == levels). Map objectives (missions) usually allow for different approaches (use the 'front door' or sneak around the back); large enemy armies roam the map and need to be avoided; liberated towns serve as your new main hub. Some of that is eye candy, but still leaves the impression your actions are actually influencing the game world.

Once you have done enough missions == rescued enough men, you can attack a larger settlement with your army. That's when ~200 NPCs will be fighting on screen with you in the middle attacking the larger enemies:



That's one of the most impressive things I've seen in a game for a long time (the screen above is ingame, not a rendered cutscene).

Pros:
- top notch presentation
- believeable isles that react to your proceedings
- town fights with hundreds of actors
- effective combat
- the game does not annoy the player! (lots of teleportation points, constant autosaves, good world design etc)

Cons:
- some repetition in the third, last isle (map). Could use some new enemies/combat tactics there
- combat could be slightly more complex
- town sieges are kinda eye candy gameplay wise (just defeat the large enemies)


Anyway, the game has kinda bombed in some reviews, so either I'm stupid or the reviewers are. They claim it gets horrendous slowdowns in the mass scenes, but everything runs 100% fluid on my xbox (maybe it's a 1080p problem, I 'just' run 1024 widescreen on a 22 TFT).

9/10, best fun I've had since Mass Effect.

[delling]

Really gonna have to pick up an Xbox soon I think.

Mass Effect, this, and guitar hero...

They're like £150 now.

Looks awesome!

[Comrade Nox]

Game looks really fun, gonna have to pick it up!

[Kawe / Dave]

Yar, getting me a copy of this as well. Read some previews of this a couple of months ago, so I must admit I'm kind of a little disappointed it's turned out as a good game rather than an awesome groundbreaking game (just some of the features, can't remember what they were now, but when I read about them, I was a little excited). I do love large scale mass slaughter though in games (a la tower defense and that 3d gauntlet game that was released on N64), so I'll certainly pick this one up and give it a go.