I'm Hell's messenger. Name's Riddick.
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is a respectable repackaging of a five year old game with significant expansion.
Published: June 16, 2009
Unfortunately, a significant portion of the Dark Athena episode leans toward all-out firefights in open, well-lit areas, which fails to play to the game’s strengths. It’s understandable that the designers wanted to switch up the pacing, but the change is unwelcome and goes on for too long. Far more effective are the few (and relatively brief) vehicle-based sequences that allow Riddick to blow off some steam by stomping around in control of mechanical walkers and biomechanical monstrosities while blasting the hell out of everything that moves.
As a current generation title, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena looks good. It’s no Killzone 2, but the locales look suitably forbidding, and all the latest high tech gimmickry has been applied, such as advanced lighting and depth of field. The sound is a high point of the presentation, from Vin Diesel’s bowel disrupting voice to the sickening crack of limbs being bent the wrong way, and it’s capped off with a dramatic musical score. The only major technical hiccups are a few funky shadows here and there, and annoyingly frequent and drawn out load times.
Multiplayer is present, but it’s nothing that can’t be found in a more polished form elsewhere. There are a few people playing online, most probably in pursuit of the demanding multiplayer-specific trophies.
For those who missed The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay the first time around, this is a great opportunity to see what the hoopla was about. The touch of added polish it has received helps it stand tall among today’s games as a unique and entertaining experience. Assault on Dark Athena is more difficult to recommend to Riddick veterans, because the new content is not as cohesive and gripping as the original adventure, but serious fans will likely enjoy going through the first part again. If you tried the original before and didn’t like it, then you still won’t like it.
In the end, the question is how you feel about violent, juvenile power fantasies, and if you can stomach dialog like “The dark... are you afraid? I'm not. The dark is afraid of me.” If you can shift your brain into neutral and coast through that kind of stupidity, then you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.
