I never played the original Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. I remember everyone raving about it and friends offering to let me borrow it, but for whatever reason I never played it. This made Assault on Dark Athena a very intriguing title for me. Not only would I get a new Riddick game, but I’d finally get to play through what is considered to be one of the best movie games ever. I only read one or two reviews because I was planning on checking this out based on word of mouth alone, but of the ones I read it seemed like everyone though Butcher Bay was still the better game. Maybe it is because I never played the original, but I definitely think Dark Athena was actually superior.
First of all, I think both games dive bombed pretty hard in their last third. Both more or less abandon all stealth mechanics and let the shooter mechanics run rampant. This would be fine, but neither game is a terribly competent shooter. They aren’t bad, but the controls feel a little loose and towards the end of Butcher Bay specifically the encounter design becomes frustrating. Walking down a hallway that leads to a T, while a guy on either corner shoots at you from the cover of said corners is not a quality encounter. It leaves you with no real tactical options other than stand from far enough away and hope your aim is better than there’s. The worst however is the multiple encounters with robots that can only take damage from the back. Early on when I first met these robots, they were in rooms with lots of places to hide. Getting the drop on them was intuitive and fun. Later in the game however, I found myself fighting two at once with several basic guards providing backup. The arena was well lit with very little cover, getting behind these guys was damn near impossible. If I did manage to get behind one, the others would most likely blow me to hell before I could kill him and return to safety. Also the enemy A.I. is pretty retarded at times, which would often lead to the robots getting stuck in one spot that really was impossible to do anything about.
Dark Athena, on the other hand, failed less badly than Butcher Bay. Its ending was still the weakest, but it was better than the worst parts of Butcher Bay. In Dark Athena, the stealth mechanics are replaced with a manually triggered grenade launcher gun that was super accurate, which also means very easy to miss with. It was kind of a weird switch, but the gun was awesome and remained fun to use for the last third of the game or so, despite several fairly cheap encounters.
The atmosphere and story of Dark Athena also boded better with me. It felt a lot more fitting for Riddick as a character than Butcher Bay. In Butcher Bay, I was tasked with escaping, something you actually end up doing three times by games’ end. Escaping just to get thrown into a higher security level via cutscene got pretty old by the third time. The pacing was also ground to a dead halt multiple times by doing errand quests for other inmates and the clunky side quest system used in these parts detracted from the experience for me. In Dark Athena it is just you. The only help you receive is from people trapped in cells, it’s all about Riddick doing what he does best in a conveniently dark and well ventilated spaceship.
Also, as nominal of a part as this is, I absolutely loved the first time I was given control of the drones. Killing guards as shown through the red robot interface with very little regard for my own well being, while the very Half Life inspired techno played in the background resonated very powerfully within me. I think for a similar reason that the climax of Half Life 2 Episode 2 was more than enough to make that my favorite game of the series. Coincidentally, I’m listening to the music that played during that part of Episode 2 right now.
Anyway, both Riddick games shine brightest in their beginnings and middles more so than their ends. They both provide an interesting take on stealth, a genre that is very easy to totally screw up. I’d recommend checking them out if you haven’t played Butcher Bay before. The graphics aren’t totally up to snuff, but they are more than sufficient. Starbreeze does enough things you think you’ve seen before with a unique enough twist to warrant your time. I suppose if you are a fan of Butcher Bay already then you don’t need a recommendation, but if not check ‘em out. They may not be the best games out there, but they are a good time.
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