The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (Xbox 360)
You, sir, are no Escape from Butcher Bay
4/7/2009 6:16 PM | 29 Comments | Page 1 of 4
What's Hot: A pretty good game...
What's Not: ...at first.
Lights, shotgun, action!
I kind of feel bad for the developers at Starbreeze. The original Chronicles of Riddick game was a tough act to follow. It was smart, varied and technically advanced. It had loads of personality, thanks to Vin Diesel, a strong cast, a well-written story, funny profane dialogue and a clever use of the prison concept. It even ended with a satisfying bang, as you went from creeping around in the shadows to suiting up in a mech and blowing the daylights out of the joint.
But the problem with a game that good is that it casts a long shadow. A clunky, mediocre game like Starbreeze's
The Darkness might have worked if it weren't a follow-up to
The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. So it's good to see Starbreeze back in familiar territory with
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. It's good to see Vin Diesel wake up on the shore of some planet with no explanation for where he is or how he got there. It's good to just plunge him into the nearest sewer opening and hear him deliver some silly line about darkness in that monotone he seems to think sounds really tough. I imagine he fancies himself a basso profundo Clint Eastwood. I'm OK with that, because when I try to sound tough, I fancy myself a rather nasal Clint Eastwood.
So here we go, into
Assault on Dark Athena, with the intriguing sense of "what the hell is going on?" balanced neatly by the faith that you're probably in good hands. And this plays out just fine for about four hours. Fans of
Escape from Butcher Bay will be delighted -- most of the time, at any rate. As the cracks start to show, we just keep reminding ourselves that these guys know what they're doing and it'll all turn out right. We're wrong, of course, but we don't know that yet.
Rescape from Butcher Bay?
"Banana blades" was rejected as not-cool-enough a name for these knives.
Although there are a lot of similarities to
Butcher Bay, that's not necessarily a problem at first. The story unfolds through conversations with characters literally locked in boxes. This is the System Shock/
Dead Space game, where you're never going to interact with anyone you aren't killing. It's a step back from the last Riddick, where you prowled around the prison yard chatting with the cast of characters. But that's okay. These people locked into their boxes spin out a good story. Starbreeze has done impressive work with the character models, and particularly syncing their expressive faces with the dialogue. The excellent voice actors -- this is clearly a game that showcases the "talent" in voice talent -- seal the deal. Michelle Forbes and Lance Henriksen are excellent, of course, but it's important to note that they don't stand out as a pair of professionals among a cast of cut-rate amateurs. Like in the previous Riddick, this is a solid ensemble cast with nary a weak spot. (It's unfortunate that Starbreeze feels the need to randomly cut to different angles during the conversations. This is good stuff that will hold the player's attention based on the quality of the material. Bizarrely shifting camera angles aren't necessary.)
