Riddick's back. And he should have stayed at Butcher Bay. Really. Dark Athena's concept was good, until the second part.
- The graphical engine of this game is solid, with some flaws. Graphical glitches pop in during most cutscenes or dialogs, drawing oddly polygon shaped shadows on the characters. The framerate is far from constant, and the game will lag on you for no reason. At a certain part, the game will strutter. Then, when you come back, it doesnt anymore. Yet, there was nothing to load in that place.
Butcher bay uses the same graphics used by the PC version of the game, with some slight improvements. When I say slight, it means you won't notice them. Heavy uses of blur effects and some HDR lightning make an entrance.
Dark Athena looks just like The Darkness ( same engine, duh ), and while it offers good character models, the world itself is rather bland, and jitterish.
- The audio is perfect. One of the greatest soundtrack and dialog in the past decade in this game.
- The gameplay is good, yet very flawed. Butcher Bay was phenomenal in its time, but now, it's not that amazing. Enemy AI is superhuman in some part. See, they know where you are in perfect pitch black and will always point their flashlights at you ( and if they dont have one, they go right to you ) even if you slowly creep next to them. Want to close the lights and then go predator on enemies who already saw you? You can't. They'll find you in the total darkness. So the game becomes a trial and error mess in some part and you'll die often just to remember the correct route to use.
Wich is not acceptable. In the total darkness, even if a dude ran around me, I couldn't pin-point is location. Some other time, they'll just randomly run around until finally using the correct pathfinding to reach you. On the other hand, Butcher Bay has a unique setting and I applaud the game for being different. Sneaking in vents with a shiv to escape a triple-max security prison is awesome.
That said, once you boot the Dark Athena campaign, its starts amazingly well. Until you hit the half of the 6hours expansion pack, where you'll get dropped in a Gears of War ish, or Dark Sector-ish town. Then, the game will force you to use a stupid and ugly mine-throwing gun, in broad daylight, while ditching every other aspects unless you want to trial and error and hope for the best.
Riddick isn't at its best here, really. I loved Butcher Bay, and still does, but replaying it as a 09 game makes it hard to love it like I used to. The 04 version is perfect, because in its time, it was great, yet today some of its elements should have been brought up to the modern times. Less trial and error, for instance, and a working AI in dark areas. As for Dark Athena, the early concept was brilliant, but once your off the ship, turn off your console, snice the rest is a total disaster.