When Riddick steps into the darkness, no one is safe… but towards the end he's kept out of the shadows for far too long
Contains: Very Strong Language, Strong Violence and Sex References
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The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is a science-fiction action stealth game that features antihero space criminal Riddick in his latest chronicle.
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STORY - 2/5
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Be Riddick, the most ruthless criminal in the universe. In his latest chronicle, Riddick has been captured by the Dark Athena, a mercenary ship hell-bent on eliminating him once and for all. Using his intense hand-to-hand combat skills, explosive firepower, and lethal stealth, Riddick must shutdown the maniacal Captain Revas and her deadly crew. When Riddick steps into the darkness, no one is safe.
Though the storyline isn't quite like the movies it takes inspiration from and doesn't include any cinema-stylised action set pieces or plot twists, it isn't a poor story, and is an acceptable narrative to advance your knowledge of the sci-fi universe and to put you in control of ex-convict Riddick once again.
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CHARACTERS - 4/5
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The cast of characters you encounter, both villain and ally, are all pretty good, with performances enhanced largely because of the voice talents perfecting the speech given to them, but by far the most interesting character is the antihero protagonist. "The darkness… for me… is where I shine". Richard B. Riddick is the title character - a dangerous space criminal who can see in the dark. Riddick's motivations are clear, his tone is absent of misgivings, and his formidable skill for discretion makes him a competent adversary you wouldn't want to face… especially in the dark - and his demeanour and violent reputation leave him unflinched by death of those that pose a threat to his mission. Riddick possesses an abnormally high pain threshold and psychologically channels what pain he does feel into anger and confidence. One major characteristic of Riddick is his indomitable will. Despite finding himself in situations where the odds of survival and/or escape would seem insurmountable, Riddick always pushes forward and never gives up. He communicates slowly and unforgiving with a constant, noticeable amount of dreariness, but addresses his point with venomous intent nonetheless, making it known how smart and capable he is of extracting what he wants without detection, or the remarkable strength and resilience shown when stealth is a less viable option and hand-to-hand combat or guns are the prime way to advance. He doesn't promise safety to the characters he meets on the way, or ask questions that evade his own objectives, and overall Riddick proves a very good protagonist to lead your mission efficiently with his serious, 'I-work-alone' attitude and is terrifically voiced by Vin Diesel, who excels when speaking some terrific dialogue.
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GAMEPLAY - 3/5
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Embrace the darkness, and be the hunter. The shadows are where you'll lurk, and are the corners where you'll reap the benefits of Riddick's special stealth ability for seeing in the dark. Eyeshine reveals the world in a bright vision mode, an ability that disregards the pitch blackness and instead illuminates it stylishly, highlighting the environment with greater detail while at the same time disguising that white glint in your eye as you prey on the drone-like guards unaware of your lethal threat and proximity until it's too late to change their fate. Patience is important, but for Riddick, waiting for the opportune time to silently strike down an enemy is prime instinct in a role you'll come to enjoy. Picking off opponents feels rewarding when everything goes smoothly, and the execution kills you perform unnoticed behind an enemy that vary depending on the melee weapon you have equipped are brutal. If your aggressors aren't wielding deadly firearms that force you to evade their flashlight and kill them one-by-one, then they'll confidently engage in a fist brawl or melee duel with you, both asking for trouble as far as Riddick is concerned. Aside from his more supernatural skills, Riddick is in excellent physical condition and an exceptional fighter with or without the use of his eyes. He's strong, fast, agile and tough, and his abilities at hand-to-hand combat are particularly formidable, and is able to confront multiple targets at once and still be the remaining fighter standing once the battle has ended. From the first-person perspective you can expect to see a number of impressive animations that stylishly and believably portray Riddick's dominance of killing with relative ease, and while the hand-to-hand or melee sequences don't always go smoothly with some problems relating to blocking and timing, if you successfully manage to counterattack an enemy, the result looks and feels great, more so knowing that you are controlling such a powerful character with incredible skill and reflexes. Riddick is well trained with any kind of weapon that he can get his hands on, but his weapon of choice is undoubtedly a knife. Silent, quick, and deadly, in Riddick's hands the knife is a weapon that is a swift ender of lives. However, Riddick's most famous weapons are the pairs of Ulak blades, and this awesome, deadly combination of tools allows you to relish each opportunity that arises to dig them deep into an enemy's flesh or skull.
It doesn't go according to plan all the time though, and combat can quickly turn troublesome if you ineffectively take down the guards stealthily as intended, and cause an alert that ruins the silence and makes proceedings suddenly more difficult; Or if you mistime attacks in melee combat and leave yourself open to a number of vicious blows that severely create a sense of discontent around that staged section of action. Disappointingly, the second half of the game lacks stealth and melee and has a much larger emphasis on shooting. There are a couple of reasons why this is such a big drawback as much as a letdown, and it's because the stealth and melee provide gruesome execution kills that look great, whilst the gunplay is average with weapons that don't feel fun to shoot. The campaign falls into such a predictable rhythm in the later stages of the story mode that it turns extremely boring, with tedious clichéd sections that don't get strung together well and flatten what little pace there is once shooting ignites and stealth dies away from the core gameplay. Even the implementation of a unique weapon that can be used during combat to kill and outside of it to proceed onwards through struggling environmental puzzles generally feels like a standard gun that proves the same point as every other - gunplay feels weak and hitting targets lacks impact even if the bullets fired showcase that there is actually bite to them. Run-of-the-mill describes the unsatisfactory last half justifiably, and Riddick's final battles don't deliver the excitement and rewarding sensation that the protagonist's efforts deserve.
Interacting with the environment is vital for proceeding, and character interaction is also necessary at brief stages of the story. You can get missions from these captives, but these are fetch quests that lack inspiration and imagination, and the action scenes that take place during the objective aren't put together well, even though some are enjoyable and mix up the stealth-encouraged gameplay early on. To reach a desired destination in these portions of the game, you'll be required to traverse the ship in a number of ways to eventually acquire an item that will in turn grant you additional information or equipment to move forwards on your main quest. Climbing crates, shimmying across ledges, using hangrails, utilising the ventilation system to sneak around undetected and gaining access to restricted access doors are activities you'll partake in at specific stages, and scattered NanoMED health units ensure you'll have the health available to sacrifice in your violent outbursts on your adversaries. If the unit is empty, you'll need to recharge it with a NanoMED cartridge - rare components that can be scavenged from the environment which are typically hidden from view, obscured in the shadows and reward mild exploration of your surroundings.
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GRAPHICS - 3/5
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Under the cover of darkness your identity is protected, and the lighting and shadows are conveniently produced to keep you from becoming exposed as much as possible, and the excellent effects that exhibit in stealth mode do a very good job of letting you see precisely which areas will keep you from alerting enemies and which will give away your position. A blue filter signifies that you are in the shadows and invisible to your enemies, and a luminous effect takes shape on the screen to enable you to see things in the dark your normal vision wouldn't detect or notice. However, despite the visual effects that expand your believability that Riddick isn't quite human, the graphics are decent and nothing more; but the environments you manoeuvre around in are far from decent, and are uninteresting artistically, and when the game falls into tedium in the later stages, the boring-looking environments are highlighted further against the gameplay to increase the factor of boredom to a low level that makes the epic sci-fi setting surprisingly dull.
Lip-synch could have been better to match the voice work, but otherwise character models are impressive, and the animations you produce link together smoothly and don't lead to any jarring moments during gameplay, so the only major letdown comes in the lack of interesting environment variety.
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SOUND - 4/5
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The standout voice acting is a highly commendable trait of Assault on Dark Athena, and each character is voiced extremely well to give each character a plausible degree of personality and characteristic qualities that few games exhibit so well. And it helps when the voice cast includes some notable actors including Lance Henriksen, Michelle Forbes, Steve Blum, Nolan North and, of course, Vin Diesel, who's talent for portraying the title character so well in the movies is carried over into the video game with outstanding results, and he's given some excellent dialogue to express maliciously. While it's a steep step up to rival the standard set in the voice acting, sound effects and background audio are good enough for the length of the experience despite never being given a wide enough berth to develop above expected standards because of the complete lack of memorable gameplay moments that are hugely missed.
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ATMOSPHERE - 2/5
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You would think that being forced into the darkness and being hunted by numerous foes armed with lethal firepower while you are merely armed with blades would create a tense atmosphere to suffocate you within the pitch black areas you find yourself. But quite honestly, not much tension is generated regarding your outnumbered circumstances, and more or less is created because of anxious movements that could trigger the poor AI to detect you even though they shouldn't have. The boring level design contributes to negatively affecting the atmosphere, and there are rarely moments where the darkness feels atmospheric for the correct reasons. There are glimpses of suspense that pays off in the early stages of the game, but once the first-person shooting takes over from the melee and stealth action, there is nothing positive to acknowledge concerning a pervasive atmosphere.
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ENEMY AI - 1/5
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During your sci-fi mission, you'll face a few different types of foe, the most common being a cross between human and robot known as drones. Developed by some unholy fusion between flesh and technology, where the mind is willing and the body is controlled, these AI adversaries offer up a challenge amidst stealth sequences, but not for the right, admirable reasons. They are poor in general, and blatantly cheat to try and get you killed. For example, if you are spotted by one of them (this applies for human enemies aswell), you will no doubt try to evade their sight and once again re-enter the darkness for a suitable stealthy evasion. However, for unknown reasons, they will know the exact place you are, and will scout you out to notify the others even if they never saw you enter that specific spot, and even if you escaped across to the other side of the environment to try and ensure being anonymous once again. If you expose yourself to the artificial lights that flood the space vessel you're in, then you'll do your utmost best to be discreet about your silent kills, but sometimes silence won't work, even if you are absolutely positive your footsteps couldn't possibly be audible above the disembodied dialogue that is transferred randomly between enemies. You might sneak up behind an enemy, only to find him turn around and face you, immediately unloading his clip into your vulnerable, unprotected body. Even if it wasn't for these blunders, the intelligence of your foes is questionable. They aren't well organised, with random patrol patterns originating from god-knows-where, and are poor at assessing the environment by occasionally ignoring cover, and laughably producing odd movements across the area that leaves you pondering if the human enemy controlling the drone is all there in the head. It's hard to tell the difference between human and drone, but either way it's not worth guessing because they will be dispatched in similar fashion each time you encounter them with guns or melee weapons anyway.
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LENGTH - 2/5
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The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is an average lengthed game, and you'll be able to clock in about 8 hours of gameplay into your experience before being thankful that the credits are rolling on your screen after the disappointing last half of the unexciting campaign that involves passages of uninspired and repetitive shooting.
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REPLAY VALUE - 2/5
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There is minimal reason to replay through the campaign again except for choosing a higher difficulty and earning some extra achievements, and because the final sections of the story mode are lacklustre and rely too heavily on weak shooting mechanics rather than successful and satisfying melee combat and stealth, everything starts to feel tedious soon enough. However, even when the game throws you combat opportunities you'll enjoy, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be free of aggravating issues. The problem with the stealth sections arises through the use of the first-person perspective in which it's challenging to assess the area properly and accurately from cover. Darkness allows you to sneak around and avoid the untrained eyes of your foes, but the layer of shadows don't cover some parts of the environment, and so leaning around an object to try and scope out the enemy positions can occasionally lead to detection, and often proves a costly mistake in vain of your unintentional error. Though it is possible to avoid such methods, it takes real patience to memorise enemy movement patterns aswell as precious time, and even if you do plan a route through eliminating foes in a specific order, your location can be compromised because of patrols that are random and don't necessarily remain the same each time.
While the environments don't invite exploration, there is something worth looking for in each area, and these are called Bounty Cards. They display the identity of a random criminal within the sci-fi universe of Riddick, with a description of their crime and informing you of the bounty on their head, and while they have no purpose within gameplay, they are worthwhile collectables for what they unlock in terms of extra content from the main menu. You'll unlock concept art images, detailed biographies of characters and locations, and video clips, and there is a good amount of this special content to keep you interested in searching for more bounty cards within each area. It's a shame the level design is so uninteresting, and it's a major letdown that the game drifts away quickly from what it does best half way through, but there are still positives to salvage from this sporadically problematic experience. The voice acting is brilliant, the characters feel like they are important parts to the story, and Vin Diesel is awe-inspiring as ruthless, space criminal antihero Riddick in a role that was meant for him right from his creation in movie fiction. The stealth is entertaining if you beat a section undetected, committing an array of brutal takedowns that display the title character's murderous appetite without pause for emotion to his actions, and the melee combat looks and feels great, granting you the opportunity to utilise Riddick's arsenal of lethal blades and hone his raw physical strength where his skill and agility will prevail against those that stand in his way. It's a game that is inconsistent in numerous ways, but being able to take advantage of the darkness is where this science fiction action game succeeds, and it's just disappointing that you are detained from the shadows for far too long.
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OVERALL SUMMARY - 7/10
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Good Points: Hunting your enemies stealthily from the shadows is entertaining, A sense of rewarding satisfaction when combat goes smoothly without mishap, First-person melee looks and feels great, Snappy writing and solid voice acting, Vin Diesel fits the part as antihero protagonist Riddick and has plenty of malicious lines to deliver, Lethal execution methods are brutal and cool.
Bad Points: A sense of penalizing discontent when combat and stealth doesn't go according to plan, Firearms feel weak in your grasp and lack impact when used, Aggravations are inevitable, Poor enemy AI, Uninteresting level design, Last half of the campaign is boring and leaves you feeling detached.