The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

Much like Vin Diesel’s movies, this game isn’t anything special, but certain elements make it enjoyable nonetheless... Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a sucker for a movie gone video game; however, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena isn’t - *cough* - too bad.

Let me play it out for you… Well first, let me mention I never played Escape from Butcher Bay. So apparently Assault on Dark Athena takes place shortly after that, and after doing a little research, it seems to be practically the same scenario played over. You’re [again] held captive, this time onboard the Athena – a dark & dirty ship - you know, instead of the seemingly dark & dirty Butcher Bay, and of course, you must find a way to escape. You stealthily creep through the ship and kill drone, after drone, after drone, and sometimes the odd mercenary. You’ll also get assistance from the other prisoners and some lost child hiding in the vents. Aside from being somewhat repetitive in terms of navigating your way through the ship and killing drones, the game suffers from horrible AI. If you play it, you’ll see what I mean.

Also - I noticed a bug or some sort of glitch, and I'm not entirely how I triggered it. When you're in the driver seat of the drone station and you’re taking out the mercenaries, it left me unable to advance further once they were all dead. Sadly I was forced to fallback to a previous checkpoint and try again, which the second time ‘round it worked fine. A few other minor hiccups were spotted but nothing overly frustrating.

All in all, if you like 1st person shooters and/or Vinny’s cheese ass one-liners, and lets say there is nothing on the store shelf that looks overly appealing, you may as well give this a shot. Like I said, there are elements that make Assault on Dark Athena enjoyable, namely the inadvertent comedic situations and I’ll give it nice graphics plus sound. It’s nothing new; it’s essentially a revamped high-definition version of Escape from Butcher Bay. Rent it; don’t buy it. You probably won’t even finish it.