You'll start up Rune, gird your loins, polish your byrnie and ruck up your sleeves for a big Norse adventure with lots of killing, coldrife mountains and valkyries and things. You will, eventually, get that. Unfortunately, you'll have to slog through an extended sewer and some awful platforming before you get to the mead halls, the mountains and the frost giants. Rune does itself no favours by making its early sequences ones of such utter tedium, and it's easy to get bored by its first offerings. If you've got the patience to stick with it, you'll eventually find an under-appreciated classic. Severance has better swordplay and there's better Viking games about, but none with combat like this. It blossoms into messy melee with lovely environments by the end. You'll rip off limbs, throw axes, and time your swing so that you catch an enemy across the neck and take his head right off. If you're into the Vikings then it's a must, but otherwise consider if you're willing to trek to the good bits. It goes on for too long and it falters whenever it sends the player anywhere other than outside, but it's a brutal melee when it gets going. Multiplayer is a strong offering, somewhere between Jedi Knight and Quake 3. It's fast, responsive and the community will no doubt get a boost from the re-re-release. It's worth a visit, but he Norse sagas have a few more sewers than we all remember.
