The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
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The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is a tale of two games as this game contains the XBOX game Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, and Assault on Dark Athena. In both you will be taking on the role of Riddick and you will be doing what Riddick does best causing unrest and killing anyone who stands in his way. You will be climbing up ladders, through air ducts, as well as sneaking up behind enemies, and staying out of the light.
The graphics in both of these games look pretty good on the 360. There are some strange issues with the cut scenes in Butcher Bay as you'll see random squares of ski on characters seemingly lift off and go back down and random times. All the levels have a nice theme to them, and are done relatively well. My problem is the night eyes. As Riddick you know that you're going to be able to see in the dark, but even in the darkest of areas if you get too close to something, you'll get an amazing amount of glare staring back at you. Also when you look closely at the walls of the level, especially some of the signs and displays you'll see that not a lot of thought went into them as they are very muddied. Also the camera angle choices for when you're climbing things seemed out of place.
It is always entertaining hearing Vin Diesel voice Riddick and say the lines throughout the game, most of which actually help with the story. The generic lines that the soldiers say aren't too mind-numbing either. The kind of creepy music, and the change in music when spotted show that it was an essential piece to the game. It's not too distracting.
The controls for the most part I didn't have too much trouble with. I did have some issues in the second game where I was trying to switch on or off my night eyes and somehow I ended up not doing that and switching off of my weapon instead. The only issue I had was when I was climbing in the game, there were times when the camera decided to do a side shot, and I automatically push left to see Riddick just stay where he is, then remembering you have to push up to go forward and down to go back.
So in Butcher Bay you are trying to escape, and I have to say that I had some frustrating moments in the game where I'd forget that the guns were DNA encoded, but overall I love the story and the stealth aspect of the game. There was also a good amount of length to the game where when I finished I felt accomplished in doing so. Dark Athena is a totally different game. Now you're just Rambo. Yes there's still that stealth aspect but it takes a back seat to blowing things up. In Butcher Bay I utilized all my weapons to get through it. In Dark Athena I used the SCAR and had all the other weapons at full ammo, though I never really pulled them out unless I was faced with a ton of enemies at one time. I did enjoy getting to pilot different enemies and armor in both, but I was usually left feeling empty as it felt like a nice change of pace, but a one time affair. The other thing that sets these two apart, besides the time factor (a good length for Butcher Bay, and about 4ish hours for Dark Athena), was the story. I felt that the story in Dark Athena was a throw away. There wasn't anything that really got me into the story.
I think I understand why this came as two games in one, it's because Dark Athena isn't strong enough to stand on its own. Even though its a continuation of the story this game isn't nearly what the first is. Because of this I have to say that you should really play the Butcher Bay game, probably on an original XBOX, knowing that Microsoft's emulation isn't the best, and leave the other game alone, unless you really just need some more Vin Diesel. This rating is for the Dark Athena part only (Butcher Bay gets a 9.1 out of 10) and it gets a 6.5 out of 10.
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