Posts Tagged ‘tigon studios’
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.
Wheelman Gets Release Date
Midway today announced that its Vin Diesel-starring action game Wheelman will hit PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on February 16, 2009.
The game was originally due out last year. It is being co-produced by Diesel himself, with his production company Tigon Studios.
It is expected that a feature film will eventually spin-off from the game; a script is currently in development, too.