Review:
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena Review

by Carl Doherty

High production values and tremendous voice talent elevate this polished combo of first-person shooters.

No other fictional archetype is more suited to videogame adaptation than the classic Hollywood action hero. It’s one of those painful ironies that by the time the videogame sound and visuals were capable of delivering a movie quality narrative, the great 80s muscle-heads were looking a little… old. While Bruce Willis put his likeness to the PS1 shooter Apocalypse and Chow Yun Fat recently “starred” in the John Woo produced Stranglehold, perhaps the only game to truly put you in the robust physique of a big, ballistic heavyweight star has been The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

When Escape from Butcher Bay hit the original Xbox in 2004 it broke the rule of film to videogame adaptations and spin-offs, in that it was actually exceptionally good, receiving far better reviews than the universally panned movie sequel with which it coincided. Unfortunately, as with many first-rate sixth generation games that weren’t released on the PS2, it missed out on a large share of the gaming audience. Swedish developer Starbreeze Studios have more than rectified this missed opportunity, by including a remastered remake of Butcher Bay with its follow-on sequel Assault on Dark Athena.

Despite Assault on Dark Athena being the more recent of the two games, it’s likely that you’ll want to start on its acclaimed predecessor. Essentially a prequel, Escape from Butcher Bay leads directly into the events of Pitch Black (or at least it did) detailing the origin behind Riddick’s eye modification, his escape from the eponymous maximum-security prison and eventual (re)capture by the bounty hunter Johns.

While Butcher Bay was one of the best looking Xbox releases, it has been touched up considerably, with improved lighting, high-res textures and marginally shorter loading times being the most noticeable enhancements. For the majority, the visual presentation holds up to Star breeze’s previous shooter The Darkness, but this makeover is occasionally betrayed by the noticeably stilted animation and some unsophisticated enemy AI. Vin Diesel’s likeness was, and still is, spot-on, though that’s not surprising since he was reportedly involved in the game’s production. You can’t help but love tough guy dialogue that’s so brazenly macho that it could have come from mouth of Rainier Wolfcastle’s McBain.