You, proud warrior, now seek to join the greatest of the Drenai heroes. Rek the Earl of Bronze, Waylander the Slayer, Druss the Legend, Tenaka Kahn, and many others will watch as you wear the badge of Drenai. Learn more about your fellow warriors on the remaining pages. Seek to improve your skills in battle, but remember your heart will win the melee before your skills.

What starts out as a simple revenge drama, turns in to a tale where the fate of the world is in the balance. You make and epic journey, you fight hundreds of foes. In the end, you are the Hero of all heroes. The time invested reaps a great reward at the end. I'm not saying little reward gaming, or big reward gaming is better. But if you need lots of carrots, RUNE is a game you best avoid. As for myself, RUNE has one of the best endings of any game I have ever played.

The graphics in RUNE are phenomenally good. It's all based on the Unreal engine, and despite the bad rap that Unreal's engine got.. RUNE runs smoothly, and I couldn't detect graphical hitches of any type. There was a little slowdown during scenes that had tons of sprites and polygons.. but, once you consider just how many are being displayed at once, it becomes reasonable. My fps rate never dropped below 30 throughout the entire game, for me, that says a lot.

The cutscenes are done in-engine, and are very well done. One cutscene, featuring Ragnar flying on the back of a bug, is simply thrilling.

Now although this map doesn't pull the highest marks I have ever seen, it does show that the mapping scene is starting to take off and we are ready to review your maps so send them in.

Now that's three, where's the fourth category? Ahh, the Limbs. Whenever you kill an enemy, they might end up becomming severed limbs, or you might find a head laying about, so just pick it up and rush into battle with your newly found head as a weapon!

Multiplayer is the word on the tip of everyone's tongue these days, but for Rune there's no redemption there. As anyone who's ever tried for the humiliation of a melee kill in games like Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 can attest, getting close to other players in an online game where everyone is just a little bit out of sync is very hard. And in Rune, there's no rocket launcher to fall back on. Connection speed, even more than usual, counts disproportionately towards your chances of victory rather than any amount of skills, and unless you have a high-speed connection like DSL or cable modem, playing Rune online can be a very frustrating experience.

The game's sound was spot-on, weapons sounded great as they cut through the air or smashed off walls, and magic sound effects weren't over the top which was a plus. The music kicked in at all the right places adding tension to the proceedings and blended well with the different scenes.

Noticed that someone was clamoring for a lightsaber mutator on RuneGames.com the other day, so I idly started putting together a few disparate bits ( sounds, etc. ) in the hopes that I could easily put it together once the game was out.

Lucky for me, the "Vampire" effect for the Viking Broadsword closely mirrors the basic functions of what I wanted to do, so I could throw together something easy for all of the SW nuts out there.

As players log into the server they are put in a line. The 2 players at the front of the line face each other in single combat. Both players start with all weapons, the best available shield and maximum health. The winner of the round has his health replenished and fights the next combatant in line. The loser goes to the back of the line and waits for a chance to redeem himself.

Players who aren't currently in combat will view either of the active players and cannot interact with the world. Spectators may change views by pressing the attack button(fire), or go into a free-flight mode by pressing the block button(altfire).

Yep, awesome gameplay. The simplest way to describe RUNE is entertaining. It is a cross between Tomb Raider's exploring, FAKK2's hack and slash, and Soul Reaver's dark story of revenge. Trust me, this is all a good thing.

The Unreal Tournament engine has been enhanced in a number of ways to provide a surreal Viking-inspired experience that turns itself into is a somewhat simple hack 'n slash action game, but a very, very fun one, at that - and that's what it is important, in the end.

As the game begins you find yourself in the big furry boots of Ragnar, a young Viking warrior who has just been inducted into a group sworn to defend the rune stones of Odin, father of the gods. As luck would have it, almost as soon as you have passed your final test a raiding party is assembled to aid a nearby village, which is under attack from a band of evil Vikings who worship the trixter god Loki. But things soon go pear-shaped, as you are ambushed en route and your longboat sunk by the powerful enemy leader Conrack."

This demo is most worthy of downloading, regardless of the speed of the modem, and you owe it to yourself as a person connected to the net to experience this game.

Now you can make that once-empty threat of beating someone to death with their own limbs a reality. While to some Rune is nothing more than just a simple hack n' slash gore fest, no one can deny the game's sense of adventure and playability. The only problem is that the game seems to run choppy on even some of the best of machines. This Unreal engine-based game is much like the others needing that little bit of attention to run just right. While this guide isn't totally different from our Deus-Ex and Unreal Tournament guides, there are enough differences to have you decapitating smoothly in no time..

Voodoo Extreme: Now that you have wrapped up RUNE, and even Blair Witch, what are you going to work on now, or, is it Miller time?

Chris Rhinehart: We still have several things to work on that are Rune-related. Finishing up foreign language translations, among other things. Despite that, we still find time to head downtown to the local sleazy bar, Buck's (which, unfortunately, is being torn down in the next couple of weeks...).

The multiplayer in Rune is truly innovative, standing out from the usual point and shoot games that seem to overcrowd the internet. I never thought that cutting down someone's head was something that lacked in my life but Rune proved me wrong! To sum it up, great graphics, incredible maps and hardcore action as we like it. If you want to do something else than shooting, this game is definetly worth a try.

In all the 3rd person adventures I've come across, I'm finally impressed with a game. I was impressed beyond measure with Rune. Deus Ex was an outstanding game, and this blows it out of the water. So many things were done right for a change, this is how a 3rd person game should be. Other than a few sound glitches which may be fixed when a patch is released, the game is pleasing in every aspect.

Rune is a nice twist on tried-and-true themes, using well-coded technical improvements and a return to game play basics that first attracted you to spend some much time playing on your PC that your hand would be sore for days afterward from a death grip on the mouse.

Human Head Studios has built a very solid third person shooter in Rune. The over the shoulder camera works impeccably, the battle system is intuitive, and the visuals are downright gorgeous. More importantly than all of this however, Rune is fun to play, and manages to remain fresh throughout all 30-40 hours of gameplay.

Nevertheless, the vivid use of colors, refined sharp textures, incredible-looking sky, and fantastic special effects--especially the lighting and fog--mixed with detailed, well-animated, and excellent-looking characters, assures that even if the look tends to feel the same after a while, it's always impressive to look at. Rounding out the presentation is the audio, which is very well done. The soundtrack is dramatic, the voices are gruff, and the general atmospheric effects are terrific.

Far too often, decent games are ruined by awkward interfaces, buggy code and poor QA. Thankfully, Rune is extremely well put together and stable -- load times are quick, saving is a breeze and it didn't crash once. It feels like a professional game, which shouldn't be surprising, but unfortunately these days it is.