Viking: Battle for Asgard (When Games Go Wrong)

[Kane Knight]

(This is longer than I'd originally planned and a little ranty. If you just want to get to the point, skip to the tl;dr and question at the very bottom).

Wow.

Now, I got this for like 5 bucks and all that, so I'm not going to complain about quality. I sort of knew what I was getting into, but there was one thing I was not prepared for.

This game totally tries to do the "God of War" thing and misses the mark on almost every front. It's almost an art form the way they manage to fail to be GoW.

--The graphics seem to be only at all superior to GoW in the sense that this wasn't a PS2 title. Now, I know not every game can have the production values of GoW and not every game has to, but with the scope of the scenery and shit, you get the impression they're trying to.

--Combat is more or less the meat and potatoes of this sort of game, and while GoW is fluid, this imitation is sluggish. Special abilities are handled kind of like GoW, except you have to earn them in an arena, so no powering up mid-mission. Not that it matters. The abilities are more limited and there are less options, especially since you only have one weapon set. Oh, and Magic sucks. You have three runes, fire ice and lightning, and they work until yoru magic bar is drained completely. Ice is so useful, I'm yet to have either of the others compare. One particular annoyance is a reliance on dodging in some circumstances. When you're up against 6 or more guys, the camera won't look in the direction you're facing, and you're supposed to hit a timing based defense, it's a crap shoot. It's okay if it's one on one and you're in an open field, but that doesn't happen often. posssibly at all with the legion champions you most need it for.

--Speaking of combat, QTEs. While I'm not a huge fan of QTEs, GoW used them to make you fel badass. The first time you fight a legion "boss" in Viking, you basically have a QTE that's "mash A to stab in face." Compare that to Kratos' fucking whirlwind of doom, where he's bashing, stabbing, and snapping? No. Later ones are a little more complex, but they miss that key function of "Make it awesome." You can finish any enemy with a finisher by hitting "X" once they're beat up enough, but there are only a couple variants, and they get boring after about ten. They also slow down the combat. Which is a shame, because if you want more magic, you need to use them.

--Exploration was cool in those Greek ruins. And not-so-ruins. The locales in this game are often bland and samey, to the point I'm never quite sure if I'm hitting a location for the first time or not. It's cool that it's "free roam," but there's little point. No XP means no improvements. You can't even get gold from enemies, so running around killing more stuff does little but suck up your time. But to find the gold, you have to wander around. Oh, and platforming is rigid and stiff.

--Upgrades again. It was a little sucky keeping track of XP and Gorgon's Eyes and Minotaur Testicles or whatever, but you kept upgrading shit in GoW. Upgrades are limited in Viking, so your character feels stagnant. You get like, one health upgrade per island (Of which there are 3 I think), and once you've got all three runes for magic (about five seconds in), there's no learning new stuff. Well...You can summon dragons, but that's not really the magic system. You learn a few new combat tricks, but nothing too terribly cool (despite awesome names). There's not much to buy, either.

--Diversity. Viking still has fantastic creatures, but the number of different creatures is limited. Even when it comes to more powerful enemies, it's usually "spellcaster" or "assassin" rather than "Medusa" or "heterosexual linebacker..." Sorry, I mean "Minotaur." Bosses are straightforward both in the sense that (This is from FAQs, as I haven't beaten it yet) there is little variety in the characters used and there is less variety in the strategies used. GoW mixes it up some, with strategies that at least make you look to the environment to see what you need to use (at the worst).

Maybe it's because Greek and Roman mythology is such a part of the American zeitgeist, and most of what we seem to know about Vikings is Thor and drinking, but the Norse had a very deep belief structure with all sorts of cool baddies and locales ripe for the picking.

And that is, I think, why I even bothered to rant about a game this bad. You can tell they wanted to be God of War so bad, but the game comes up short on every front. Except for making the Vikings Scottish, because every culture should be more Scottish. God of War isn't even the pinnacle of depth of imagination and mythological exploration, but it does a great job for a hack-n-slash that is mostly designed for awesome.

The one thing they did that was different from GoW I'd like to see improved upon by some other beat 'em up series, a good one, is you have to recruit Viking tribes. And I'm all "fuck yeah! Tactical elements!" But they're just quest requirements, really. Like needing a key to open a lock, you need X clans to "open" Y battle. And you get on the battlefield, and they just charge forward and fight with the enemy horde. No dynamics, nothing even all that cool, since it just looks like a clusterfuck. And a dull clusterfuck.

Dynasty Warriors has always had a morale system, and you could raise and lower it by doing things like saving allies or completing objectives (or failing to do so). I always thought the one thing that element was really missing was the capacity to make tactical decisions. Not to the extent of a TBS or RTS, where you micromanage shit to the nth, but still. An implementation of something like that, where there were large battles and some tactical control would have made those battles awesome and the GoW cloning a little more tolerable. I'm pretty sure that's been done before. Just don't remember where.

For 5 bucks, it's not a terrible game. But 2 years ago, they wanted retail for it.

tl;dr: If you're going to rip off a well-done franchise, at least do a half-decent job.

So...Now that that's out of my system, anyone else got examples of games that try and be something but go horribly, horribly wrong?

[Kane Knight]

And let's skip the generic "tried to be good."

[Razzamajazz]

one of the reviews i read for that game was "does repetition annoy you? does repetition annoy you? does repetition annoy you?

i think i owned the game for a whole month before reselling it. the loss of money was well worth it to get that abomination off my shelf

[Kane Knight]

Originally Posted by Razzamajazz one of the reviews i read for that game was "does repetition annoy you? does repetition annoy you? does repetition annoy you? i think i owned the game for a whole month before reselling it. the loss of money was well worth it to get that abomination off my shelf

That review summed it up well.

[Fignuts]

You could have gotten a chalupa and small soft drink with the money you spent on this game.

Very poor decision making, Kane Knight.

[Ermaximus]

I have this game, but I got it for free.

[Disturbed316]

I thought this game was just about ok, but could have easily been better.

[Kane Knight]

Originally Posted by Fignuts You could have gotten a chalupa and small soft drink with the money you spent on this game. Very poor decision making, Kane Knight.

Since I didn't end up in the bathroom with the shits, I'm calling this a much better deal.

Which is saying something, given how mediocre the game is.

[Fignuts]

Bah!

Don't blame the chalupa because your stomach is weak.

Bah, I say!

[Kane Knight]

It's not my stomach. It's my arse!

[Funky Fly]

I want a chalupa and a small soft drink. Wait, what was this thread about?

[Fignuts]

So getting one tomorrow. Not just any chalupa though, but a Chalupa XL. For my stomach AND my arse is mighty.

[Funky Fly]

I shit fire, which I promptly use to immolate my enemies. Gonna go drink hot sauce straight from the bottle now.

[Fignuts]

Nah, I think I will get a queso burrito from qdoba. Bigger and better, tbh.

[Lara Emily]

Indigo Prophecy was an entertaining interactive fiction murder mystery until it went all batshit in the last act. I still love the game cause 75% of it is awesome but man in that last act the game goes super wrong

[G]

Chalupa XXL has been discontinued around here for quite sometime now. The $5 boxes are "bangin" tho. The new Pacific Shrimp burritos are horrible

[RoXer]

Originally Posted by G The new Pacific Shrimp burritos are horrible

Was going to try those. Not anymore I guess

[Fignuts]

I forgot that unit(Fakerazor TM). I will try it I guess.

The potatoe taco thing they have is pretty decent.

[G]

Take everything you know about shrimp and forget it. It's a completely new experience.

[Swiss Ultimate]

I was going to say Saints Row 2 but I fucking love this game...better than the last GTA I played (San Andreas).

[Kane Knight]

Originally Posted by DeathtotheSwiss I was going to say Saints Row 2 but I fucking love this game...better than the last GTA I played (San Andreas).

Do you ever watch Zero Punctuation?

Yahtzee more or less sums up my feelings on why SR2 is better than GTAIV.

I LOVE SR2. It took everything good about the first and cranked it up, and pared out most of the bad. Now, it's still got technical issues (Goes down more than Swiss' Grandma and has draw distance issues up the arse), but man, they were as close to pitch perfect as I've seen in ages (In the sandboxy genre).

Actually, SR2 is a good example of what I said earlier: They ripped off a franchise and did a good job with it. It's not so much that Viking is a GoW clone I mind, it's that it's a bad clone. Slow, clunky combat, repetitive missions, boring QTEs, repetive missions, little reason to actually explore, repetitive missions, unimaginative story, repetitive missions....

Dante's Inferno was more imaginative and fluid than this, though I hear that drops off later in the game. And that's still considered a bad GoW clone.

Also, I'm irritated that the achievements are a crapshoot. I'm missing three, two of which are mandatory to have gotten where I am in the game on hard difficulty. I'm not a whore...Well, an achievement whore....But it's annoying to be missing the shit you earned.

On a similar note, I think both Infamous and [Prototype] missed some marks. Prototype, for example, takes the "sidequests are a grind" thing really literally. Infamous has bad parkour mechanics and for an open-world game, it really limits the ways you can get around. Plus, Cole is a pansy and there's still not much to do outside missions.

Not that these are awful games...Any game where you can eat brains and chuck tanks at helicopters ain't all bad. And nut shotting people with electricity is fun. But...They do miss some strong elements of the genres.

[Swiss Ultimate]

I have yet to play the new GTA and yet I have no desire to even try it.

The big problems with SR2 are the glitches and somewhat faulty auto-save. I find though that the freedom and creativity make it well worth any minor annoyances I might have. What I like is that the mini-games actually make sense in context with the game. Fuck this girl, kill that guy, rob this store, beat up these people.

Also, I have yet to deal with one stupid as fuck mini-plane game...I hate those so fucking much.

[Fignuts]

Overall, I think I like Saint's Row 2 more than GTA IV.

But it is close. Especially when counting the DLC. A big part of it, is that Rockstar's gameworlds are so much more detailed, and feel so much more alive and like a real city. It is just much more immersive than SR.

And I am always a fan of cover systems. Feel like it adds more tension and strategy to firefights. Hoping SR3 has one.

[Kane Knight]

Originally Posted by Fignuts Overall, I think I like Saint's Row 2 more than GTA IV. But it is close. Especially when counting the DLC. A big part of it, is that Rockstar's gameworlds are so much more detailed, and feel so much more alive and like a real city. It is just much more immersive than SR. And I am always a fan of cover systems. Feel like it adds more tension and strategy to firefights. Hoping SR3 has one.

I can't think of anything less immersive than clunky controls. SR2 was smooth, GTAIV was not. I loved how wet everything looked in the rain, how pretty things were, but that's not actually immersion.

Also, cover adds more strategy? It usually turns titles into a whack-a-mole deal.

Though it is nice to be able to aim OVER things....

"Hey, I'm standing next to a box. It's a shame I'm too stupid to shoot around or over the box, and instead can only aim AT it...."

[Fignuts]

I honestly never had any problem with the GTA IV controls.

Also, wtf am I doing, this topic is supposed to be about chalupas.

[Funky Fly]

God damnit want a chalupa so bad right now. No fucking Taco Bells within walking range. Fuuuuuuck

[G]

I will eat one for you today in your honor

[Funky Fly]

I'd rather you mail it to me.

[G]

what kind do you want? I like steak and nacho cheese but they are all winners

[Boomer]

I'd take a Chunchwrap Supreme over a Chalupa any day.

And I always heard so much love for SR2 around here, but it didn't really seem to be my taste. Never played it, so I could be completely wrong, and I noticed Amazon had 1&2 for 20 bucks, but my back-log is so chalupa-d up right now I can't pull the trigger. I enjoyed GTAIV, but have never had the desire to explore in those games. The main quest is always where its at for me.

[Funky Fly]

Originally Posted by G what kind do you want? I like steak and nacho cheese but they are all winners

Yeah, probably just basic ground beef. Not feeling anything fancy rn.

[Fignuts]

The only way I can eat a chalupa is if it's a steak supreme. Anything else is unthinkable.

[DaveBrawl]

I'm glad to see KK post this. I saw this for like $5 at Gamestop or Amazon or somewhere and was thinking about getting it, since I typically enjoy these types of games. Guess I can save my money.

I'll just go to Taco Bell later and have a Chalupa in his honor.