Viking: Battle for Asgard. 10/10 Don't Recommend

Slam away my friends — if your X button breaks, at least you’ll know why.

Accuse me of unsophistication, but I stake my claim to the occasional senseless hack and slash.

‘Viking: The Battle for Asgard’ may be little more than a brainless button-masher, but it’ll have you bashing your controller like a sugar-infused child trying to feed his hungry, hungry hippo.

The lore is a bore, and the gore, well, eventually becomes an eyesore. So you’re probably wondering, “What’s the redeeming quality of such a lackluster half-adventure?”

My answer to that is… nothing really.

And that’s ok.

While ‘Viking’ may not be objectively bad — at best it’s underwhelmingly average — it’s still predictably fun.

I say predictably because there’s no real mystery as to why it’s so numbingly entertaining. After a challenging week of mind-wrangling work, a cerebral RPG isn’t always the cure. Under such circumstances, it can admittedly feel like a chore to hop aboard Mass Effect’s Normandy and tackle the crew’s encyclopedic political disputes.

Instead, I just want something I can pop in my ‘Box’ and happily slap away to, free of intellectual taxation.

And perhaps herein lies ‘Viking’s’ only semblance of grace: it’s graphically breezy for a title from 2007, and the gameplay, albeit repetitive, flows, drip-feeding the player a certain sense of accomplishment while demanding no more than basic video game literacy.

That’s right. If you can move both joysticks simultaneously and locate the buttons without looking down at your controller, heck, you can even play this game on hard!

Devoid of any true satisfaction or salvation, ‘Viking’ doesn’t quite promise us a place in Valhalla, but it does offer us a seat at the finger-lickin’ feast of violence that is Asgard, where blood flows like mead.