Review

by Dave "Marauder" Kratky, Nov 16/2000.

 

No, this isn't a review of Rune the News Bitch (tm). It's actually a game! :) For this particular review I'm rapidly running out of inspiration, so we're going to have a quick and dirty review here. For those of you who aren't into the whole medeval thing: Quaffing is just like drinking, but you spill more.

Well. Lemme start by saying I love this game. It is sweet. Who hasn't wanted to play the part of a huge barbarian warrior with even huger pointy and sharp weapons? I don't know what's going on here, but I'm beginning to really like these damned third person shooter/slasher type games. First there was Drakken, then FAKK2, and now Rune. I may just have found myself a favorite new Genre of game to play!

The first thing that one notices about this game is that they've used the Unreal engine. As usual, the damned UT engine doesn't work worth a damn on my GeForce in it's default Direct 3D mode. Once I switched over to Open GL it was much smoother and I was ready to rock.

The in-game cut scenes in Rune are excellent. Very fluid, and they fit into the game. The little intro was rather funny, with the little men & goblins beating on the rocks. Reminds me of older arcade game intros.

The voice acting isn't all that great, but on the other hand it doesn't suck as badly as it does in most other games.

The graphics and other visuals are just stunning. Excellent attention to detail, and whoever did the texturing really deserves a round of applause. Very, VERY nice work.

Level design is generally excellent, I didn't really get stuck all that many times that I couldn't figure out the puzzle fairly quickly. I will however point out one thing. The believability factor... Just how DID that Viking warrior manage to get himself sealed up in that wall? That's normal though. :)

 

The attention to detail is continued in your interaction with the levels. You touch a plant, it bends and bobs. Corpses hanging from the roof creak and swing on their ropes. When you eat meat or a lizard (Here lizard lizard lizard!) you throw the refuse over your shoulder. You smash mugs of ale once you're done drinking. You can break one hellovalota stuff, and damn it, I like that in a game.

 

Regrettably, there are a few key places the game fails.

The AI is stupid. Your opponents basically run at you swinging. The Dark Vikings are a little smarter and work together to attack you, but still nothing up to Half-Life AI.

There are a few annoying bugs in the game. The one that REALLY got me was when I couldn't find my way out of a level for the life of me. Turns out it's a bug, where the final door just won't open. Du'oh. Humanhead has however released a patch that seems to fix most of the issues I experienced, including the non-opening door.

 

 

I did find there are quite a few areas you get trapped in for no apparent reason. I've gotten stuck at least 20 times so far. Once I fell behind a few skins stretched on frames... Trapped. My mighty axe of rendering, able to destroy mighty oaken doors and Vikings clad in plate armor was apparently nothing before the might of dried reindeer skin. There's a few other spots where one jumps through a window... but you're apparently not supposed to go there as you get hung up... Reload time...

 

 

Rune is a very, VERY dark game. I'm not sure if this only occurs in GeForce cards, or on other video cards as well...... But ye gods. I finally had to get out of the game and crank the gamma up in my video drivers to make the game playable. You'll notice that some of the screenshots have been lightened up quite a bit in Photoshop.

The final analysis

Good game, worth the play. Lots of mindless bashing, which if of course always good. Once you beat it, that's it though. No real replay except perhaps multiplayer, which we will be trying out this weekend. I'll let you know how it went. The jumping puzzles are not my favorite thing.. but........ I kept playing it didn't I?? :) Quaff some ale, ignore your wench and get a few hours worth of good gameplay outta this bad boy.