Human Head
Studios’ RUNE Review
by
Gwynhala
|
Developer: |
Human
Head Studios |
|
Publisher: |
Gathering
of Developers |
|
Price: |
$39.95
(U.S market) |
|
Availability: |
In
stores now. |
I’ve
been looking forward to RUNE
since Human Head Studio’s January, 1999 press release announcing the game. That
first press release described RUNE
this way:
“RUNE transports gamers into the
Dark Ages, when the Vikings were the conquerors of a cold, dismal world, and
paganism ruled all of the northern lands. Taking on the role of Ragnar, a
rugged young Viking warrior, players are challenged to fight off Nordic
creatures and uncover an evil perpetrator who is annihilating the Viking
population. RUNE
combines melee combat and exploration, with a colossal story line and an active
environment, to recreate a period in history characterized by savagery and the
sword.”
Before
RUNE, Raven’s Heretic and Heretic II were my favorite video games. So many people from the
Heretic development team were
now working on RUNE at
Human Head Studios, it made me pretty sure that RUNE would be “the next game” for me.
RUNE has been in stores for a week now, and here at
Mindless Games Network we’ve had access to a golden master copy of RUNE for a few weeks, via our
RuneNews.com RUNE fan
site. We’ve played through the single-player game completely, and tested
multiplayer on both LAN and dial-up connections, on several machines.
I’m
happy to say that RUNE
meets or exceeds about 75% of my expectations. It’s
fun to play and beautiful to look at and to hear. Congratulations to the team
at Human Head Studios, for a great job on their first title!
I Hate Video Games
It’s
true. I hate most video games. What I hate most are the childish plots, cheap
exploitation of sex and violence, endless platform jumping, boring puzzles, and
shallow opponents that most video games offer.
Some
people love that stuff, and more power to them. I’m confident that if that’s
what you like, you’ll find 20 reviews of RUNE to read all about its excellent platform jumping, cool
bosses and dead sexy Viking studs. For a video game to capture and hold my
attention, it has to offer much more. Here’s what I care about:
1) Immersiveness
a. Physics
b. Player Maneuverability
c. Combat and Abilities System
d. Performance
e. Environments
f. Animation
g. Graphics
h. Sound
i. Camera
2) Intelligence
a. Story Line
b. Puzzles
c. Opponents
d. Humor
3) Inspiration
a. The Fantastic
b. The Primal
c. The Sublime
d. The Provocative
4) Multiplayer
a. Modes
b. Maps
c. Player Models and Skins
d. Network Performance
e. Server Discovery
f. Community
5) The Facts
a. Price
b. Availability
c. System Requirements
d. Why Buy It?
RUNE stacks up pretty well, as you’ll see below.
Immersiveness
The
physics of RUNE are a
souped-up version of those found in Epic Games’ Unreal. I didn’t like Unreal,
but I like RUNE. In RUNE, if I throw an axe at a
stone floor, it bounces and clanks in a way that seems real; if I throw the
same axe at a wooden post, it sticks in the post realistically. Bump into a
tree, it rustles and deforms and springs back into position like, well, like a
tree. Step onto a floating piece of wood, and it moves away from me in the
direction of my step. I like that.
The
physics aren’t perfect in RUNE.
Some things downright bugged me. For example, sometimes a piece of explosion
debris will bump into a wall, “stick” there, and tumble forever. Can’t climb on top of other players or monsters. Hugely
exaggerated rebound effects (e.g. jumping on a tarp or bridge). Couldn’t pick up items like bones and small stones that might make
good weapons.
Ragnar,
your character in RUNE,
is maneuverable but not acrobatic. He can move forward, backward, sideways,
jump, swim, climb, crouch, and turn. He can also execute a wide range of weapon-specific
attack moves and basic defense moves. Moves I miss that would fit well with the
Viking motif include run/walk control, rolling, and parrying.
Three
other 3rd person games invite comparison to RUNE’s movement system: Core
Design’s Tomb Raider, Tantrum’s
Die By The
Sword, and Raven’s Heretic II.
The movement system in RUNE
is for sure better than Tomb Raider,
which I didn’t like. Die By The Sword offers more sophisticated and varied
attack moves (but difficult controls). Heretic
II offers more acrobatics and a generally more maneuverable character.
The
movement system in RUNE
is not the best I’ve seen, but it’s very usable and fits the game.
RUNE offers a simple and straightforward combat and
abilities system. There are no aimable ranged weapons (other than throwing an
axe or hammer), so combat is a matter of getting within range, circling to find
a vulnerable area, blocking with the shield, striking, and moving out of range
of your opponent’s weapon. Each weapon has a magical Rune Power, which is
either offensive or defensive, and either an area effect (for example,
auto-target all opponents in range) or a contact effect (for example, do extra
damage on a hit, or increase difficulty of hitting user).
While
the combat system works well in single-player mode, I found it a little
simplistic and unbalanced in multiplayer. For me this diminishes immersiveness.
RUNE deathmatch can
suffer from the same boring degeneration as, say, Quake II – player gets super-weapon, camps, and kills everyone
else forever. The lack of ranged weapons makes it especially difficult to take
out the camper. The saving grace is this: because the camper doesn’t have
ranged weapons either, you can ignore him until he comes out into an area where
he’s a little more vulnerable.
Any
game performs well on a high-end computer system. To get the real story,
Mindless Games Network tried RUNE
on several low-tier / mid-tier systems. We didn’t run formal frame rate
benchmarks on these systems, but rather evaluated the overall impression of
playing RUNE on them.
The Table 1, below, summarizes our results.
|
System |
CPU |
RAM |
Sound |
3D |
API |
Comments |
System
1
|
Pentium
MMX 266 |
64MB |
Yamaha
OLP3 |
Voodoo
3 2000 PCI |
Glide |
Choppy,
not immersive |
|
System
2 |
Pentium
MMX 266 |
80MB |
Yamaha
OLP3 |
Voodoo
3 2000 PCI |
Glide |
Didn’t
suck |
|
System
3 |
AMD
K6 2 300 |
96
MB |
ESS |
TNT2
M64 AGP |
Direct3D |
OK |
|
System
4 |
AMD
K6 2 400 |
64
MB |
Yamaha
OLP3 |
Voodoo
3 2000 PCI |
Glide |
Choppy,
not immersive |
|
System
5 |
AMD
K6 III 450 |
128
MB |
SB
Live! |
ATI
Rage Fury Pro |
Direct3D |
Pleasant
performance, even above defaults; environmental audio unpleasant. |
|
System
6 |
Pentium
III 650 |
192
MB |
Crystal |
None. NeoMagic
chipset. |
Soft-ware |
Pleasant
performance, even above defaults; unpleasant Z-buffering / depth cueing
problems. |
Table 1: RUNE Performance on
Several System Configurations
System
5 and System 6 were very pleasant to play on, with two exceptions. On System 5,
the environmental audio effects were awful and had to be turned off using the
advanced options menu. On System 6, a Z-buffering and / or camera problem
messed up depth queuing and obstruction effects making
it very difficult to tell, for example, where a rope was relative to Ragnar.
The
environments in RUNE are
big beautiful, especially with the mesh and texture detail cranked up to
maximum. The game takes you from a quiet Nordic village, to the depths of the
ocean, through the fires of hell, a mountain fortress, and a land of ingenious
dwarves, to the dwellings of the gods and back again. Each environment has its
own character and your immersion in those environments is made more believable
by the environment-specific clothing Ragnar obtains from unfortunate locals.
Ambient ravens fly gracefully by, while schools of fish swarm and veer through
submerged passageways and mushrooms emit clouds of green spores. Each
environment has multiple dead-ends and secret places where power-ups and
weapons are stashed.
The
environments are good, but not perfect. For example, on one map we found we
could climb up through a skylight into the map’s bounding box; on another, we
found a missing triangle in a wall’s mesh; on a third, that we could stand in
lava forever without getting burned. These are pretty minor, nit-picky things
that don’t detract from overall enjoyment or immersiveness of RUNE.
RUNE uses a fully skeletal animation system for player
models and environmental models. Skeletal animation calculates the location of
each point of 3D object on-the-fly as the game is running. All this calculation
requires a lot of floating point math, causing game performance to suffer on
low-end CPUs like the Intel Celeron or AMD K6.
The
alternative to skeletal animation is vertex animation. It’s used in older games
like Quake 2. Vertex animation
uses less CPU power, but more memory, because the location of every point on the
object is calculated in advance for every possible pose of the model.
I
find the skeletal animation used in RUNE
creates a more immersive experience than vertex animation, because it allows RUNE to adapt to whatever frame
rate and CPU power are available, while using less memory. Instead of the game
engine having to choose the closest pre-calculated position of each point for
each frame, the point locations are calculated exactly, reducing jerkiness in
the animations. All things considered, you’ll be really pleased with RUNE’s skeletal animation system
- if you have a CPU with good floating point performance.
The
graphics in RUNE are
just beautiful, especially at high detail levels. In addition to separate
option settings for the level of detail of environments and models, the
modified Unreal engine improves
performance by automatically adjusting the level of detail based on an object’s
range and other factors. Here’s a screen shot from RUNE taken in software mode
at 800x600 to eliminate any texture enhancement from the 3D card – note the
sharp detail in Ragnar, the ship, trees, and sky.
Despite
the difficulties we encountered using EAX environmental sound, the sound
effects and background music of RUNE
are moody, beautiful, and a great fit for each of the environments. RUNE does
not use CD sound; the engine plays all tracks from .uax files as the game runs, using additional CPU power – a
performance issue on low-end systems.
Intelligence
The
story line of RUNE is
based loosely on Norse mythology and Viking legends. As RUNE opens, the
hero Ragnar is inducted into an elite fighting force known as the Odinsblade, who serve the Norse god
Odin. The story line of RUNE
introduces us to two other Norse gods: a disturbed half-giant god named Loki,
and a bitter underworld goddess named Hel. The story also introduces various
creatures from Norse legend, such as dwarves, goblins, and the fearsome wendol
(snowbeast).
Ragnar
begins his life a simple warrior, but he’s increasingly drawn into the plots of
the gods. First duty, then vengeance, then epic destiny, and finally a decision
to win - no matter what the cost - propel Ragnar through forty-three levels of
story.
Other
video games have attempted the Viking theme, including Gametek’s Prophecy: The Viking Child (scrolling
action adventure), and Blizzard’s The
Lost Vikings (puzzle). Both of these got positive reviews, but were
criticized as lacking substance. RUNE
is the first game we know of to bring the Viking mythos to the 3rd
person 3D scene.
The
story line of RUNE is
enjoyable, but linear and predictable. The characters are interesting, but
one-dimensional: Odin is portrayed as a kind of benevolent spiritual guide,
while Loki is painted as a scheming madman.
A
more complex treatment of Norse mythology might have introduced the idea that
Viking warriors considered Odin to be a fickle god, and that Loki did some good
deeds along with his mischief. This would make the player a bit less sure of
his course of action, increasing tension and enjoyment.
A
more complex treatment of Viking society might have exploited the high level of
equality between men and women in Viking society. The only women you’ll meet in
RUNE are dead, or rule
the dead.
As
it is, there’s no need to worry that character development or plot twists will
get in the way of RUNE’s
spacious environmental exploration, platform jumping, and hack-and-slash game
play.
There
are five types of puzzles in RUNE,
all familiar. Can you guess them? They are:
1) Platform Jumping puzzles
(up, down, with ropes, over pits, across lava, on an ice field, etc);
2) The-Way-Is-Not-The-Way
puzzles (the obvious way to get somewhere or kill something turns out not to be
the way, and you have to go around another way, which usually involves platform
jumping, or running a maze, or smashing through a wall, or knocking something
over, or doing something that seems very dangerous or inadequate but is
neither);
3) Timing puzzles (you pull a
switch, then you have barely enough time to get to whatever the switch opened)
4) Counting puzzles (you have
to kill a certain number of creatures, or pass a spot a certain number of
times, to trigger the solution of the puzzle)
5) Combination puzzles (a
sequence of switches have to be pressed in the right order)
In
addition, the levels are nice and big, so just finding your way through a level
is a puzzle in itself. And there are some cool traps to avoid, most of which
have to do with things smashing you, burning you, or slicing you in half.
RUNE has more platform jumping puzzles than I care for,
but others may find it just right. Other types of puzzles I would have welcomed
in RUNE include:
psychological puzzles (who do you trust?); collection puzzles (find the pieces
of an artifact); arranging puzzles (move things around to create a path);
randomized puzzles (things that, once in a while, don’t work the way they
should); mental puzzles (you need to outwit your opponent).
The
opponents you fight in RUNE
can be shrewd warriors, or very inept, depending on the difficulty level you
set. On the easiest difficulty, your enemies might not even react as you make a
frontal assault on them. On the most difficult setting, they will fight
defensively, maneuvering and carefully choosing their moment to strike.
Another
important aspect of RUNE
is its humor. There is certainly humor in RUNE, including some great “easter eggs” (funny surprises in
secret places) scattered throughout the game. Your opponents spend a lot of
time insulting you; some of the insults are funny but most have to do with
Ragnar not being a real man, or how bad he smells. I also enjoyed some of the
whimsical elements in RUNE,
such as the music you can make by beating on the Goblin drums, the fun of
skidding across pools on floating disks, the way-over-the-top tarp and geyser
jumps, and the way Ragnar smashes his glass after drinking mead.
A
Viking hoped to die in battle, with a jest on his lips – he valued a man’s wit
and luck as much as his battle skills. There’s a lot more room for humor in RUNE. Good job this time, but
crank it up a bit next time, Heads!
Inspiration
RUNE takes its inspiration from several sources: Norse
myth; the long tradition of 1st and 3rd person shooter
video games; the basic human appeal of good, evil, and a quest; the heroic
fantasy.
I
really like the fantasy element in RUNE. It feels pretty good to play a
Viking in glorious 3D. As Human Head artist and co-founder Ted Halsted
reportedly said of an early Ragnar concept drawing, “Who wouldn’t want to play
this guy?” Ragnar’s weapons, environments, and journey all keep me focused on
the fantasy setting, and in this regard I think RUNE is truly inspired.
RUNE is a bloody, gory game in
which, pretty much, everybody but Ragnar dies a horrible death. This is
familiar, it’s been done before, and it still has the same primal kick-butt
appeal it’s always had. It’s even novel (for a while) when blood drips from
severed heads and limbs, or when you pick up an arm and use it as a weapon.
These too have been done before. RUNE
does them solidly.
The
Norse gods are present in RUNE,
and used as props to define the story or set up a conflict. Many pantheon
members aren’t introduced. We have Odin and Hel collecting dead warriors, but
no Freyja. We have Bifrost Bridge, but no Heimdall guarding it. And where’s
Thor? I’d love to see more exposure, influence, interaction, and personality of
the Norse gods in future RUNE
titles.
Very
little about RUNE’s game
concept or storyboard is provocative or intellectually challenging.
That
said, RUNE
is a solid and beautifully rendered action / adventure title that makes good
use of a novel fantasy scenario – Viking vengeance – to give dedicated players
a fun experience incorporating familiar and time-tested gaming elements.
Multiplayer
Tim
Gerritsen, head of Business Development at Human Head Studios, has written on
the RUNE fan forums that
the initial release of RUNE
emphasizes single-player, not multiplayer. RUNE is based on the Unreal engine, which was broadly
criticized by reviewers in its early days for having weak networking code. So
what’s the deal with RUNE
multiplayer?
Well,
it’s fun.
RUNE has two built-in multiplayer modes: RuneMatch, and
Team Game. RuneMatch is free-for-all deathmatch, while Team Game is team
deathmatch. Teams are specified by color (red, blue, yellow, etc.), with a tint
applied to your model’s skin to indicate team membership. Both players and
indestructible, invisible spectators are allowed in each game type.
There’s
no co-op game in RUNE.
Human Head Studios felt strongly that many of the game’s puzzles would have to
be changed to make them co-op proof, and chose instead to concentrate on
getting RUNE to market.
Six
mutators are included to change
the rules or physics of the selected RUNE
multiplayer game. The server administrator can select any combination of these,
from Fatboy, Infinite Powerups, Left Handed Mode, Low Gravity, Lower Weapon
Damage, and No Powerups. In addition, you can set difficulty level, game speed,
frag limit, time limit, and whether weapons automatically respawn.
Seven
deathmatch maps are included, set in various environments from the game and
designed for various numbers of players. If only a few people will be playing,
avoid the larger maps like DM-AcidChamber and DM-Thorstadt. If more than a few
people are playing, avoid tiny maps like DM-LavaPit.
You
can select from more than twenty player models in deathmatch. Most of these
have only one skin choice, which can be modified by selecting a team color.
You’ve seen all of these skins if you’ve played through the single-player game.
There is also a special model that is unlocked once you’ve completed the
single-player game.
Mindless
Game Network played RUNE
deathmatch on a LAN, a cable modem, and on a dial-up modem. During our tests
hosting a game for more than 4 players on a cable modem, everybody got significant
lag. Using a dial-up Internet connection, RUNE was playable with pings up to about 300 but
deteriorated quickly for higher pings. LAN play was a dream.
The
effect of lag in RUNE is
a little different than what I’ve seen in other games. The most common lag
effect is to walk somewhere, get lagged during the movement, and then have your
character suddenly jerk to a nearby (but usually inconvenient) place on the map
when the lag subsides. Client prediction during lag is a tough problem to solve
well, but I suspect there’s room for improvement in RUNE’s client prediction code.
RUNE has a built-in multiplayer server locator, and
built-in ability to launch either a dedicated server
or a combined client / server. It works well. GameSpy will also be supporting RUNE server location, maybe by
the time this review is published. RUNE
has been a very popular title for deathmatch play. Even before RUNE hit store shelves, more than
30 pirate RUNE
deathmatch servers spread around the world. At this writing, legitimate buyers
of RUNE operate hundreds
of on-line servers.
New
RUNE Hordes – teams of
players who compete against other Hordes in organized matches – are forming
every day.
The Facts
System
Requirements:
Minimum:
|
OS: |
Win
95 / 98 / ME / 2000 / NT+SP3 |
|
CPU: |
AMD
K6-2 300, PII 300, Celeron 300A |
|
RAM: |
64MB |
|
Video: |
PCI/AGP
Local Bus, 8MB Memory |
|
Sound: |
Any
Direct X Compatible |
|
Disk
Space: |
200MB
+ swap file |
|
CD-ROM: |
4X |
|
Network: |
via
TCP/IP |
Recommended:
|
OS: |
Win
95 / 98 / ME / 2000 / NT+SP3 |
|
CPU: |
AMD
Athlon, PIII, Celeron, 450 MHz or higher |
|
RAM: |
128MB |
|
Video: |
3D
Accelerator; Direct3D, OpenGL, 3Dfx, Glide, or S3MeTal |
|
Sound: |
SoundBlaster
Live (EAX and A3D supported) |
|
Disk
Space: |
650MB
+ swap file |
|
CD-ROM: |
8X |
|
Network: |
via
TCP/IP |
Why Buy RUNE?
Any
of these reasons are good reasons to buy RUNE:
-
You
want to play a beautiful 3D game with a Viking motif.
-
You
love 3rd person melee combat, wherever it’s set.
-
You
have an illegal copy and can’t sleep at night from guilt.
Our
review of RUNE pointed out both positive and negative aspects of the game.
Weighing these against each other, RUNE
is still a buy in my book; I’ve bought two copies already!
Pros:
-
Cool
Viking theme
-
Beautiful
graphics and sound
-
Huge
levels
-
Fun
melee weapons
-
Five
hours minimum single-player game (even with a walkthrough) Level editing tools
included, easy to make mods Great price - $39.95 in
U.S. stores Excellent first effort from a new studio
Cons:
-
Weak
single-player story line and character development
-
Unexceptional
traps and puzzles Limited built-in multiplayer modes and models
-
Several
bugs in the production CD - download the Version 1.01 patch before playing.
Ratings:
|
Graphics: |
9 |
|
Storyline: |
5 |
|
Gameplay: |
7 |
|
Sound: |
9 |
|
Value: |
8 |
|
Total: |
7.6 |
This review originally ran
on mindlessgames.com 11/9/2000. The site is now offline.