The Chronicles Of RiddickTestosterone, check. Darkness, check. Funky glasses, check. You ARE Vin Diesel. The sequel, Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, released 5 years after Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay puts everyone’s favourite night seeing, space flying protagonist from the motion picture Pitch Black in yet another action packed sci-fi. Yes, that’s right, this IS a movie licensed video game, but wait, don’t leave, don’t click that close button because Dark Athena isn’t all that bad!

Still with me? Good! Dark Athena takes place shortly after Escape from Butcher Bay ends, as such (I don’t want to spoil anything, but the game came out 5 years ago!) you begin with yourself and Johns in stasis on a ship, your stasis short circuited and you woke early. The benefit of this coincidence is that you get to see your ship being reeled in like a trout by one of the scariest looking ships I have ever seen, the Dark Athena. The mercenaries (or space pirates, whatever you want to call them) board your ship with just enough time for you to hide in the darkness (a recurring theme in this game) and watch as they break your ship and capture Johns, who spends a lot of time sleeping throughout the game. It’s up to you, Riddick, Vin Diesel, the only chance of getting the other prisoners off the ship and the only one capable of pulling off the feat, to kick some ass.

Dark Athena is a first person action game, with elements of stealth, platforming, and melee combat. For the first few hours you have nothing more to defend yourself with but a hairpin and your trust Ulaks (a pair of odd shaped knives). During this point, the shadows are your friend as you stealthily take down drone after drone. The stealth aspect is key for a number of reasons, when you enter stealth mode the screen will turn a blue hue to show that you are in the dark, at this time, unless a bad guy saw you wander into the shadows, you’re nearly impossible to find. The second reason is due to Riddick’s unique ability of Eyeshine, when you turn this feature on, it gives you limited night vision, as this is one of the darkest games I have ever played, Eyeshine will be your best friend as you venture throughout the ship. As you are just one person caught unprepared, Riddick lacks any real weapons for a long time or any sort of motion detector or radar found in most other games, BUT, he does have the ability to lean, peering above crates or around corners is his only means of scouting out the areas ahead.

Graphically, Dark Athena’s a mixed bag, some of the rendering looks amazing, and textures used are extremely detailed. One thing that bothered me however was the quality of detail on Riddick vs. the rest of the characters in the game. It makes sense that they would spend the most time on the main character, but the comparison between him and anyone else is almost the difference between night and day. Blood is also plentiful as this is by far one of the more gruesome games I have ever played. Utilizing a hair pin, you may sneak up on a drone and stab him through the neck, or depending on timing, direction and weapon, there are many MANY horrible-to-watch-but-cant-look-away deaths to enjoy. Now onto the bad, Riddick’s Eyeshine is good and all, however, at times it doesn’t actually work, or do that much to help you as you can be blinded by flashlights. As well, when climbing boxes or shimmying along poles, Dark Athena switches from a first person perspective to third. While it would be nearly impossible to do these feats in first person, it totally takes the player out of the story and if it’s at an extremely intense moment, can pull you out of the story line faster than… well… faster than something I shouldn’t say on this website. Overall, the game is extremely cinematic, with pacing, plot, dialog and intense cut scenes, almost as though Universal wanted to continue the Riddick story but felt that movies would be the wrong approach.

Listening to Dark Athena was surprisingly pleasant. One would think with Vin Diesel voicing a character that looked just like him would be annoying for the average gamer. One would also think that the logical choice would be to voice the character by the actor portraying it… so I guess it makes sense. The game is filled with characters chatter, ambient noises, dramatic music (which changes when bad guys have spotted you, another helping mechanic), and Diesel monologues. The monologues started out feeling really weird, but as you progress through the game, these asides become deeper, darker, and feel more like a movie narrator then Vin saying he is the darkness. One thing I must point out though is that this game is EXTREMELY expletive. There are so many F-bombs that my mother, one who knows profanity extremely well, was offended by the cursing she heard come from the TV. The commentary from every day drones gets a little repetitive however, for example, whenever you use a tranquilizer gun on a controlled drone, each and every time they say the exact same line, “F-ck I’m losing my feed man” considering the amount of time it takes between getting the tranq gun and a real gun, I must have heard this line at least 50 times.

For the most part, Dark Athena plays pretty well, there are a few cumbersome glitches that I would have hoped to be found through game testing (try attacking and then quickly blocking, or turning off Eyeshine with any option involving the ‘y’ button being offered), there are some really cool aspects (such as the extremely gruesome one hit kills and controlling a drone yourself), and there are some really creepy aspects (expanding your health involved getting stabbed multiple times by the scariest machine I have ever seen), but the real treat of this game is what you get for the price of admission. Not only do you get access to Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena, but you also gain access to online multiplayer mayhem… but wait, there’s more! Packaged on the same disc is a graphically enhanced version of the Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, the 2004 prequel to Dark Athena! Two games for the price of one!

The online multiplayer aspect is your general fair, simple, nothing overly special, very quake like. The multiplayer is extremely quick: quick to kill, quick to die, quick to respawn. Really it’s mostly just that whoever shoots first, kills the other player then dies from the next battle encounter. Rinse and Repeat. While there are plenty of modes, weapons, and maps to choose from, two were extra interesting in my mind. Butcher Bay riot mode has guards, prisoners, and mercs playing three way capture the flag where as Pitch Black mode has you hunting down Riddick in the pitch black with nothing but a gun and flashlight, and whoever kills him, becomes him. These online modes would be extra fun if two things were available: 1) there wasn’t such a lag issue, and 2) if there were actually enough people to play online with. Butcher Bay has the same design, controls, graphics, and mechanics as Dark Athena, so for all intensive purposes, You’re basically getting two full campaigns for the price of one, add on all the (albeit lame) unlockables from both campaigns and this might be the FPS to tie you over during the spring gaming drought.

Overall, if you were a fan of Butcher Bay, you owe it to yourself (and Vin) to pick up this title, if you’re a fan of Doom type games (which this, I feel, is a step beyond) pick this title up, if you like two for one deals, why not pick this game up? However, if you’re looking for a good multiplayer title, you might want to pass on Dark Athena. If Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is the future of licensed gaming, I welcome more cross-platform synergies. Hopefully this is a trend starter and not just a one shot deal, I don’t think I can handle any more games like Iron Man.

Gameplay: 4/5

Graphics: 4.5/5

Sound: 4/5

Replay Value: 4.5/5

 

andPOP Rating - 4 Stars

 






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