The Chronicles of Riddick

**Be sure to check out the video review!**  

Today's review is a bonus of sorts. That's because when you buy The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena you also get Escape from Butcher Bay from back in 2004. The combination of the two makes for a whole heck of a lot of playtime, and, consequently, a longer than average review.

Let's start with the commonalities, then break it down into the individual games, shall we? First, while the game is officially classified as action, I would call it a blend of stealth and FPS, with a bit of RPG thrown in for variety. It is a rather unusual combination of different elements, but it generally works well. While the proportions are different in each game, much of your time will be spent sneaking around in the dark, attempting to maneuver behind enemies, so you can break their necks or perform some other type of silent kill, or just avoid them outright. To this end, the eventual acquisition of the tranquilizer gun is a blessing, allowing you to not only stun enemies, but also blow out light sources, at least in most cases, and as such it will become one of your favorite items once you get it.

The Tranq gun lets you stun enemies for a close kill, or just saves your butt when you screw up.

Interspersed with long stealth only sequences are more action packed sections, where it is pretty much impossible to do anything other than pick you biggest guns and see how accurate you are. This is much more pointed when you get behind the wheel(?) of a mech or riot guard, and just lay waste to scores of enemies. Overall though, the gun combat isn't what this series is about, particularly in the first game, where it's more dedicated to close quarters combat - utilizing your fists, a club, or, since the first game is set in a prison, a shiv, to dispatch enemies.

To the ends of encouraging melee combat, the developers came up with a nice combat system, which includes directional aiming for your melee attacks. What I mean by that is you can "aim" your punches by selecting where they come from. Press right and punch, and you get a right hook. Back and punch gets you an uppercut. This makes for some pretty decent melee bouts, with certain times in the game designed for that exact purpose, during which you need to time your attacks, and the type of attack, based off of what your enemy is doing. Some are heavy hitters that will land some damage even if you're blocking, and once you include weapons in the mix, it does change things up a bit. Of course, none of that seems like it would help you very much going up against an opponent with a firearm, but if you close in enough, they will take a swing at you, which, if you can time it right, you'll turn into a counter that usually results in using their own firearm to execute them in this game's more graphic style.

Executing a guard with his own gun... I'm pretty sure this is why the game is rated M.

The final thing I'd like to cover before breaking down into individual games are the more RPG-esque elements of the game, specifically the notion of side missions, as well as mention the way the health system is designed. Predominately appearing in the first game are side missions. You see, you can talk to many different people in the game, so long as they aren't trying to kill you of course, which generally means prisoners. Some will offer you missions, granting you rewards if you do them a favor, which usually involves killing members of an opposing gang or hunting down an item. One somewhat unofficial side mission in the first game has you hunting down moths, which will require you to hop up in the air and grab them when they get close enough. That one in particular feels stupid, since you are supposed to be Riddick, apparently the most notorious criminal in the universe, and here you are hopping around grabbing moths. I seriously doubt that would help your street cred.

Most side missions will reward you with cigarettes during the first game, which unlock bonus content, or cash, which you can use at a few different points in the game to purchase a weapon, such as a shiv after a point in which you have lost all your weapons, or picking up a tranquilizer gun much earlier than you could find it on your own, though you can also acquire cash from dead enemies or sometimes find it hidden in lockers. Overall this portion on the game feels more forced, and was all but done away with in the second, where there are only four or so side missions, all but one right along your main path anyway, and the one that takes you out of your way at least rewards you with a sniper rifle, which can only be found in that location, at least as far as I can tell.

Just a few of the missions you can have at one time.

The health system is a bit more unique from my experience with either shooters or stealth games, where you usually have a set amount of health and keep it full from med kits or health stations you encounter. Not entirely so in Chronicles. Instead, you have blocks of health, starting with four, that deplete as you take damage. However, if you manage to spend enough time without taking damage, a partial block will regenerate to full. In this way it's more akin to Assassin's Creed, though that did come out four years later. If you want to refill your health, you have to find a med station, which will only heal up to four blocks of health, unless you have happened across a refill for the station. Furthermore, there are a few points in each game which allow you to upgrade your health capacity, and some stations are the rewards you get for spending that extra amount of effort when exploring. Nothing major here, but just something that is a little different from most games I've ever played, and so it bares mention.

So now that I've covered all of that, I can finally move unto the specific games. Escape from Butcher Bay covers Riddick's limited stay at the Butcher Bay "slam." From the get go you are looking for a way out. At first you find yourself locked in the more general population, and so you engage in some missions where you track a few people down that want to talk with you, some of which have information, or others that claim to have weapons. Pretty quickly things get messy, as one would expect, though the first portion of the game just introduces you to the melee combat.

A successful counter, which is followed by a punch to the enemy's throat.

After a time it looks like you've got a means of escape, at which point you begin stealthing around. This is particularly important because, even if you get the drop on an armed guard, you can't just take their weapon. You see, weapons are DNA locked so that anyone outside of a database cannot use them. If you attempt to pick one up, you are shocked. In this way you're locked into melee/stealth mode for this portion of the game. Especially at higher difficulties, the lack of any firearm makes risking getting shot at by a guard not worth it, and so your best defense is to hide in the dark, wait for patrols, and hide bodies, though I never found that last part to be particularly necessary, except in the cases where there were a good number of guards patrolling an area, and I didn't want them leaving their path. Of course, sometimes a body makes for a good distraction.

Eventually you do get access to something more advanced than a screwdriver or knuckleduster, at which point you're shoehorned into action mode, firing from cover, taking out lights and trying to avoid being seen by guards with flashlights. Sometimes that is even too tame though, and you must practice a little run and gun, with less than human enemies pouring in at you in endless waves, and only a limited amount of ammunition. Those points don't last too long though, and some of the game, at least where you are armed, does offer you the option of stealth or firearms, such as when you enter the guards quarters, and you can either make it an all out firefight, or practice a little deception by flicking off some lights, taking out some unsuspecting guards, and getting a hold of an enemy uniform.

Sometimes, it's just better to avoid enemies, because there is another guard and a riot mech just around the corner.

Unfortunately, Butcher Bay gets a bit cyclical, where you go from unarmed doing errands, to stealthing around, to getting your hands on something, such as the tranquilizer, to a big firefight, to getting captured and losing all your weapons, thus starting the cycle all over again, because even after you've been recaptured a few times, Riddick is the eternal optimist. In this sense the game is a bit repetitive, and it is frustrating to finally start filling up your weapons wheel only to have it emptied all over again, as well as begging the question of just how important it is to keep a prisoner who repeatedly defies your attempts to hold him in a state of consciousness. Or alive.

Butcher Bay feels like it is roughly a 2 to 1 split between slower, more stealth centered portions of the game, and the fast, shoot 'em up pace of stealing a riot guard mech or fleeing from alien like enemies. The lull that occurs about 25% of the way through the game, after you've been recaptured the first time, was tough to get through, not because of difficulty, but due to all the running back and forth, talking to people all over, just to run back to where you started, resulting in a crisscrossing path through several loading screens. This is also when you encounter most of those side quests, and is generally my least favorite part of the game.

Turrets limit the actions you can take, such as attacking other prisoners, among other things.

Another disappointing feature of the game deals with the AI, and the seeming lack of consequences for your actions. You have the option to drag bodies around, but as I pointed out earlier, that almost never matters, since enemies aren't dense enough to encounter a body, and if they do, they are very vocal about needing to keep looking, etc, which I understand, but at the same time, is a little frustrating if you're looking for a more intense stealth experience.

Something I did enjoy, though it felt as if it were added without being fully developed, were branching pathways and different options to complete an objective. For example, during said lull, one of the things you have to do to advance is get taken away by the guards to an isolation room where there are no cameras, in hopes to meeting up with an officer that would have access to the hanger where shuttles are stored. Well, there are two ways of doing this; do well in the pit fighting ring, defeating a total of 5 opponents, or get close to some guards while you have drugs on you. Unfortunately, they really aren't distinct enough, and you still have to participate in a few fights if you want to go the drug route, mostly because that portion of the game is meant to showcase the melee combat, but it still gives you the option of approaching something from a different angle. Similarly, there are occasionally two doors into a room, with one giving you an advantage, but generally requiring greater risk to access. All good stuff, but I really wish there was more of it.

All in all Butcher Bay was a good game, with an interesting movie tie in that I'll cover briefly later. I admire the developers for the gamble they took by mixing different genres together, but the whole experience could have been refined a little more. And, in many ways, that is exactly what happens when you get to the second game, Assault on Dark Athena.

I thought the "Peace: We Want It" was a nice contrast to the Dark Athena in the background.

This time you're on a shuttle, sometime after the events of Butcher Bay, that gets captured by a merc ship. Except these aren't nice mercs, because they have been messing around with some pretty nasty stuff. Specifically, they have a technology that allows them to turn a living person into some kind of AI controlled drone, which make for nasty, but particularly useful, enemies. Thus, you once again must escape.

Now if you would recall how Butcher Bay used the mechanic of DNA locked guns to force you to play in a stealthier style? Well, the drones in Dark Athena function in much the same way, because their weapons are fused to their arms. However, you are allowed to pick up the drone and fire while holding him like a shield, giving you a means to dealing with multiple enemies if you're detected. You can drag a drone body while armed, but it's slow going, and the amount of ammunition they have is limited to just the one clip.

You can't take him with you, but the ability to use a Drone's gun makes life a lot easier.

Another component to these drones is that they can be remotely controlled by another person, so sometimes you'll encounter ones covered in white lights, as opposed to the typical red. These drones are smarter, faster, and actually use a flashlight when exploring, making them more difficult than the standard versions, which aren't much more the canon fodder.

Drones do make up the majority of the enemies you'll face during the game, and this change in game mechanics makes for a generally faster feeling game, and I would say it changes the balance to more  of a 50-50 split between stealth and action, though once you get the tranquilizer gun, you can pretty much play it all as an action game, as long as you're a good enough shot to hit your target every time, because the reload is pretty long.

One way in which Dark Athena is more action oriented than the previous installment can be seen in just how many weapons there are. In Butcher Bay, you're lucky to get a shiv, club, or some kind of fist weapon, and the firearm selection was limited to handguns, an assault rifle, and a shotgun. Not so in Dark Athena, as they've included a SMG, a sniper rifle, and a rather interesting weapon called the SCAR gun, which fires charges that can be detonated when you choose, with up to five placed at one time. The latter is required for several of the more difficult fights in this game, where you go up against some large enemies that would be impossible to take down with just your ulaks, those curving over the fist blades that become Riddick's trademark weapon.

Another way in which Dark Athena is a different game from Butcher Bay is the level design. While Butcher Bay generally consisted of corridors, high cat walks, vents, and big looping paths that you never realized you were on, Dark Athena is almost designed with more of a platform feeling in mind. It may not be the most obvious thing, but there is a difference between sneaking behind your enemy using a vent shortcut during the first game, and instead climbing cargo boxes in the second game. Really nothing major, but it does change the feel of the game to something much more open, most likely due to the difference in power between the Xbox and Xbox 360, on with Butcher Bay and Dark Athena were respectively released.

A beautiful scene on a planet, which also includes more platforming elements.

While Dark Athena lacks all those side missions and conversation options that were present prior, you will find in its stead a deeper level of character interaction and development, particularly between Riddick and the captain of the Dark Athena, Revas, as they play a game of cat and mouse. You'll also find good guys that you're rooting for, or that actually help you, though I would attribute this to the difference between innocent people who are captured by mercs versus individuals locked up in a max security slam. Still, it fleshes out the game much more so than Butcher Bay.

I definitely enjoyed Dark Athena more than Butcher Bay, though that is perhaps due to my natural inclination towards action/shooter centric games. I would argue that the better story, the connection with characters' whose fate you wish you could alter, the inclusion of more environments, specifically thinking about the final portion of the game that takes place on a nearby planet, or just that you only lose all your weapons once, rather than three times, all make it a better game, though it does not take the same amount of skill and/or patience to get through like it does Butcher Bay, mostly due to the difference in the balance between stealth and action.

So how would you handle these drones?

If you're interested, the games take place sequentially sometime prior to the events of Pitch Black, but if you find enough of the extra content hidden through both games, in the form of cigarettes and bounty cards, you'll find out that they are intended to be flashbacks from sometime during the beginning scene of the second movie. The games explain some of the major occurrences during Riddick's life, specifically how he acquired his night vision eyes and ulaks, as well as showcasing his soft spot for children and giving some background about his relationship with Johns, who appears in the first movie. All cool stuff, but nothing that hampers your experience with the game if you haven't seen the movies.

All in all, I would recommend The Cronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena as a game you should play, though if you're more of a purist and don't fancy the mix of stealth and action, you may want to stay away. My original playthrough took me roughly 20 hours, while a second was more around 16 - the difference between normal and easy, and it is pretty obvious when playing. It will be interesting to see if we ever get another game in the series, since supposedly a third movie is in production. I for one would look forward to it, even if it does include the rolling activation limit that this one has (no more than 3 installs in a month), because it is a good game, though not without points where it stumbles, such as limiting the player to only two quick bound weapons, or feels a little undeveloped, such as the few branching choices in the first game. Look for it at $15 or less. Overall, I did have a blast playing it, and rate it higher than most games I've come across - 8 out of 10.

So, the final breakdown:

Score: 8/10

Suggested Price: $15+