Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena–A Nice Try But Still Lacking
Once again I applaud the sheer business acumen of Vin Diesel and company Tigon Studios for continuing to release second-rate video games at the rate of as fast as they possibly can to perpetrate as many colossal cash-grabs as possible. Perhaps their most recent attempt is to cash in on the phenomenal Riddick license with recent title Xbox 360 title Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, making me wonder how they got it in the first place. Sublet from Universal? Or did Vin keep a bit of Riddick as part of his Pitch Black work? Dunno.
Anyway, like I said, Riddick’s back, and this time he’s taking on a mercenary ship called the Dark Athena (hence the title). He’ll be taking on legions of mercenaries and armed guards and attack drones and whatnot, and he’ll be spending a lot of time sneaking around in the dark to do his killing, taking full advantage of his illicit optical modifications (a shine job in case you’ve forgotten the original Pitch Black).
While it’s always fun to watch Riddick be a sociopath to children as young as five—seriously, Riddick, it’s not cool to be all snarly and threatening toward small children. It’s like taking a sand blaster to a soup cracker. How about just a little variety? Why don’t you just juggle once? Hit someone with a pie? Do something ridiculous for no clear reason—and not kill anyone.
Ironically, this tiny rant directed at a fictional character may well be the best explanation of what’s wrong with the whole concept of Riddick video games and Assault on Dark Athena in particular. There’s no VARIETY. Riddick sneaks around, goes shiny-eyes, kills people, repeat until everyone bows down and declares Riddick the absolute emperor of cool. Okay, we GET IT ALREADY. This whole game smells like dead horse because they WON’T STOP FLOGGING ONE.
I’ll give them credit—they tried. They added on some first-person shooter sort of stuff, gave Riddick access to assault rifles and shotguns and whatnot. This is cool, make no mistake, but it’s also the same kind of thing that you’ve played a whole bunch of times. Yes, it’s cool to sneak around in the dark and jam a hairpin into a guy’s brain stem. That’s innovative, but not a big part of the whole thing. I liked being able to kill enemies by dropping off high places and using them to break my fall. Again, innovative, but too small to be of much use. And I definitely have to give some due props for including a complete port of Escape From Butcher Bay, giving some added value. But the biggest problem remains—while these small additions are welcome touches of innovation, the rest of the package is so badly lacking that there’s not much sense to playing it.
In that sense, it’s a whole lot like that earlier Vin Diesel game Wheelman, because that too was a big steaming batch of More of the Same. Get right down to it, I can’t recommend this one unless you’re a rabid Riddick fan or can’t get enough of the first person shooter subgenre, in which case you’re definitely going to be all over this.
April 14th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
“Perhaps their most recent attempt is to cash in on the phenomenal Riddick license…making me wonder how they got it in the first place.”
I’m not sure what you mean by this, since Tigon Studios was heavily involved in the original Escape From Butcher Bay game. Unless you’re referring to the film franchise? But if that’s the case, Escape From Butcher Bay was a bigger critical success than either Riddick Film.
When the 2004 movie tanked, it effectively ended Tigon’s plans for a true sequel to Butcher Bay. Instead, they decided to update the original game for next gen systems, since the title lacked backwards compatibility. The “Assault On Dark Athena” portion began life as an epilogue to that remake- an extra incentive for players of the Xbox verison to double dip.
When Activision and Vivendi merged, new management put the game into development hell. It was eventually picked up by Atari. During this delay, the “epilogue” grew from little more than an bonus level to a full-blown campaign. Tigon has said all along it is not a true sequel, but an extension to the Butcher Bay storyline. This is why both campaigns are included on the same disc.