Riddick: Dark Athena Review

The Short Version: Riddick earns its place among few and far between decent movie-based-tie-in games with its great sci-fi atmosphere and viceral hand to hand FPS combat. All of this in one great package that includes the original Butcher Bay, the new dark Athena campaign, and even newly added Multiplayer modes.
Check out the Video Review after the Break!

The Video Review:

The Long Version:

This game kick ass. It’s hard for games to really nail their atmosphere – make you feel as if your part of their world, immerse you in its surroundings and really engage you in the story. Its even harder for a sci-fi game to do this just because sometimes things are so far fetched that none of it seems possible. But somehow, it manages to nail this spot on! And that’s really the sole reason why this game is so fun to play through.

And speaking of beating ass, that’s another thing this game gets right – first person hand to hand combat, we know its something that’s hard to pull off – other games have tried it – but Riddick is the game that’s done it the best.

In the game there’s a great mixture of different play styles, towards the beginning you’ve got your stealth and more towards the Sh*t hits the fan and you’ve got yourself full out firefights. And just when you think you’ve had enough of the prison or the corridors of Athena – They shake things up by putting you in a mech, and another level where your outside doing a spacewalk, but be careful get hit too much and you’ll be a floating corpse for a long time.

The game isn’t without problems though, the AI blatantly cheats to keep up with you – Everyone automatically knows exactly where you are in the dark if just one guard is alerted, drones can track you through walls, and just about every enmy with a gun is overly accurate.

Towards the end of the Dark Athena Campaign the game starts to tread away from what it does best, the “choose-your-own-method-stealth action, to the exponentially more frustrating firefights. Finally, the Multiplayer modes (besides the Pitch Black) mode) dont offer much in innovation, so can get boring after a few plays. Probably the reason I found it difficult to link up with other players online. Luckly these small annoyances dont do anything to detract me from recommending even promoting this game.

I Love the Riddick character and I’d like to see more of him and this universe that is his playground – so I hope all of you guys take the time to at least rent this game and buy it if you like it enough. With any luck we will see them make more – maybe delving into maybe some of the movie material like Pitch Black or Chronicles of Riddick.

What I Liked:
• No game does First Person hand to Hand Combat better than Riddick!
• Essentially 2 1/2 Games for the Price of One! You get the original butcher bay, the new Athena, and a few multiplayer options with the cool Pitch Black mode.
• Perfect Atmosphere and interesting mythos.


What I Hated:
• Other than the Pitch Black Mode in multiplayer it doesn’t offer anything new and because of that its hard to find other players to play with, at least for me.
• AI cheats hardcore.
• Dark Athena loses its focus towards the end.


Final Verdict
8/10