k, the Escapist Magazine should really do this instead of leaving it to us followers but i was able to make an exact transcript which took 2 hours....-_-
but here it is!
Ok so Pitch Black was good if you?re into that sorta thing, it had Claudia Black getting her crotch pulled off and that?s always a plus but the best part was the character of Riddick because he was clearly needed for the survival of the other characters but entirely unpredictable. You were never certain whether he was genuinely motivated by a genuine spark of compassion inside his stony psychotic exterior or if he was just serving the others so he could pull out their brain matter and use their empty skulls as muesli bowls. Vin Diesel then grabs the completely wrong end of the entirely wrong stick and decided that everyone was just there to see Vin Diesel run round saying badass one-liners in a voice that suggested he had severe congestion.
So he vowed to see how long single-handedly he could keep a franchise going based entirely on that alone. Shortly after ?The Chronicles of Riddick? film burst into cinemas, killed all the characters interesting mystique and quietly snuck away to die. But lets be kind enough and forget about that and talk about the games. Ok, so escape from Butcher Bay was a good game if your into that sort of thing, it had the ability to creep up behind a guard and dig out all his childhood with a screw driver, and that?s always a plus but it wasn?t the kind of criterion collection timeless classic that demands a remake, a notion which someone was thankfully able to crowbar into Vin Diesels head but persuaded him to rerelease Butcher Bay with an additional campaign tacked on; Assault on Vinegar. ..Err Dark Athena. Lets not waste the universes time pretending that there?s much essential difference between the set-ups between Assault on Vinegar and Escape from Smokey Bacon.
Riddick is placed somewhere he doesn?t want to be in an interior that was designed from something like the Doom 3 engine and endeavours to not be in a place that he doesn?t want to be in. On the way he kills a lot of people but they all mutter to themselves about how much they like stepping on fluffy yellow Easter chicks all day so that?s alright. That?s one the on-curring things in the Chronicles of Riddick Adventures actually. Writers desperately try to come up with enemies that are socially less likeable then the socially inept baldly headed douche that we?re supposed to root for.
Anyway, let?s leave that aside from now and look at the gameplay point. Its first person, all the benefit of Vin Diesel to project except the occasional inexplicable cuts to third person whenever Riddick climbs up things, all the benefits of Vin Diesel to imagine his self-imaginary rippling selves body. Best of Both Worlds. Speaking of which, the gameplay is mostly stealth focused. Hang on, they?ve given us a gun, I guess it?s a shooter now then. Oh, No wait, my guns? tritely fell behind a fridge and all my other guns spontaneously disintegrated, now its melee brawler. Gameplay does tend to tremble back and forth between the 3 main stations of the FPS circle line and to its credit they all seem to function surprisingly well.
The guards are sufficiently thick and slow moving enough to make stealth viable and if you get bored you always have the option of snapping peoples? necks like freshly bread sticks. Melee combat is nicely visceral and punching someone has the actual weighted feeling of actually punching someone as opposed to wondering your knuckles around till they fall over and shooting people with guns is just as wholesome and rewarding as it is in real life.
Although the locational damage is a little mental when a headshot is an instant kill and blowing off their knee caps is about as effective as a foot massage; At times though the schizophrenic changing of gameplay makes me want to fold my arms and sit down and refuse to continue until the game makes its bloody mind up!
I?ll be crawling along from shadow to shadow in stealthy mode when 50 guys burst in and I realise we switched to shooter mode when I wasn?t looking, which makes me feel like a bit of a wolly. The difficulty curve is all over the place when you could be riding around in a powered robot suit one moment and have girly hair pulling slap fights the next. Assault on Cool Ranch Doritos gets particularly unfocused around 4hours in when Riddick goes through what is unmistakably a final boss fight with something which is equally unmistakably an ending. Only for the game to keep going in a different location for an hour or two before going through another final boss fight with the exact same villain who seemed pretty spritely for someone who just ended up with a fucking spike through their neck the first time around. My theory is that Dark Athena contains 2 Mission Packs that were inexpertly mashed together after it became sure that the second one became too short and too shit.
It?s in this Chapter that we?re introduced to the Spider Turret. A small wall mounted enemy which is very hard to spot and can knock off all your health in 2 hits from 2 continents away. An enemy which could have only been designed by some kind of sinister conspiracy of 16th Century Puritans who could have only been working to eliminate the very concept of fun. Butcher Bay was good, but remakes are bad. See how this works? If all we do is remake and re-release what was good then we end up circling the same drain various Nintendo properties that they have been monopolizing the last 20 lucrative years.
Disregard that aspect and concentrate on the expansion pack or packs because that?s exactly what Dark Athena is. More percent gameplay in new, darker, emo cals?. I guess it would be your sort of thing if you thought Butcher Bay needed 6hours of extra length that gradually glide downhill in quality or if you still give a shit about Riddick as a character in which case HELLO VIN DIESEL for you are the only one.
Riddick in Pitch Black had some personality, a sense of humour, actual flaws which ambiguous models like what us tiresome human beings have but now he?s just an infallible cardboard cut-out who does nothing but growls threats and pretentious bullshit one-liners that?s supposed to make him sounds more like warrior poet but more give the impression he has fortune cookies papers glued to the inside of his goggles.
I understand it?s fun to jerk off Mr. Diesel but most of us don?t try to make a franchise out of selling the sticky tissues as since you asked; No, I probably wouldn?t say that to your face.