Another game played prior to listing on eBay, "Zombie Vikings" was visually impressive, in the cut scenes anyway, but a pedestrian game to play.
Four undead Vikings hack their way across various Scandinavian scenes, to retrieve Odin's Eye that was taken by the trickster god Loki. The game initially offered four characters to play as, each with their own special attack patterns and quirks. The Ragnarok edition added a character based on Raz from the classic game "Psychonauts". The game allows the purchase of upgraded weapons, as well as Runes that provided additional life, or faster speed. The game is designed to be played in four player co-op.
Therein lies my real problem with the game. I wasn't playing it in four player co-op, I was generally unable to find other players online (it being six years after the games initial release, and the release not being particularly successful anyway). So, I was hacking and slashing alone, and like so many side scrolling hack and slash 'em ups... it grew tiresome pretty quickly. In the early stages, the enemies essentially just died pretty quickly, then there were a few with organised attack patterns to deal with, then they started to combine. It was at this point I started to die occasionally and decided that I'd seen all the game really had to offer.
The cartoon visuals of the cut scenes were really good, and, to be fair, the Paper Mario style animation within the game was decent too, but I do feel like the writing was very ... pleased with itself about how quirky it was. Irony is not always the same as wit. Maybe I'd have been more forgiving in a game I liked more, but after the first couple I was desperate to skip the story scenes on as quickly as I could.
Maybe in four player it's a lot better, in fact, I'd assume it is - given the number of little tactics the game talks about, reviving characters and throwing bits of them around - but alas, that's not the game I played - and it offered me very little.
