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Wes Fenlon
From the archives: This evaluation was initially printed in PC Gamer journal #200 (UK, May 2009). The evaluation seems as initially written, with solely minor adjustments in formatting and presentation.
I’ve been diving into the again problems with PC Gamer journal to resurrect writing that by no means made it onto the older variations of PCGamer.com. While the latest evaluations I’ve posted, Mirror’s Edge and Far Cry 2, are for video games that also have a powerful place in our collective gaming reminiscence, I really feel like I can not say the identical for The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, an FPS which you could not purchase new. Confession time: I performed each this recreation and its prequel Butcher Bay on the Xbox and Xbox 360, slightly than PC, the place they appeared unimaginable on the time.
You might sneak! You might lean! There was melee fight and also you had little quests to do inside an FPS! This all felt like actually novel stuff in console shooters on the time, and each video games have been drop lifeless stunners within the lighting and texturing departments for his or her day. I believe the breakout success of Batman: Arkham Asylum owes a nod to Escape From Butcher Bay for doing one thing equally ingenious with the extent design in a licensed recreation a number of years earlier.
I’s a disgrace you’ll be able to’t purchase both Riddick video games at this time—notably as, within the years since, developer Starbreeze has basically develop into the Payday studio. Surely Vin Diesel might type out that licensing scenario if he wished to? He retains threatening to make one other Riddick film, which I predict can be outright embarrassing, however I’d take one other Riddick FPS any day. How about one which feels extra like Pitch Black, with some Alien: Isolation-style AI for the monsties?
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena evaluation – PC Gamer challenge #200 (UK, May 2009)
Around concerning the time that I used to be stamping three guards to loss of life, I realised that I used to be the monster in Riddick. Is it any surprise that the fourth guard who blundered into that state of affairs, who noticed his colleagues on the bottom in foetal positions, faces sticking to my boot heels, tried to shoot me?
You are the creature at midnight, sliding out from the shadows to snap and pummel, maim and in any other case cut back the overall inhabitants of senseless drone guards. In another recreation, you would be searching, effectively, you.
Riddick’s story is break up over two video games, the primary a remake of the 2004’s melee-focused FPS Escape from Butcher Bay, the second, set on the ship the Dark Athena, taking over the story after Riddick’s escape. It continues the great work of the unique, melding some grownup themes and darkish characters with an fascinating ‘hero’.
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In each video games Riddick is feared and revered by the scum he encounters. Prisoners and mercenaries respect violence, and as Riddick there’s ample alternative to practise the artwork. The mechanics have not developed a lot since 2004: Riddick can use his fists, shivs, bats and ultimately weapons to slaughter his foes. The melee system provides you 4 strikes with each weapon, utilizing the WASD keys to maneuver earlier than tapping the left mouse to execute—so to talk—and the correct mouse to dam. It’s all within the timing: controlling the move of a struggle provides far more satisfying and devastating outcomes than spamming the mouse button. Tap your assault because the enemy strikes in, and also you’re rewarded with an terrible, hideous loss of life animation. You’ll see screwdrivers slide simply into armpits, knives popping eyeballs, and in the event you block a gun melee assault, Riddick will twist the gun beneath the attacker’s jaw and carry out a skillful lobotomy.
Vin Diesel is French for “Wine made from engine oil.” Trufax.
Image credit score: Starbreeze
Out of bullets? Why not use a curved, serrated pointy factor as an alternative?
Image credit score: Starbreeze
Shadows conceal Riddick and his crimes. It’s notably related in Dark Athena, the place all the ship is stitched collectively from fluorescent lights and slanted shadows. Riddick has two predominant benefits at midnight: he can see whereas his enemies want flashlights, and sneaking up allows instantaneous kills.
From the archives
This evaluation was initially printed in PC Gamer #200 (UK, May 2009).
You can nonetheless subscribe to PC Gamer to get new problems with the journal (in print!) each month.
There are a number of flavours of guard: meaty people, self-controlled drones, and remote-controlled drones that may monitor you down with flashlights, however revert to the autonomous sort when the hyperlink is severed by your assault. In open areas, populated by roaming guards, the darkish is helpful for decreasing the prospect of your discovery: the AI guards are silly and bloody-minded, wheeling round in prescribed patterns till you pique their curiosity. If you lure them into the shadows, you will have an opportunity to swiftly dispatch whoever blunders into your entice.
In each video games, Riddick is concerned in an elaborate escape try. As his impression on Butcher Bay and Dark Athena turns into extra of an issue, the response escalates. There’s a tipping level in every the place the video games swap from being a stealth bludgeoner to one thing extra like a standard shooter. In each, other than the standard shotguns and assault rifles, you are supplied with a tranquilliser gun that lets you knock folks out or sever the remote- managed drones’ connection.
But most fun is Dark Athena’s Scar gun, which fires remotely detonated sticky explosives. You can line up five for bossfights and fun times. As you gain different tools, the environments evolve to accommodate. Later levels in Dark Athena are a mixed bag: ingenious locations such as the ship’s gravity core where the reward for offing the guards is to see them scooped away by the core, or slightly dull ones, following your escape from the ship where you’re dropped onto a planet. Whenever the game places you in shooting galleries, such as you’ll find more of in the second half of Dark Athena, it tends to place you in levels and scenarios you’d expect to find in other, lesser games. The boss fights, in particular, are tedious numbered attack scenarios.
Their tedium highlights the largest flaw of both games: the checkpointing. There’s no quicksave, instead the game decides when to save your progress. On more than one occasion it did so when I was in a dire situation with just a sliver of health, leading to continual restarts as I died over and over again. True, it forced me to improvise, but this is still an appalling decision by Starbreeze.
Off-putting though this was, I kept returning to the game. Riddick is adult, funny and too much fun to keep me away.
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