Silicon Knights delivers a game that needed another ten years of development.
You play as Baldur, a cybernetic Norse god who must take on legions of robots in defense of humanity. Along the way, you'll meet several other mythological creatures and gods such as Loki, Heimdall, and Hel. The whole game is basically a Norse mythological story with a Cyber-Punk twist.
What will throw some gamers off, as well as suck them in at the game's early stages, are the high production values. The entire voice-acting cast puts on an extremely believable performance, and the actual real-time cut-scenes are rendered incredibly well. Unfortunately, this shining quality becomes overshadowed by sound glitches that happen throughout the game. At some points during gameplay, you can't even hear what the characters are saying to each other. Also, the lack of background the game provides on each of the characters, as well as the extremely thin storyline, doesn't give you much story to watch, so enjoy what few scenes you are given.
The graphics in the game are relatively good. You won't be passing out from amazement, but the game is far from ugly. Some of the environments are actually impressive with mountains in the background and streams jogging across the landscape. The game consists of four massive levels, and it's incredible how expansive each level actually is and how far you can see in each one. Don't start assuming that those oversized levels are going to give you a lengthy game, though, as you'll finish this one in about thirteen hours or less.
Silicon Knights did put a twist on the control mechanics for the game assigning the melee combat to the right control stick, and mapping everything else to the buttons and triggers. Pushing the analog stick in a given direction is supposed to attack enemies in that direction, and it works most of the time. But you'll occasionally find Baldur swinging around to hit nothing but air when the enemy is clearly standing right there in front of him. And that's just the beginning of the problems with the gameplay; there are so many problems you'll encounter during combat that they're almost too numerous to list.
One thing or another constantly interrupts the pace of the game, so you never get into any kind of enjoyable groove. Cumbersome menus plague the game, and you'll constantly have to endure them thanks to the game's loot-heavy approach. You spend more time sorting out your weapons than you do actually using them. Death is another problem, as every time you're killed you're forced to sit through a cut-scene where a Valkyrie comes down from the sky and takes you to Valhalla.
This wouldn't be such a big deal if deaths came few and far between, but you'll find yourself dying a lot for one reason or another. Whether it's the unruly camera, horrendous ballistic lock-on system, or just the fact that Silicon Knights' idea of difficulty is throwing every enemy in the game at you at the same time, you'll find yourself constantly frustrated. Certain status effects, like poison, last way too long to even be considered fair. You'll have a full health meter, become poisoned, and die before the effect wears off. If you're lucky, you'll pick up enough health boosters in battle to wait it out, but the item drops are too random. You'll either end up with more health than you need, or none at all. The number of poisonous enemies the game throws at you compounds this issue, as does their blast radius. And if you're looking for help on this little adventure, forget it. Your allies are also almost completely useless, as their A.I. is about as stump-dumb as you can get.
As a result of all this, the game becomes nothing more than a grind from start to finish. You move from battle to battle, hoping the next one will be your last just so you can get it over with, but instead they just keep coming. It's enough boredom and frustration to make the ten-hour game feel like twenty to twenty-five hours. You can replay the game again, or try the on-line co-op mode, but you'll be so aggravated by the end of the campaign that you most likely won't want to.
Sadly, this game not only refused to live up to its hype, it refused to even be a good game. If you're looking for a solid Action-RPG, look elsewhere. This game is intended to be the first of a three-part series, so hopefully Silicon Knights will work out something more worthwhile for the second and third installments of this trilogy. They certainly can't do much worse.