Vikings make great characters for video games.  Their history is one of huge quantities of fighting and destruction, and I say this being of Danish descent myself.  Okay, sure, the Danes didn’t have quite the fighting past of, say, the Norwegians or the Swedes, but we still got our blades wet from time to time.  Anyway, that’s probably part of the impetus behind Sega’s recent release of Viking: Battle for Asgard, now available for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

In this one, you’ll play a local boy named Skarin, who’s about to get a serious promotion from random sword-toting schmuck to champion of Freya herself.  This is actually much like the relationship between Kratos and Athena.  Except, of course, Skarin wasn’t a homicidal psychopath like Kratos.  Anyway, Skarin is now part of the big war between the gods, fighting on behalf of Freya to take out some of the footholds that Hel, goddess of the underworld, has on Earth.  Just in case you wonder, Earth is called “Midgard” here.  For every bit of Midgard that Skarin takes back from Hel, Freya uses her weird goddess powers to make it green and vibrant again, like nothing ever happened.

There are an uncomfortably large number of comparisons available between Viking: Battle for Asgard and God of War—both feature a human elevated to godly champion status, both will feature occasional battles with large monsters that require a series of timed button presses in order to beat, both will have you find small red orbs to recharge your powers and whatnot—the more I play Viking: Battle for Asgard the more I wonder if it really ISN’T just God of War in a Norse mythology skin and with a lower development budget and a whole lot less promotion.

This isn’t to say, of course, that Viking: Battle for Asgard is all that bad a game.  In a lot of ways, it’s actually rather fun, and it does distract from the endless flood of first person shooters out there.  Getting anything other than one of those is actually a cause for some minor celebration these days.  Think of it as God of War with less bloodshed and more fetch questing and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what’s going on.  Admittedly, it’s still plenty fun to wander around a map and repeatedly jam a blade in things–you’ll get to do likewise with an axe and a whole host of special moves which, for some reason, must be taught to you by ghosts who will require payment in gold first, but there’s room to shake things up here and that’s always a good thing.  Plus, you’ll get to imbue your blade with various elemental powers as part of your agreement with Freya, thus introducing a small note of strategy into things.  Do you freeze the monsters and try to thin out the crowd?  Or just set everything on fire?  Your call!

These are strange days in gaming, when just by virtue of not being a first-person shooter you get a little extra bonus to your originality score.  Granted, this is only one step beyond that—a THIRD person slasher / action game—but still, it’s a step, and a step is better than nothing.

Despite this, you should still be able to get some fun out of this one, especially if you were really into the God of War series and are sort of jonesing for a little of that old god-driven bloodsport.  There’s enough action and adventure to go around, and this should also ensure that you get some fun out of the whole affair.  In the end, that’s better than nothing, if not by a whole lot.