Rune now on Steam

mtbush

2[H]4U
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Sep 2, 2009
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Surprised I haven't seen a post for this yet, but Steam is now selling Rune "Classic".
Man, this game takes me to the way-back time machine...

For those that aren't familiar with Rune it was a hack n' slash developed by Human Head Studios (Prey, Prey 2). This game is hella' fun and definitely worth the $8. It looks like they've added some new enemies and removed some redundancy in terms of game-play

http://store.steampowered.com/app/210950/

  • New enemies added
  • Some levels have been redesigned for more enjoyable play
  • Experience multiplayer in vicious, fun "up close and personal" melee action with swords, maces, hammers and axes (or your opponent's head or arm)
  • Includes Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Arena and Headball
  • Over 35 multiplayer and singleplayer levels
  • All the music tracks from the game and the original audio CD will be available as part of this release in OGG format
 
I remember trying out the demo when god games (Gathering of Developers) was pushing them.I remember signing up in their website back in the day, they would send you a calendar, demo disk with a bunch of games and some offer fliers. Demo was excellent since download speeds back then were horrible with dialup, not everyone had DSL or T1.
 
My buddies and I LAN about twice a year still and this game always finds some play time. There's a Dx10 shader pack and a ton of free maps. It can be pretty epic in multiplayer especially after some drinks. I'm not sure how single player is.
 
I remember playing this in my game center back in the day. We had some good LAN battles. I still have the original game in packaging. Unreal engine did the game very well.
 
I rulled that game. I did nothing but arena battles.

God it was fun chopping limbs off.
 
My buddies and I LAN about twice a year still and this game always finds some play time. There's a Dx10 shader pack and a ton of free maps. It can be pretty epic in multiplayer especially after some drinks. I'm not sure how single player is.

Very excellent LAN game, and gets even better with some drinks.

Also, there's a DX10 shader pack for it???? :eek:
 
Also, there's a DX10 shader pack for it???? :eek:



Dude! Do want DX10 shader pack too! I played Rune just couple of years ago and tried to look for some graphics enhancers (mainly texture overhaul mods) but didnt find any.

I might give the Steam version a go, (lost my disc anyway) and this time put some Amon Amarth playing in background. :D
 
I remember this game, and it doesnt really feel all that long ago...

I'm old :(
 
Old DX7 game.That is reaching back in time.

UE1 still had a software renderer for that matter. I have the GOG Unreal and much to my amusement, the software renderer actually runs at 60 fps in my monitors native res on this computer and basically scales perfectly in performance as resolution goes down (my poor Q6600 is completely fill rate bound :(). I need to use the FPS cap with the DX10 renderer or it becomes far too fast, so I just lock it at 125 and it's super smooth.

edit: here's the difference between the "classic lighting" setting

OFF - this is the new lighting
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10565193/games/unreal/Unreal 2012-06-18 00-21-25-58.png

ON - ye olde lighting
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10565193/games/unreal/Unreal 2012-06-18 00-21-46-78.png


Flip back and forth between them. The new one is HDR-esque and changes somewhat depending on scene. Darks are darker, colors are more vibrant, and there's a sort of eye adaption effect in place. If you're in a really dark area and there's something bright, like a lamp, it'll appear somewhat blown out in comparison to the rest of the scene. Pretty cool effect, I like it. Overall I think it has a... for lack of a better word, kind of filmic look to it.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10565193/games/unreal/Unreal 2012-06-18 00-20-10-72.png
 
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I might give the Steam version a go, (lost my disc anyway) and this time put some Amon Amarth playing in background. :D

Don't leave out Unleashed! They've got quite a few songs that fit well for this game.

I got this game during Christmas in 2000, have played it around 5 times through. Not going to pay for Steam version, but it makes me want to re-install again.
 
God I miss making maps for Rune and UT99. Those were fun days ;)

/me goes to buy Rune on steam.
 
Very excellent LAN game, and gets even better with some drinks.

Also, there's a DX10 shader pack for it???? :eek:

I have not tried out Rune yet, I have to find the disk but I did try this with both Unreal and UT last night. UT was super smooth and it still surprises how well this game holds out with all the newer graphics of games today. I was not disappointed in playing it at all. I even frapped some gameplay last night. I might have to upload it to my youtube for some old school flashback gaming footage.
 
Don't leave out Unleashed! They've got quite a few songs that fit well for this game.

I got this game during Christmas in 2000, have played it around 5 times through. Not going to pay for Steam version, but it makes me want to re-install again.


I havent paid Unleashed much attention so far. But yeah, thematically the bands fits really well. :cool:
 
such a great game. Played the shit out of it back in the day. Would probably have a hard time going back to it now though.
 
I have this game on disc from when it first came out. Haven't played it since then, so I thought I would give it a whirl.

First off the game installs and runs flawlessly on my i7, Win7, GTX580 gaming rig. Having no problems technically with it at all. It looks pretty good for an old game, but angular and blocky. The character models remind me of Gothic II, if you ever played that game.

I haven't tried multiplayer and I am down in the underworld after being shipwrecked at the start of the game. I remember now why I was disappointed with Rune originally. Here I am a Viking down in some dungeon killing crabs and other critters that look like they could have been imported from Half Life. How come I am not out on a Viking ship raiding and pillaging, terrorizing coastal communities?

The gameplay is very primitive, even uninspired. Look for switches and secret passages to progress through the level, Quake fashion. The combat is not much fun. Click MB1 to swing the sword horizontally back and forth. Strafe, back up, move forward, that's about it. For a little variance the mace has a vertical downward swing. The whole combat system is dull and so are the enemies. Oh, there is climbing, swimming, and platforming down here too.

I dunno how much more of this I can take. It's like taking a trip down memory lane, only without the fond memories. I'll put another hour or so into it, maybe it will kick into gear a little bit.
 
Hey baby, I found a shield! It was just laying there on a platform. I had to jump off a ledge to reach it. Would have been easy to mistake it for a mushroom laying way down there like that. But my eagle eye spotted it!

I been saving this game about every 30 seconds because I don't want to replay any of it. Make a platform jump, save, get past a couple of enemies, save. There are ropes or vines to climb and you leap from one to another like Tarzan. Get through a series of rope climbing, save.

Right now I am going in circles trying to figure out how to move on to the next dungeon area. I think the shield was the only thing in here to find, but I can't locate the path to progress. I keep finding myself back at the entrance where I dropped down from above. Goblins have been introduced, so now there are goblins to fight along with crabs. No explanation how or why they got here, they just appeared. Maybe they eat mushrooms, mushroom hunters.

I just want to get through this dungeon sequence and see what else the game has for a gameplay environment. Maybe I will get to the surface and see something besides ruins, water, and cavern walls.
 
I LOVE RUNE!!! \m/ Best hack & slash ever!

Still the only game I've played that featured being able to beat someone to death with their own severed limbs. Good times! :D

I've been wishing for Rune 2 for years and years, still holding out hope that HumanHead will get back up and finish it at some point. Looks like they're still bogged down in Prey2 at the moment, which isn't going well apparently - doubt we'll be seeing any news on Rune2 for another year or two at the very least.
 
I LOVE RUNE!!! \m/ Best hack & slash ever!

Still the only game I've played that featured being able to beat someone to death with their own severed limbs. Good times! :D

I've been wishing for Rune 2 for years and years, still holding out hope that HumanHead will get back up and finish it at some point. Looks like they're still bogged down in Prey2 at the moment, which isn't going well apparently - doubt we'll be seeing any news on Rune2 for another year or two at the very least.

HH just needs to go to Kickstarter for crowd funding.
 
HH just needs to go to Kickstarter for crowd funding.

After some brief searching it looks like HH may be done-for pretty soon. Doesn't look like kickstarter funding would help much at this point. I saw a press release from Bethesda from June of this year where they were saying they reviewed Prey2 earlier this year and decided it still completely sucked. After investing millions of dollars over several years into the project they felt that the game was nowhere near ready for release and were considering pulling the plug on HH and possible handing the project over to Arkane, the developers of Dishonored, to overhaul the project and get it back on track. Doesn't bode well for future projects of HumanHead either...
 
Playing Rune right now I can say that HH did a great job on the tech side. When I was installing this game from a 13 year old disc I had my doubts if it would even run. But run it did! And not only run, it runs butter smooth with no graphical anomalies at all, or tearing. The game must be clipping along at 80 fps or faster, everything maxed out of course. The game doesn't look bad either, dated sure, but not ugly at all.

Controls are pretty good. Sometimes it is hard to make a simple jump up a ledge, or to grab a rope. But for the most part everything is quick and responsive.

Where they fall short is gameplay design. Making the game really fun. Being down in some underground ruins at the bottom of the sea fighting crabs and dangerous plants is not my idea of a fun game about Vikings. In addition the combat is dull. Swinging the sword, ax, or mace is not something that gets my blood up. Maybe it is the enemy AI that sucks the life out of it, or the enemy types you are up against. But it just isn't very fun in the combat department, and this game is all about the combat.

Of course I am talking single player. I realize the multiplayer arena is another game entirely. But I am not playing that, I am playing the single player campaign.
 
Playing Rune right now I can say that HH did a great job on the tech side. When I was installing this game from a 13 year old disc I had my doubts if it would even run. But run it did! And not only run, it runs butter smooth with no graphical anomalies at all, or tearing. The game must be clipping along at 80 fps or faster, everything maxed out of course. The game doesn't look bad either, dated sure, but not ugly at all.

Controls are pretty good. Sometimes it is hard to make a simple jump up a ledge, or to grab a rope. But for the most part everything is quick and responsive.

Where they fall short is gameplay design. Making the game really fun. Being down in some underground ruins at the bottom of the sea fighting crabs and dangerous plants is not my idea of a fun game about Vikings. In addition the combat is dull. Swinging the sword, ax, or mace is not something that gets my blood up. Maybe it is the enemy AI that sucks the life out of it, or the enemy types you are up against. But it just isn't very fun in the combat department, and this game is all about the combat.

Of course I am talking single player. I realize the multiplayer arena is another game entirely. But I am not playing that, I am playing the single player campaign.

Yeah, it's always hard to pick up an old game to play today when the nostalgia factor isn't there for you. There are lots of old classics I missed when they were new and now I'll probably never play them just because I can't stand the old graphics and feel of them.

Rune 1 was made in the Unreal 1 engine, iirc, so no huge surprise that it still runs well. When this first came out it was a one-of-a-kind thing - it pretty much invented the Hack & Slash genre that is now copied by most fantasy games.

Rune was the first of this genre I personally ever played, and I still remember it having a wonderful responsiveness to the controls and combat system that you don't get from other hack-&-slash / fantasy titles since then. Mêlée combat in Oblivion and Skyrim feels like trudging through molasses by comparison (at least as my rose-tinted nostalgic memory serves me).

Oh, and yes the enemies ramp up over the course of the game, and you do fight humans later on. The game is pretty long, so don't expect to get there all that soon. You will go through several other realms of underworld before you get back to the realm of humans. Just try and remember Rune was one of the first of this genre - it doesn't adhere strictly to a realistic Viking historical theme, but kindof runs the gamut of themes from fantasy and the old lore of the Vikings and their deities and mythologies etc.

I just picked up the game from Steam as well. Looking forward to giving it another play-through sometime soon! Should be interesting to see how much of nostalgia factor remains and how much the game will have aged since I played it last. Definitely need to install that DX10 mod before I fire it up.
 
Yep, I started seeing some more human type enemies. There are these guys you have to decapitate in order to kill. If you strike them anywhere else they go down, but get back up.

I am in this castle kind of area now. If you have ever played Quake or Quake 2 you will see a profound influence.The whole place is full of switches or levers that open up heavy iron doors that reveal new corridors to explore. Instead of health packs you eat lizards you find on the floor, or pick off walls. It is a lot like playing Quake with a melee weapon instead of a rocket launcher. Even the lighting and sound effects are reminiscent.

The game is very retro feeling, but it looks and runs great on my PC and monitor. My monitor is a 4:3 CRT which is what the game was designed for. It may not look as good on a LCD, especially if the game doesn't support wide screen and you stretch it to fit. I haven't tried the DX10 mod, but I did patch it up to1.07.
 
Rune... what a game, not sure what to make of it. Sometimes I am enjoying it and other times I am so doggone frustrated I could strangle the developers!

This game is 44 levels long! That is mind boggling. They don't make 'em like this any more. But every level is a lot like the one you just finished. Changes come, but very slowly. I just picked up my first sword upgrade. This new sword has a new attack animation that allows me to jump and spin in mid air. The weapons have power ups that last a few seconds, one makes your shield super strong, another gives the sword fire damage ability.

In 14 levels the enemies haven't changed. Still fighting crabs, goblins and these undead that can only be killed by decapitation. Just lately I notice fire will kill them too. My fire enhanced sword works, or I can lure them near some shooting flames whooshing out of a wall, or coming up from the floor. There's lots of that stuff. Lots of platforming over lava, lots of puzzles, traps, switches, levers, pressure plates. I get turned around or lost in most every level. Lots of back tracking while looking for that missed doorway or hidden passage that allows you to progress.

But the game can be fun in a addictive kind of way. Most of the fun comes from improving at the combat. Getting better with the sword. Decapitating those undead takes precise aim. You have to swipe exactly at the neck and there is nothing like a aiming reticule, it is all free form mouse control. It seems the sword is the only weapon that will take them out. The ax or mace just knocks them down.

The game seems to get better looking as I progress. It's a dungeon crawl, but a lot of art work and detail was put into the game. Excellent lighting too. The combat seems to becoming deeper than what I had experienced at first. So I am plugging away at it watching it grow on me. I might end up really liking the game. 44 levels is a long ass game!

I tried multiplayer but the servers were all empty. But the maps looked great and so did my multiplayer character. One thing you can't take away from Rune, it is a good looking game, even as old as it is.
 
A couple of things have changed since my last post, and I know y'all can hardly wait to hear how Rune is coming.

I installed the DX10 mod. It turns this old DX7 game into a modern looking DX10 monster! No just joking, he he. But it does help. I can crank the AA up to 16 and that really smooths things out, plus there is no frame rate hit to go along with it. The whole game looks richer and sharper.

The second big improvement is finally getting out of the underworld and up to the surface. There was this one huge boss monster I had to beat to get out of the dungeon. It showed bloody hash marks on his body after he started taking damage, kind of cool. On the surface I am in this huge stone fortress high in the snowy mountains. Outside in the courtyards I can look up and see the sky! And I am fighting Vikings now instead of goblins and undead. Along with Viking enemies we have their voices, so there is voice acting in this part of the game. Human Head went out to a bar after work one night and brought along a tape recorder. Then they asked a few fellows in there to speak into the mic and say with their most gruff pirate voice "He's hiding here somewhere!" "It's that boy Ragnar!" and a few other phrases. The next morning they listened to them all and put the best ones in the game. Actually, they don't sound too bad. Voice acting has come a long way though.

I am kind of excited about playing the game now that I am up top. No telling where it will go from here! DX10 is looking good, we have human enemies that talk, and they are good for trying out the different weapons and moves. Not that there are a lot of weapons; a sword, a couple of different axes, a mace or two, and I recently found this big maul. But the Viking opponents move in a more human fashion than goblins or undead, making them more fun to fight.
 
Okay! time for my final review of the single player side of Rune.

The most impressive thing about Rune is how well it runs and how good it looks. On my machine it ran at a steady 75 FPS while my P225f CRT was set at 75 hz. So everything was in sync and butter smooth. Then there was the DX10 mod that allowed for even more impressive perks like AA, better shadows, lighting, and textures. Really, I have never seen a game this old run this well or look this good. Also loading and saving were lighting fast, which was a good thing because I saved often and died often.

When I played Rune back when it first came out I was expecting the game to be something other than what it was. For some reason I was expecting more of a historically focused game about Viking life, raids and battles, but that is not what Rune is. So this time I picked it up with that understanding and was ready to play whatever it had to offer.

The the game is very long and really it could have done all that it did in 22 levels instead of 44. Basic 101 corridor level design, featuring the typical platforming, obligatory pressure plates, switches, lava, and occasional puzzles is what we have here. The devs took their cue from id and Quake, only Rune is 3rd person and melee weapons instead of 1st person, guns and rockets. You could say the game is old and that explains the gameplay and level design, but even reviewers of the day saw it as somewhat retro.

However, what Rune does do in its retro way it does well. The levels never get boring, they are always fun to fight through, although they did cause frustration more than a few times. Getting lost or stuck because I couldn't find a hidden passage or switch that allowed me to progress was a common ordeal. In fact if it weren't for the online game guide to clue me in, I don't think I would have finished the game.

The combat was not bad. It takes a while to get fluid with the timing and the swinging of your weapon, but once you get comfortable with that things go pretty smooth, and you find yourself plowing through enemies without much trouble. Rune is a fast paced game that keeps driving you forward. When I found myself low on health the solution was always fight ahead, fight harder, until I found that next lizard or pint of grog that would restore a little health and give me a breather.

The UI is very basic. What you see on screen is all there is. There is no inventory screen, skill tree, map, stats, weapons upgrade screen, or any kind of window menu at all to open up and use. Rune is a pared down action game in that regard. No RPG elements to enhance this adventure - or bog it down, depending on your point of view.

I did try the vaunted multiplayer side of Rune, but I always found empty servers.

As long as you go into Rune not expecting anything more than a hard core action title that doesn't change much from beginning to end, and you like the sound of hacking opponents to pieces with a sword and battle ax, I would say it is worth a play. Especially if you have an older computer that has a little trouble running the latest games the way you dream it should. Your computer will run Rune maxed out in all its glory, blazing smooth, which is a treat in itself !
 
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