Review: 'Viking: Battle for Asgard' a weekend skirmish

Fantasy adventure meets large-scale warfare in Sega's "Viking: Battle For Asgard," a gory Norse mythology tale crafted by The Creative Assembly of Total War fame.

While easy on the eyes and ears, the game play itself is a mixed bag, rendering this disc as a decent weekend rental for mature players and nothing more.

You play as Skarin, a Viking hero who wages war against evil to save mankind. How does this beefy brute go about it? By beheading and dismembering baddies with a battle ax, summoning dragons, rescuing imprisoned Vikings and commanding large-scale skirmishes featuring hundreds of fighters.

While the mission-based objectives are enjoyable, such as figuring out a stealthy way to enter an enemy camp and engaging in fights, the huge battle scenes have problems.

Specifically, when you've got hundreds of Vikings facing off against hundreds of blue-skinned creatures, as well as giants and dragons, the action can slow to a crawl. There's also a feeling of lost control because the outcome of this big messy fight appears to be out of your hands.

What's more, the game, which is played from a third-person perspective, has camera angles that obscure the action rather than provide cinematic views of it. Another issue is that you might not know where to go or what to do next because the instructions aren't always clear.

Be forewarned: Viking is one of the most graphic and bloody games of the year thus far. You can literally chop enemies in half and see guts seep out, or behead them with a quick swing of the ax.

Skarin can also upgrade his skills by using gold to buy new moves from a Viking spirit, which adds more gory attacks to his arsenal, including stealthy slow-motion kills and magic based on fire and ice. Keep this one away from the kids, tweens and younger teens.

Told via non-interactive cut-scenes that resemble moments from the gory film 300, the story was written by Rhianna Pratchett ("Heavenly Sword," "Overlord"), who is the daughter of renowned fantasy author Terry Pratchett.

"Viking: Battle for Asgard" offers a few enjoyable hours of hacking and slashing -- if you're into that kind of thing -- but the fun begins to wane about three or four hours into the game because of its tedious missions and some technical issues primarily with the large-scale conflicts.

As a result, this game is fine as an inexpensive rental for mature Microsoft Xbox 360 or Sony PlayStation 3 gamers interested in fantasy and violence -- with a strong emphasis on the latter.

It's not a horrible adventure, but a few extra months of testing and tweaking might have resolved some of its problems E-mail to a friend