I have many a tale to tell you, young warrior, of how I slew the greatest of evil Loki's servants with my steel blade, of how I defeated the despised Dark Vikings in their own fortress with my mighty axe and even of how I… oh, you just want me to tell you how the damn game plays? Well, I suppose I can do that too.

Let me start off the main part of this review with an admission – I'm biased. Rune is a game that I've wanted to play ever since I heard it was being made. It's the first game to really focus on Vikings that I know of (the Lost Vikings games don't count) and I happen to be quite a fan of Viking mythology. Hell, I'm even sad enough to have named my computers after Viking gods and my hard drives things like Hvergelmir and Yggdrasill, so Rune was looking pretty good to me from the moment I heard about it. The fact that it focuses purely on close combat only made it look even better. It may come as a surprise to you then that despite how much I really wanted to like this game I initially found it a disappointingly frustrating experience and felt ready to give it at best a slightly above average 7 overall. Initially anyway.

After a little run around the village to get used to moving and fighting, Ragnar joins the other warriors of his settlement to help defend a nearby village that is under attack by rebel Vikings serving the Trickster God Loki. Their longboat is unexpectedly sunk on the way there (I'll leave you to find out the details of how) and Ragnar is the only survivor, saved by Odin so that he may find and battle the Dark Vikings and anyone else who looks in need of a good kicking. From the underwater cave that he finds himself in, Ragnar makes his way through Hel (yes, only one “l”), his only route to the surface, and this area is without doubt the game's main weak point. It's not that the level design of Hel is bad, far from it. It's the enemies. Rune is a game about close combat action with a bit of puzzle solving thrown in, so you'd want enemies to stay down once they've been cut down so you can concentrate on killing the next batch of enemies that are fast approaching. However, in Hel you must fight these undead creatures that can only be killed by decapitation, something which proves to be a frustratingly difficult task with your initially dinky little sword, axe or club. Undead killing is a little easier once you get hold of a torch since their dry flesh and tattered clothing burns particularly well, but there are simply too many of them to kill for this to prove an ideal solution. It wouldn't be so bad if Hel was a short section of the game but it proves to be one of the longest, which is unfortunate. I've had much more frustrating and annoying gaming experiences, but frankly Rune would've been a better game if the denizens of Hel were not so numerous and so frustrating to kill.

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