Wow, since I have holidays and my flat in Osna on the safe side I have lots of time and so I am spending this in an insane amount with my 360. I decided to play as much as I can until I have more important things to do when my studies begin in the end of october.
Yesterday I rented 'Viking: Battle for Asgard' and today I am two thirds through and will finish it tomorrow. I always wanted to play this game because I like Viking and Viking mythology and the Viking Death Metal band 'Amon Amarth'. This game is really cool. You start as the Warrior Skarin that is chosen by the goddess Freya to lead war against her foe Hel and her dark legions. The game reminds me a bit of 'Severance: Blade of Darkness', only with an open world and the goal to free hostage held vikings to lead them in epic siege battles. Those siege battles are just breathtaking. The shere amount of non player characters moving the same time is just incredible. It really plays like Helm's Klamm in Peter Jackson's 'LOTR: The Two Towers'! The gameplay is simple and good. A clean hack'n'slay with lots of bloody animations. Skarin delievers the action as you wish - hard and merciless. The open world is relative. Basically you have three different maps - islands with lots of farms, towers or even ship graveyards to free from the dark legion. On those islands you'll do quests that most always end with freeing vikings to enlarge your army or you'll have to find magical gems to summon dragons you can command in the siege battles. Epic!
So far I am very positive about the game, it has rewarding achievements that are never out of reach, it simply rocks.
What I find annoying is that in areas you didn't liberate it's always rainy night until you free it what has as consequence that the sun breaks through. When you're moving through the world at first it's annoying until you realize the mechanic. Another negative aspect of 'Viking' the game could have used more sound samples or background music in general. Sometimes it's simply too quite. And more character models. Fellow vikings and legion orcs look always the same.
But all those negative aspects are really only small scratches on a really good game. Thumps up from me!
The other title I am playing currently is 'Unreal Tournament III'. I've always been a fan of the series, playing it since the first UT and declared it years ago to my favorite competitive shooter which it still is. I found UT2k4 was a very strong title and I liked especially the Assault (operative based) and Onslaugt (kind of vehicle based domination mode) modes. In UTIII Epic decided for the good or the bad to mix those two modes together in the Warfare mode. In my humble opinion for the bad. It just complicates things - now you have a ball you can carry in your enemies node to instantly transform it in yours instead of the more time eating destroying and building up, now you'll have to do things in a certain chronology like driving a tank on a button to bring the draw bridge down for example. That's okay if you get used to it but at first it's annoying.
Therefore in this Unreal Tournament my favorite mode is good old Capture The Flag. Without vehicles.
And the level design is just awesome. Unreal Tournaments maps were always remarkable and so beloved that they updated the most famous ones like Facing Worlds for example in every new edition of the game. One map I just fell in love with is CTF-Strident. It looks so incredibly good and is designed so simply it feels just right.
I am really thinking about getting this game aswell for my laptop...
So far for now. Looking forward to rent many more games from my local videothek in the next weeks.
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