The world can't get enough of Richard B. Riddick if anyone associated with the Riddick series is anything to go by. Films, animations, video games and now a sequel to the surprisingly good Escape from Butcher Bay in The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.
Straight after the events of the first game, still before the events of the first film, Riddick continues to be the killer that lurks in the shadows, so efficient in his craft that some of these mercenaries really ought to know better by now.
It started life as an expansion to Butcher Bay, but things happened and now here we are, a full sequel to enjoy, much the same as the first game. And to prove that point, here, we've bundled the first game in here too...
Frustrations
I'm not playing a deluxe version of Dark Athena, or a collection of both games. The plan was for Butcher Bay to be remade and shown off on the next generation of consoles, and by the time it was ready, so was a sequel, so why not put them together?
It would have been great to have known it was that easy to play both games before I bought both games but to be fair, I don't even know where I picked up these games, and being stingy, I know I would have held off buying them until they were cheap and on sale, so I'm not too bothered - only one game that needs to be installed now.
We awake on a beach. No idea where, but that is probably Butcher Bay in the background. An educated guess based on when this game is set, that, because I certainly haven't gone back to Butcher Bay to finish that game off yet.
Our mission is to simply get off the beach. Riddick is the kind of guy to go with the flow, so I'm sure we'll get a little more of an idea of what our plans are in due course.
Dark Athena is very much like Butcher Bay. You've got your fancy night vision to enhance all the shadows for you to hide in, you've got a first-person camera that switches to third-person whenever you're climbing and dangling, and you've got awkward melee combat controls where you can block and swing some punches, but you're never quite sure what you're going to get until you press the buttons.
How did I trigger an elaborate animation to finish this guy off? Did I just punch him enough? Was it scripted? Even if you're not sure whether you like it or not, it does feel like a struggle is taking place when you get into a scrap. Your punches are weighty. Or is that the controls being janky?
I'm not sure where the fault lay, but 'janky' does come quite close to describing it. Nothing's feels broken, so much as it feels a little off, a little awkward. An acquired taste, or something.
As the tutorials continue, we're introduced to drones - I bet you thought they'd be flying machines, too, am I right? These drones have a dark story behind them, one we'll uncover over the course of the game, but for now, they're both something to avoid and something to make use of.
Sneaking out of the shadows and attacking from behind with a quick stealth kill, the drone is on the floor and we get to use its drone gun. Mighty handy that we can, because he's got some mates behind him...
The limitations of using the drone gun is that you're rooted to the spot, but you can slowly - agonisingly slowly - drag bodies around the level if you're desperate for a better place to shoot from. My advice: Don't. The shooting sucks.
Picking up an assault rifle and getting the drop on an unsuspecting enemy should be an easy win for Riddick, but lining up a headshot only for it to do nothing wasn't the greatest of starts to a combat encounter, and then watching seemingly every follow-up shot miss after that was just embarrassing.
At a fundamental level, the shooting controls and mechanics work. Pull the trigger, bullets come out the business end, but it feels bad. It feels like getting into combat like this would be a mistake, which is fitting for Riddick's character, I guess.
Maybe it'll get better. Oh, and that was all a dream, too.
It might have been a memory, but whatever the case, the shine of a nearby star and the bump of an asteroid on the ship's cockpit wake Riddick up from some sort of sci-fi deep sleep. Johns, the mercenary who seems so confident in his ability to capture Riddick is sound asleep, or dead, I've no idea, and we're drifting rather close towards the large imposing structure that is the Dark Athena.
Fun Times
If there is a saving grace to Dark Athena - the game, not the ship - it's that the movie-like presentation carries over from Butcher Bay. It's not a cinematic game in the same vein as an Uncharted or something, but it uses the same kind of pacing as the Riddick films do, and Vin Diesel does his Vin Diesel voice to great effect once more.
Part mercenary outpost, part jail, part salvage ship, and who knows what else, the delicate spider-like arms pull the ship into its hangar and once again, we are captives in need of an escape.
Here to welcome us aboard - should she ever find us - is Gale Revas, another merc out for a payday. She seems to have a handle on Johns, but then he's now been drugged while in a deep sleep. Riddick, meanwhile, has the balls to pluck a hairpin from her head and the skill to use it as a shiv.
After smashing our way out of the hangar we head to the air vents, a familiar home in stealth games, where we come across a little girl called Lynn, also on the run. In typically cold fashion, Riddick makes no promises, and we learn a little more about the drones that we've been seeing.
Prisoners? Slaves? Experiments? It's too early to say for sure, but these drones roam about the Dark Athena as their security force and can be remotely controlled by a merc for an even more detailed sweep of an area. In gameplay terms, the red ones are dumber than the white ones.
We'll be seeing plenty of them, that's for sure.
Yeah, no shit, Riddick. Now armed with our fancy knives from the movie, we can go to town on these drones. I'd have preferred to have done everything quietly from behind, but when the shit hits the fan, spamming the mouse button to swing your knives in the hope of getting a fancy animation works well enough on Easy, and these guys turn into a turret of sorts upon their demise, so you've got options.
Probably wouldn't use your night vision unless you need to, though. It's a bit bright in places. In fact, the colours in general are a little weird. Black shadows mean a spot of safety, and when you're fully consumed by the absence of light, your screen turns blue to indicate it and allow you to see better, but this isn't your night vision, so you turn that on to see everything even clearer, only to learn that you are about to come out of shadow entirely and get blinded by the light.
Minor issue, though, in the grand scheme of things. but one that does get in the way on our approach towards the next area of interest: the prison cells.
Further Frustrations
Some human interaction is welcome after all these drones, but the combat is no better. What attacks are blockable, how should approach a group of enemies, how did that animation even happen... it may not look terrible - actually, no, sometimes it does - but it does feel a little offputting.
But, if you were a fan of Butcher Bay, it's no different. Just different to what you might expect from this kind of game.
It might seem weird for a man of such few words to have dialogue options when talking to people, but here they are. I suppose you could always roleplay and say nothing, but it's an iconic voice, so let's hear it.
I can understand trying to get on Riddick's good side, but I doubt even his own mother has seen his good side, and that would have been a long time ago for sure. The one useful piece of information our first prisoner has is that the guy in the next cell was once a merc who worked here. He's bound to know more than this fella.
Well, I was hoping for a bit more information than that.
Crashing 40 minutes in wasn't the best way Dark Athena could have shown itself off, but have I seen enough to know whether I want to try and stop this error from happening again?
Final Word
On the one hand, yes. Riddick in any form is dumb action entertainment. It's not going to be amazing, it's often going to be baffling, but there are some hints of cool, dated though it may be nowadays. I'm not knocking Riddick, basically. It's a solid 7/10. Maybe a 6. But solid.
On the other hand, I had to resort to the word 'janky' to describe Dark Athena, and a crash doesn't help, though yes, Windows 10 wasn't a thing in 2009, so we'll cut it some slack. Besides the crash, it was only janky in graphics and gameplay.
That sounds quite bad. I'm not sure that's what I meant. Assault on Dark Athena requires you to go into it with a bit of an understanding that it's not quite going to be what you think it might be. It's more of Butcher Bay, for better and for worse, and is really aimed squarely at fans, because newcomers might just have a tough time getting stuck in.
I do like the concept of Riddick, if not always its execution, and so I do want to see both Butcher Bay and Dark Athena for their stories. Will either of them rock my world and change my views on Riddick? No, don't be silly. But I hope they'll be entertaining enough to justify however many hours it takes to watch someone competent play.
I'm not too sure why Dark Athena makes it to the 1001 list. Like Butcher Bay, it does a good job of being a piece of Riddick media, and of knowing where the line is between video game and movie, but I've yet to see it truly shine and stand out as a must-play.
Fun Facts
Riddick's wasn't the only voice to be praised, with the vocal talents of much of the cast getting called out as a highlight of the game, which now features a multiplayer mode for some reason.
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, developed by Starbreeze Studios, first released in 2009.
Version played: PC, 2009.