This review almost didn't happen.  After playing Rune all the way through to the rainbow-colored but still bitter end, I was ready to give up on games.  At one point, as I was virtua-clambering over a pile of crates to get to the exit of one of Rune's sewer levels, I was like, "you know what?  Fuck this, fuck sewers, fuck vikings, fuck orcs and motherfuck gaming.  I've had my eye on model railroading for a while now anyway."  Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you'll love Rune.  It's technically very solid.   It's everything you've seen a thousand times before, but it's 10-12% prettier!  So enjoy it there, chubsy-ubsy.  I'm talking to you, George Broussard. 

Let's start with a snippet from an interview on Sharkygames with Human Head's Timothy Gerritsen.  If we could afford fact-checkers like our rivals at Christianity Today, I'd probably know what Gerritsen's job was on Rune.  Us being the underfunded, threadbare failed Christian website that we are, I'm just going to say he programmed the sound.  Here he is answering a question unrelated to his duties programming the sound:

Sharky Games: Would you consider [Rune] as a thinking person's action adventure?

Timothy Gerritsen: Time will have to tell as to how the game is received.

To quote Mike Haggar: "Have my ears gone insane?!?"  I'm almost afraid to publish that excerpt, because if one of you all of a sudden gets pink eye from your filthy keyboard and goes immediately to the doctor and forgets to come back and read the rest of the review, you might stop by Electronics Boutique after the hospital, see Rune, look skyward, tap your upper lip with your index finger and think to yourself, "Rune... Rune... What did I hear about that?  Oh yeah, that's the thinking man's action adventure!  I better buy two."  And that would be all my fault. 

Here's Sharky's unpublished followup question:

Sharky Games: If you used both hands to fling the Rune box at the ceiling, would it float through the roof and fly to the moon?

Timothy Gerritsen: We'll see.

The answer to both of those questions should be no.  Period.  Or comma then "absolutely not" then period.