Rune Classic

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.

Man does Rune start off slow. The other folks are correct that you'll slog though dark caves full of gnolls and sewers full of zombies. And those zombies of Hel are very tedious because they can only be killed by decapitation. You'll spend a half-dozen long levels whacking the same baddies over and over hoping for clean headshots. It's a surprisingly linear game too, but unusual: the hidden crevices and hard-to-spot ropes that might lead to a secret area in another game are actually the *main path* here. You'll spend plenty of time getting lost and backtracking. Fortunately, some of the levels are quite beautiful, and the game really starts feeling like the adventure you'd expect once you finally emerge from the caves/underworld. The real fun builds as you explore snow-covered villages and fortresses taking down axe-wielding berzerkers, then trek through dwarven mountain citadels and start collecting some seriously huge weapons. The sense of power and tension keeps building through to the end, and you finally feel like some of your patience through the early levels has paid off. The game takes some interesting turns toward the end too. So even though long stretches near the beginning can suck, the scope and scale of the journey ends up being pretty impressive. If you have the fortitude for a grand viking melee adventure, this is it.

I can't recommand single player of Rune as best. I don't think it's very good. I played few times in single player campaign and enjoyed it though. Rune shines in LAN parties. Its realy great. When you start playing PvP it looks like fighting system is simple and random. Believe me, its not. You realy can fight any weapon against any other, just need practice. Its all about timing. Last LAN party with Rune i actualy had about 3 months ago. Default maps are good but we found at internet about 10 more which are better. 15-20 maps cycled are good enough for whole night. I recommand duels. Fighting and chasing each other is fun but when it comes to fights i recommand prepare for duels when attacking, blocking and timing attacks gets into play. This is not number one PvP game. I have realy good time with this game. Thats why i buy it here. PS It has Halls of Valhalla :D

Foliage physics,decapitation of limbs, physical weapons, mind blowing enemy ai, interesting puzzles. I recommend this game for every one.