Rune: Viking Warlord is the story of Ragnar the newly accepted warrior of a Viking clan.  No sooner does Ragnar finish training then most of his clan is slaughtered by an evil warlord intent on taking control of the rune stones; powerful artifacts left on the earth by the all-father of the gods Odin.  Ragnar is saved from death only by the direct intervention of Odin himself and then the real game begins.  

The first thing you'll notice about this game is that like the Viking boats the load times are stupidly ridiculously loooooooooonnnnnnnngggggg.  Though I could not find a stopwatch I would say that I spent around a quarter of my time in the confines of the load screen.  I found myself wishing that I had another ps2 and TV set up so that I could play games of "Crazy Taxi" during the interludes.  Once you get past the loading screens and actually start to play the game isn't that bad.  It’s not that good either.

Graphically rune while decent breaks little ground.  Noticeable is the incredibly unimpressive father of the gods Odin, who presents himself as a disembodied head.  And this head has none of the imposing character of the Wizard of Oz.  It’s just a big head, and it talks, and its big and uh yeah...  Coming back to the review, the sound is equally unimpressive but adequate.

The gameplay was fairly smooth but also pretty basic with a relatively limited button mashing attack system and unimaginative puzzles based almost solely on mindless destruction or that old standby, the platform jump.  The levels, divided by automatic save points, and sometimes very short did not seem to contain enough detailing to compensate for the ridiculous load times.

Rune: Viking Warlord is a game based in a rich mythic tradition and society that has captured the imagination of authors and artists to this very day.  However Rune fails to capitalize on this.  Rune instead throws story to the wind and instead attempts to immerse the player in a world of mindless violence, which unfortunately for its creator’s falls far short of the pulse pounding action of games like “Quake” or “Halflife”.  Rune: Viking Warlord is not a bad game but I’d advise renting it instead of buying it.  At least that way you only loose a fraction of the purchase price when you inevitably set it to the side to play something better.

Install: Easy
PS2

Gameplay: 4
Basic gameplay and crazy long load times.

Graphics: 5 
Unimpressive.  C'mon your animating GODS!

Sound: 6
Not bad but unmemorable.

Difficulty: 5
Several different difficulty levels add more smashing for your button mashing but do little else to keep you interested.

Concept: 5 
With a rich and detailed story line this could have been a great game.  As it was, it was lacking.

Multiplayer: 7
A large selection of characters and the ever present fun of competition make this the best feature of an average game.

Overall: 4.5
A solid game offering a twisting on the “Doom” genre of random destruction, but without the depth of “Halflife” or the intensity of “Quake”.