Human Head brings their norse-inspired action title to the PS2 with good results.
When Gathering of Developers and Human Head Studios released Rune onto the PC market, it was met with mixed feelings. Gaming Age’s review, written by myself, gave the game two-thumbs up with an “A-“ grade point; I thought the focus on melee combat was a great departure from the too standard guns blazing gameplay. While Human Head Studios hacks away at secret projects, the development house has also been cranking out a PlayStation 2 port of their Unreal Tournament-powered, Viking-inspired action adventure. Thanks to Human Head actually handling the port, the conversion has gone over far better than most PC-to-console ports that come along.
Ragnar has now been granted the great honor of officially becoming a man in his village. Ragnar is sworn to protect his village and the sacred runes within it. After completing his final test against the village’s toughest fighter, word comes that a nearby village is under attack, their runes in danger. Ragnar suits up and sets out with the village’s warriors to aid the town. Once they arrive, however, they encounter Conrack, an evil disciple and follower of the god Loki, once an ally of Ragnar’s father. Conrack then proceeds to destroy the ship Ragnar and the others are traveling in, killing everyone – except for Ragnar. Given a second chance at live thanks the god Odin, Ragnar sets out a quest for vengeance.
Since Rune: Viking Warlord hasn’t been designed from the ground up with the PlayStation 2 hardware in mind, there have been the usual sacrifices made in bringing the game from running on a 1Mhz CPU with a GeForce 2 to the Emotion Engine. That is not to say that Rune: Viking Warlord looks bad or anything, but it is evident that the textures have taken a hit, as they seem more watered out and blurry than usual. The mythically inspired environments and models, however, are still completely intact, even looking a bit better than before in some cases. All of the action runs near a constant 30 frames per second, and as far as I noticed, there was no apparent slowdown (though some areas used an excessive amount of fog) or any annoying jagged edges.
The worst “addition” that’s been made to the game is the unfortunate amount of loading that is present throughout the game. The levels in Rune seemed to be designed smaller so that more could be done with the environment in small portions. This works fine when most of the game data is loaded onto a speedy hard drive, but when shoved solely on a CD (using a DVD would have helped) and into the PlayStation 2’s limited RAM, it creates a problem. It seems that almost every five or ten minutes, the load screen appears again, taking over a minute to pull the data needed for the next area. You start to ignore it after a while (a fun distraction is to try and read part the game’s story setup in the manual during the loading sections – you can finish whole paragraphs if you’re quick!), but when the game has to spend over a minute just to load up the menu screen, you can’t help but wonder if the developers skimped in this area.
Fortunately, other than the loading aspect, all that was good about Rune on the PC has translated perfectly to the PlayStation 2. The controls are a dream on the Dual Shock 2; in no time gamers will be swinging their axe (or hammer or sword – there are 15 weapons to collect in the game) around with R1 and throwing up their shield for defense with ease by clicking R2. The game’s camera always follows Ragnar, but it is possible to manipulate on your own by moving the right analog. Strafing is accomplished by maneuvering the left analog right and left, and the rest of the buttons are a moot point. Since crouching is controlled via R3 (pressing down on the right analog), the few times that crouching is required can be tough to keep control over. Considering that Rune: Viking Warlord is completely melee-based, using the Dual Shock 2 is actually much more preferable than the PC’s keyboard and mouse combination.
Human Head hasn’t spent all the development time of Rune: Viking Warlord working on the conversion; they have actually added features to the game, such as a training mode toward the start of the game. There also seems to be more of an emphasis on the Runestones in the PlayStation 2 version, though their effectiveness is about as useful as the Runestones were plentiful in the PC version. There are several types of Runestones that perform a different action, including increasing Ragnar’s health meter, filling the Rune Power bar, automatically throwing Ragnar into “Berserk Mode”, and increasing Ragnar’s Rune Power bar. Each weapon in the game has a special power that uses up so much of the Rune Power bar during every use, but during much of the game, enabling a Rune Power does little to help you (Berserk Mode is the most helpful).
As with Rune on the PC, the story still feels a bit disjointed as you travel through the land of Midgard. It starts off strong, but following that, the cinematics are pretty weak, and the times that Odin shows up to push things along are few and far between. Because the action is always intense, thankfully, the game never slows down to the point of becoming boring.
There is little reason for fans of Rune to check out Rune: Viking Warlord, except for the chance to battle their friends in the four-player split-screen modes. PlayStation 2 owners on the look out for an intense action adventure should definitely be entertained with the game for a while, though. Rune: Viking Warlord is a long, epic adventure that has a few problems here and there, but still stays entertaining.
