Vikings are awesome. Well, sort of. Let’s not forget that, for the best part of three centuries, they raped and pillaged their way through Europe, committing heinous acts of sacrilege and wiping settlements clean off the map. As in most video games, however, we’re willing to gloss over the history’s foulest atrocities, especially when beards and axes are involved.
War of the Vikings continues Fatshark’s experimentation with online melee-focused action games. The logistics behind such a niche genre have always been complicated yet, in 2012, Fatshark came close to cracking the formula when it released War of the Roses.
Combining a simple duelling system with a diverse spread of weapons and perks, it was a valiant first effort. A sequel, therefore, seemed like a no-brainer and Fatshark have been happy to oblige.
Like its predecessor, Vikings is multiplayer-only, aside from a brief albeit helpful tutorial. Forgoing conventional matchmaking queues, players can simply dive into a lobby of their choice, side with a faction, and drop into one of four modes.
Doing away with the houses of York and Lancaster, this time players can side with the god-fearing Saxons or their Norse invaders. The choice is purely a cosmetic one, with neither side offering any particular gameplay advantages and they share the same small arsenal of weapons.
Playstyle hinges entirely on how you compose your loadout. Hand weapon and shield, two-handed weapon, and bow make up Vikings’ three core archetypes, though these can be altered. Secondary weapons can be equipped for instance, as can different classes of armour and various perks.
Regardless of how you dress up your soldier, combat mechanics remain largely the same. Holding down the left mouse button while gesturing up, down, left, or right will ready an attack in that direction, the power of which depends on timing. When initiating a strike, a gauge at the bottom of the screen will fill, indicating the best time to land a hit. Of course, with enemies looking to dodge or parry, it takes skill and the occasional bit of luck to deal a fatal blow, thanks to the precise hit detection.
When playing you have to take into account for friendly damage too. Whether in the pursuit of realism or just frustrating players, Fatshark has championed this mechanic, punishing every wayward attack, be it intentional or not. Friendly hits incur both a health and experience deficit and will happen almost all of the time. Without even playing the game, you can imagine just how volatile this feature is with players forming huge mosh pits and are constantly under fire from clumsy archers.
It would be much easier to overlook some of these issues if there were more game modes on-hand, but at present there are just three flavours of team deathmatch alongside a control point-based scenario. This mode, Conquest, is particularly frustrating though, merely ending in another endless brawl.
In Conquest there are five control points in total, two belonging to each team and a neutral one in between. Naturally, victory is achieved by seizing all five, but you can only capture a control point in sequence and if an adjacent control point also belongs to your team. It means that instead of being able to tactically branch into squads and cover a handful of areas, everyone is constantly being funnelled into a single choke-point and usually stays there until the match clock runs down, with the victor then whoever has the majority of control points.
The main area that doesn’t warrant criticism is how War of the Vikings looks. It’s authentic and gritty with maps demonstrating some much-needed environmental diversity. One thing worth mentioning, however, is the lack of custom options for your character. Along with there being fewer weapons to choose from, cosmetic options have also been cut back with most players donning the same default styles.
What’s Good:
- Looks good with some nice variety.
- Beards and axes.
What’s Bad:
- Combat mechanics haven’t been improved.
- Friendly fire, particularly from ranged weapons.
- Fewer weapons and less choice.
- Diminished sense of progression.
- Sometimes dodgy spawn points.
Fatshark has turned the clock back for its new game’s setting, unfortunately doing the same for its mechanics and content too. There’s nothing wrong with streamlining or simplifying your core game model but War of the Vikings takes this a step too far. Apart from one or two minor tweaks, the combat system remains largely unchanged and poorly fostered by the game’s dull spread of modes.
No doubt Vikings will eventually get up to speed and there’s a good chance that a slew of modes and customisation options are currently in the pipeline. However, given its status as a sequel, these features should have been there from the start.