Rune: Ragnarok gives us a glimpse of its hack-and-slashing combat

Remember Rune, the Viking hack-and-slasher from 2000? Well, last year developer Human Head Studios announced an open-world RPG sequel called Rune: Ragnarok, which had a lot of people excited. The team later put out a stylish cinematic trailer, and now they've offered up an actual slice of gameplay with a short combat clip, above.

Remember, it's still in alpha, so it's likely to be rough around the edges. It tells us that there's going to be plenty of beheading: one enemy gets his noggin chopped off by the player's axe, the other with a sword, while the third enemy takes a spear to the chest. There's lots of blood, but it's so over-the-top that it doesn't seem gory.

There's no lock-on in combat, which makes me (and other people) think of Skyrim in third-person, where you're swinging away and trying to pull your thrusts towards the enemy as they dance around. I do like the way the camera frames the action, slipping occasionally into slow motion to emphasise the heaviest hits.

The game has no release date but is set to enter beta testing later this year. What do you think of this latest footage?

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.