Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena Review

Posted on 15. May, 2009 by Johnn0 in Games, News, Reviews

Two games for the price of one, a sure-fire way to sell plenty of games right? Well I bet thats what the folks at Starbreeze Studios and Atari thought, but does Assault on Dark Athena manage to make the time with Riddick a worthwhile experience?

Embrace the Dark

Five years ago, a game based on a movie license was released and suprisingly it was a game that was well received by both gamers and critics alike. That game of course was Escape from Butchers Bay. For the sequel, Starbreeze studios has included a remastered version of the original game on the same disc as Assault on Dark Athena with launching into either of the two games done from the main menu.

The first of the two games, Escape from Butcher Bay has our hero locked away in the titular Butchers Bay prison. To survive and escape the triple-max slam (eventually), Riddick must not only survive the guards, but other prisoners and some really disturbing alien/mutant things that live in the tunnels beneath the prison.

Assault on Dark Athena has a slight bit more depth to the story line, Riddick and archenemy Johns are captured by the merc crew of the the Dark Athena, a ship that is as big in size as it is in infamy. During Riddicks experience about the Dark Athena you will discover that there is a bit more to the Dark Athena than som simple bounty hunting, and Riddick must rely on some of the Prisoners aboard the ship to aid him in his escape.

Both games handle what they have for stories pretty well but make no mistakes, there will be no academy awards handed out over the stories behind these games, but to be fair thats not what you would expect from the games.

Sneaky Sneaky

The Riddick games are rather different from most other first person games out there, that is to say that the main focus of the games is stealth rather than the traditional ‘shooter’ type expreince that is more commonly associated with the first person view. You see Riddick – despite being the universe’s most wanted – isn’t bulletproof and trying the run ‘n gun approach is a guaranteed way to get your ass handed to you.

Apparently the way to do it is to creep around in the dark ( cause Riddick loves that ) and then jump the gaurds from behind, or so i’m told. That aside, sneaking around is definitely what Riddick does best and this give the games a very unique feel, in this universe you are the hunter and not the hunted. Now simply because Riddick sneaks around a lot it doesn’t mean that he can’t handle his business when you need to.

Players will have at there disposal a number of methods to deal with the enemies that you will encounter in the game, you can choose to either silently ‘remove’ an enemy without alerting the other (but then you should hide the body) or you can grab the enemy and use him and his gun to kill the rest of the enemies in the area. I wouldn’t rely on this technique to much though as the ‘human sheild’ that you will be holding offers little to no protection from gun fire and the gun runs outta ammo pretty quickly. There are moments in the game however where you will have to grab a downed enemy to use his weapon so that you can shoot out a window or something to progress.

This is how real men do it!

Riddick is capable of dealing huge doses of death using a multitude of weapons as well, you will have access to knives, hairpins, bats, guns and tranquilizers. The gunplay is pretty much standard fare, aim – fire – reload – rinse and repeat. One aspect of the combat that caught my attention was the melee combat, you will be able to swing your weapon of choice freely or time your strikes carefully to activate what is usually an instant and ahhh-that-looks-painfull kill. I really enjoyed these sequences.

On the presentation side of things Riddick once again differs to other games in the genre, the camera has a convex shape to it making judging distance a bit of an issue in some cases, but the pay off is that it does give the impression that you are really looking through Riddicks eyes. Adding to the whole fish eye thing is the addition of Riddick’s ability to see in the dark, referred to a “eyeshine”, it is the equivalent of Night Vision Goggles but instead of the green tint it amplifies light and is really close to what the effect looks like in the movies. It works well.

Graphically the games vary slightly. Escape from Butchers Bay has been re-worked using the Dark Athena engine and for the most part looks pretty good, unfortunately the game is showing it’s age and there are quite a few areas that have unimpressive lighting and some texture issues, granted it is better that if they had simply re-worked Butchers Bay without the HD upgrade, so not too much to complain about there.

Not the preferred aproach

Dark Athena makes better use of the engine than Butchers Bay and graphically the game is more than compitent, Vin Diesel looks like Vin Diesel and the Sci-fi setting for the games is well done and carries over the visual style of the Riddick universe. My only real complaint here is that some of the games areas do look pretty generic but other than that the game has decent visuals and a steady framerate. That is enough for me.

The sound is really well done, with special mention to the voice acting in the games you will hear the same class of badass lines from Riddick – sometimes they are a little cheesy – and that is what we expect, the voice actors handle the dialouge well.

Now onto the minus, the games can be pretty frustrating at times. The developers have a knack for not letting you know where you need to be next and you will find yourself running around looking for where you need to be a lot of the time, add this to the fact that there are loading screens between areas and it can result in a VERY frustrating period untill you land up being wherever it is you need to be. This really does impact the gameplay and it is evident in both of the games.

I'd love to do this online someday

One of the other groovy additions to the Dark Athena package is online multiplayer with some very cool modes. There is Pitch Black which has one player playing as Riddick trying to do his stealth thing and “ghost’ other players while those players are on the hunt for Riddick, whoever kills Riddick becomes him. It has the potential to be a great game mode. I say potential because in my two weeks with the game, I have yet to connect to a multiplayer game. It’s not for a lack of trying either, for some reason i cannot find games, there was one time that i joined a game and as I entered the game ended and I was sent off to search for a game again. I can put this done to how new the game is, but I have never had this problem with any other game that I received over launch.

Conclusion

Having never played the original Escape from Butchers Bay back in 2004, I can see that there is plenty of cool things in this game that will have made me fall in love with it back then, unfortunately Dark Athena brings nothing new to the table and it is a bit of a shame. That being said, Assualt on Dark Athena and Escape from Butchers Bay are better than a lot of games out there and the fact that you get both games on the same disc and for the same price it is difficult not to recommend.

Be warned though, the games don’t offer any differences in gameplay between them – story line aside – and as such if you are not a fan of the Riddick universe, I would advise you to try before you buy.