Everyone here at Xbox World Australia loves the Xbox, and so do you, otherwise we wouldn't all be here, right? But let's face it; as great as Microsoft's console offering is, there's some things Sony has that we don't, and I don't mean ten-minute game installations or ten-month delays, either. No, Sony has things like Final Fantasy and Ratchet and Clank, but more important than anything else, the bastards have God of War. We've got the multiplatform Conan which was pretty great, but other than that the console is pretty deprived of offerings in the brutal-combat-action-adventure genre! Now though, the Creative Assembly have unleashed the fury that is Viking: Battle for Asgard. But could this be our Nord of War?

The imaginatively titled Viking tells the tale of Skarin, a Nordic warrior whose glory on the battlefield is cut short – literally – and while he is en route to Valhalla, the goddess Freya stops him at the check-in desk and returns him to life, and to battle. You see Hel's army of undead louts, simply called Legion in the game, are currently tearing Midgard to bits and threatening to extinguish all mortal life...also known as Freya's constituency, and in an election year, she just can't handle any more negative press. Unlike most politicians, who'd try to get us to focus on kids being chucked overboard or on mythical global warming, Freya decides to employ Skarin as a fixer, giving him weapons, immortality and the ability to kill hundreds of people without blinking an eye. And probably some carbon offset credits too, never know when you'll need those.

Where God of War and Conan both had structured, fairly linear levels, Viking takes a totally different approach by dropping you on a series of massive islands and leaving you alone to get on with the business of busting heads. Your starting point is always a friendly village or Viking stronghold, which serves as Skarin's base of operations for the coming battles. Likewise, there's always a helpful chieftain or concerned citizen who can give you a summary of what needs to be done in the area before Skarin can accomplish his primary objective: forcing back Hel's Legion and retaking captured Viking settlements. Anyone who played Freedom Fighters on the original Xbox will have a bit of an idea of how it all plays out: multiple objectives achievable in any order you please, some of which contributing to your overall goal, others designed to bolster your protagonist.

In Viking, these objectives tend to be fairly similar and also repetitive: free captured Vikings, free captured locations of interest, or free captured items that may come in handy. Yeah, there's a lot of liberation going on here, but Hel only really has herself to blame for this. Surely if she'd read the Hostage Taking 101 manual, she would have caught the helpful hint that suggests one does not imprison Viking warriors with their armour and weapons. Kind of makes it easy for them to, y'know, fight back when another Viking comes and rips off the door of their prisons.

Dying on the battlefield hasn't really slowed Skarin down at all, either, and you'll be effortlessly dismembering foes within a few minutes of starting the game. Combat is neither deep nor shallow...A for normal attacks, X for heavy attacks, Y allows you to jump and modifies your attacks accordingly, and you can also block and use the left-bumper to pull off a rage attack, which again modifies what normal and heavy attacks can do. Up against two or three low-level enemies, Skarin is a force to be reckoned with, but larger groups, or those containing more powerful or shielded foes, and things can get hairy pretty fast. Blocking becomes essential, and since Skarin's speed is a brisk jog at best, fleeing is rarely an option unless you actually want to get cut down from behind.

Still, what good is being an immortal if you can't die a lot and rise again, unscathed and ready to fight another day? Skarin might argue that it would be better if all the enemies he just meticulously stealth-killed to soften the defences of a Legion camp hadn't respawned, or that the potions quaffed or axes thrown hadn't been consumed, but I guess you can't have everything. It does make things a little frustrating though, but the open-ended nature of the game means that if you do find one location a bit too tough, you can just bugger off and do something else until you're more powerful.

Skarin can use gold he has acquired to purchase a number of upgrades, some of which only become available when you liberate certain production facilities in the game. If you want to throw Molotov cocktails, you'll need the distillery working to make them, for example. More important by far is buying new moves from the battle arena, increasing your health or powering up your magical attacks, as these permanent boosts can make a huge difference to combat. It isn't all roses, however...the new combat moves are powerful, but most tend to leave Skarin pretty vulnerable to interruption from enemy attacks, and as is all-too-often the case in games like this, just mashing the normal attack is going to be the safest way to succeed.

This is only part of the problem though, because the combat shortcomings are compounded by the lack of weapon variety. Unlike Conan, God of War – or even the Creative Assembly's previous effort, Spartan – Skarin is limited to just using his default axe and sword. And in turn, the dearth of weapons means a lack of combat animations, fatality moves and quick-timer events, which further serves to reinforce the repetitive feel of the game. This isn't to say the ones included don't look good or satisfy our morbid desire for disarticulation or arterial sprays, because the game delivers both in spades, it just would've been great if there were a few different weapon choices and combinations.

Perhaps the most interesting feature introduced in Viking is that you are working towards the liberation of huge settlements of your kinsmen, and every Viking you save is another who will take the field beside you in this final assault. Once you've freed enough men, halted enemy reinforcements, secured the production of siege engines or whatever else the game demands, it will be time to launch into an epic battle that dwarfs anything else you'll see in the game. Hundreds of units on-screen at once is an impressive sight, and there's a nice tactical dimension that allows Skarin to command dragons to launch air-strikes against key enemy locations in the battle, like groups of archers or shamans who summon a never-ending wave of Legion lackeys to slow your advance.

These battles are a cool pay-off for all the hard work you've done around the island, but sadly they aren't without their problems either. First and foremost, the sheer volume of action on-screen causes some massive slow-down in places, and honestly, a few dozen less units wouldn't have spoilt the epic effect if offset by reduced sluggishness. Secondly, it can be almost impossible to distinguish friend from foe, resulting in Skarin getting cut to bits without even being able to discern a foe, and actually navigating through the fighting hordes to key objectives can be an exercise in frustration as a result.

If you've taken anything away from this review so far, it's that Viking is a game with some good ideas let down by poor execution or cheap short-cuts. Attempting to tackle the look and sound of the game will result in a similar sentiment I'm afraid, so feel free to skip on ahead to the final thoughts and score if you'd like!

Still here? Suit yourself! Viking is a pretty good looking game; stylistically, it looks a lot like Fable, but the most impressive aspect is that the entire island loads on the fly so you won't spend any time looking at loading screens, except when you move to a new island, of course. Areas under Legion control will appear dark and dank, shrouded in shadows and drenched by rain (or later...lava!), and as you free locations, you'll literally be restoring light and colour to the world. It's a nice touch and lets you know when you're heading into enemy territory, but the problem is it all still feels a little barren and lifeless.

This is partly the audio's fault, however, because Viking is an oddly silent game. Wander around the world and you'll hear your footsteps and the very occasional ambient sound like running water if you're near a stream, but outside of that there is nothing much going on. A few birds chirping or animals running through the forest would have really made the game world feel more alive, as would some music. Outside of battle, you'll almost never hear Viking's score kick in, which is a shame, because it's pretty decent, in a Lord of the Rings movie sort of way.

Thankfully, you won't have to spend that much time perambulating around the islands if you don't want to, since each one has a bunch of Leystones that will allow you to instantly teleport around to the main points of interest. It's just as well, really, because the map isn't exactly something Magellan would be proud of, and the in-game compass is practically useless. Viking isn't a particularly long game either, and you should be able to unseat Hel and earn your way into Valhalla within 10-15 hours. Any longer and you'd probably be sick of it though, even if the Achievements do come as thick and fast as the blood and gibs. Sadly there's no multiplayer battles or even one-on-one arena combat, but at the end of the day, Viking just isn't the sort of game you'd find yourself coming back to anyway, so it's no great loss.