When Vikings Attack

pro

The 4 player fast paced frantic gameplay fits the pick-up-and-play genre perfectly. If you like games likes Calling All Cars! and Bomberman, you will most likely love When Vikings Attack!

pro

The game mechanics couldn't be easier to learn. You can dash with one button, move near an object to pick it up and throw it at your foe with another. You control a small mob of either civilians or Vikings, the larger the group the bigger the objects you can pick up and hurl at each other. Big objects like cars or stonehenge pillars threatens to wipe out your entire horde in one clean blow, so use your dash button frequently to get out of harms way!

pro

A well timed dash in the general direction of an incoming object will have you pick up the object instead of being killed by it, serving as a nifty counter attack. Hilarious back and forth throwing contests are sure to ensue!

pro

A great way of building up strength in numbers again, say for instance that you have just been stuck with a bad case of giant donut, is by collecting innocent bystanders milling about the levels. You can also increase your group by throwing colored bombs on your enemies, this will make them join your crew instead.

pro

The 20 "VS" multiplayer maps are varied, ranging from cluttered town squares to highway intersections with oncoming traffic to factories with moving conveyor belts.

pro

Cross-Play and Cross-Buy makes this a must buy for PS3 and PS Vita owners.

con

Quest mode is the campaign part of the game. It is great for learning the ropes offline against enemy AI, but it gets repetitious and isn't quite up to snuff (to be fair co-op play makes it more fun!).

con

PS3 version is 60 frames per second while Vita version is "only" 30. While not a deal breaker it would have been nice if they were equally smooth.

con

Simplicity is great, kill your darlings and all that but the game is quite bare bones. It might have been nice to be able to customize your group of fearless vikings and even level them up and assign different unique perks or upgrades to them.

con

I can see why using randomly selected maps is a good decision for this game. Allowing players to select a new map after every match would take a lot of time away from the action. However I can't help but want to be able to play that favorite map of mine over and over again. Throwing a humongous great white shark at your friend just never gets old!