I'm going to go a little out of my comfort zone on this review and do something non-Nintendo. This spectacular little gem on the Saturn is an absolutely must play in my opinion. It does have its flaws (to its credit most games at the time had the same problems), but its strengths are more than enough to make up for them.

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As soon as you boot this one up you should notice the goofy plot and equally goofy characters. You control 3 Vikings who have been sent through time and are simply trying to find their way back home. To do this they must use their unique abilities (which they stole from the alien ship which was responsible for sending them through time) to build a time machine. As you progress through the game, you encounter 2 more playable characters that add to your list of special abilities. So in total you get control of 5 different characters, but only 3 (chosen for you) are playable on each level.

[img width=560 height=420]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/vikingsgameplay.jpg[/img]

You can switch to each character on the fly, which is often necessary for timing purposes. This helps keep a nice "flow" going which can plague many strategy games. Each level is basically a large puzzle in which you must gather items, or time machine parts and get all your characters to the end of the level.

The puzzles become challenging quite early on, but once you've learned a few tricks they don't seem as difficult as you progress. You'll have to use skills such as stealth, fighting, blocking, timing, and navigating, often in tandem with each other, in order to complete each puzzle.

The level designs are fantastic and quite varied. They are short enough that if you die and have to restart its not overly frustrating, yet long enough that they are not too easy. You get a nice blend of flavor with levels ranging from Transylvania (complete with werewolves and witches) to Medieval to Sci-fi to Pirate themed levels.

[img width=300 height=225]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/gameplay.jpg[/img]

The sound and voice acting is absolutely perfect in this game. I've played current gen games with worse voice-overs than Norse by Norsewest has. It really adds a completely new layer to the humor of the game because of the excellent quality of voice acting. Many of the voices also sounded quite familiar to me. Mostly from Cartoons I watched growing up. I am unsure if they got the same voice actors or simply mimicked them, but whatever they did it was fantastic.

Now my biggest concern with this game, and many others of the time, was the visuals. It was about what you'd expect for the time as fully 3D games had yet to hit their stride, but in some cases a poorly rendered level resulted in a more difficult than necessary puzzle. Something as simple as a ladder could be obscured by the graphics making the puzzle seem more difficult than it truly was. It was not very bad, but there were a few times it became quite frustrating.

If you're a puzzle fan, platforming fan or simply like goofy off-the wall games, then don't hesitate to add Norse by Norsewest: Return of the Lost Vikings to your collection.


Final Score - 7.5

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