Vin Diesel’s role as shiny eyed, intergalactic super-criminal Richard B. Riddick started on the big screen back in 2000, before he was famous, in the sci-fi film Pitch Black.  This was followed 4 years later by the sequel The Chronicles of Riddick, in which Mr Diesel took centre stage, and the prequel The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, but this was no film.  Instead Universal took the brave step and allowed Starbreeze Studios to make the story a video game for the original Xbox and PC’s, with Vin Diesel returning to reprise his role as the games anti-hero.  The game was very well received, averaging 90/100 on Metacritic, and flew in the face of the standard preconception that movie tie-in games will generally be awful. Fast forward 5 years to the here and now and Starbreeze have given EFBB the full HD workover, added an entire new single player campaign, Assault on Dark Athena, and added a multiplayer mode to bring the game into the current generation.

Assault on Dark Athena is really 3 separate games in one package, with the 2 stand alone single player campaigns and the somewhat unrelated multiplayer mode, so I’ll start at the beginning.  Escape from Butcher Bay is probably the best part of this package which is a mixed blessing really.  Whilst it’s great to know that the game has stood the test of time and still plays as well as it did 5 years ago, it’s somewhat disappointing that the new additions to the game do not surpass the original.

EfBB starts with Riddick being handed over by a bounty hunter to be incarcerated in Butcher Bay (a high security intergalactic prison), where you are herded to your cell by Xibit and meet you new friends and enemies. It is here that you first get to experience the Tomb Raider meets Morrowind mix of gameplay, with it’s mix of running, sneaking climbing and shooting mixed witha smattering of RPG style interaction and optional side quests, but none of these will distract you from your one simple mission…  Escape, and escaping from a high security prison is a challenging as it sounds.  Trying the ‘run and gun’ tactic will only end one way, with you riddled full of bullet holes.  Instead you must rely on your stealth, cunning and night vision to even the odds.

As great as Butcher Bay was, and still is, some aspects of the game feel dated and probably could have done with an update, the most major of which is the games map and objective system.  The map gives you no detail other than which area you are in, no clue as to where you are or which direction you are facing and this can lead to a lot of unnecessary backtracking when looking for required items in the dark.  Gunfights are let down by the poor targeting system which has you guessing if you’ve managed to line the shot up as the dot you have to help you aim is useless, which then usually leads to your quick and untimely death at the hands of the uber-accurate guards.

After reliving the joys of Butcher Bay it’s quite a shock moving to the second campaign, Assault on Dark Athena.  After a small time skulking round the ship the game is named after, the Dark Athena – a mercenary spaceship involved in grusome experiments and human slavery, the stealth and adventure aspects of the game are soon dropped in favor of a more linear 3rd person shooter affair that EfBB tried so hard not to be.  The side quests are few and don’t really add to the depth and Dark Athena in general fails to recreate the atmosphere that the first game nailed so perfectly.

Whilst keys parts of EfBB are dropped too many others are kept, making the 2 campaigns feel very similar to play through.  Both have you collecting items to unlock secrets, both contain a section that sees you piloting robotic suits and generally you get an overall sense of deja vu if you play the 2 back to back, which considering they had 5 years to build on Butchers Bay is a pretty poor show.  If Dark Athena had only been 2-3 years behind EfBB the overall gameplay of DA probably wouldn’t have been as disappointing, but in those 5 years we have had excellent, atmospheric, storytelling games like Bioshock and Condemned that have really raised the bar and Starbreeze have failed to challenge them.

In addition to the 2 single player campaigns there is also the multiplayer side of the game, offering a pretty standard selection of deathmatch and capture the flag game types across a sparse amount of maps based on both campaigns.  The only one of these that really stands out is the ‘juggernaught’ style mode, called ‘Pitch Black’.  This mode has one player as Riddick with his night vision, who gets points for every kill, whilst the rest of the players have to hunt him down, with whoever kills Riddick playing as him in the next round.  Sadly though I can’t see this being enough to kept a good online community going, so it’s quite likely that is 6 months time you will struggle to find a game online.

All in all Assault on Dark Athena is a strange bundle, on one hand you have Escape from Butcher Bay, which has really stood the test of time and is easily as enjoyable (and frustrating) as it was 5 years ago, whilst on the other hand you have the titular adventure, Assault on Dark Athena, which just cannot compete with its predecessor.  Perhaps that’s because they tried too hard to make it like EfBB, or perhaps it’s just that compared to the current crop of adventure games and shooters out there Dark Athena can’t quite cut it.  As for the multiplayer experience, it is quickly forgettable and feels like it has been added through obligation and not that it really should have been there, but these can be excused somewhat if you look at the package as Escape from Butcher Bay as the main feature with Dark Athena added as a bonus campaign.

Overall Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is a solid game that is good fun to play and certainly a worthwhile purchase, but it feels like they could have just cut the multiplayer and new campaign and just released the remake of Butcher Bay as a cheaper downloadable title.

7.5/10

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