User Rating: 8.9 | The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay XBOX
What a shockingly good title, especially since I doubt the upcoming film will be garnering anything more than a few middling reviews and a very average haul of dollars. Of course, that's the chief irony at play here: great (or at least blockbuster) films have inspired mediocre games, so it stands to reason that the inverse could be true. Hell, GameSpot might very well award a perfect 10.0 to an XBox game based on "White Oleander" or "The Ring" or God knows what. Enough of that, though: "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay" is a welcome surprise and a much-needed dose of enjoyment with "Halo 2" and "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" still months away from release. The audiovisual aspect is, as noted in the GameSpot review, exceedingly well executed, but I'm more excited by the less obvious nuances. For starters, the game pulls no punches in attempting to replicate the baseness of a futuristic correctional facility--it's a cramped, vulgar, dirty place where corruption is the order of the day. A notch goes into the developer's belt for making the inmates a living, breathing bunch instead of an amorphous and unimaginative throng of jumpsuit-clad obstacles. While I'm at it, let's give the folks at Vivendi/Tigon another round of applause for carrying the realism of the Half Life-meets-Halo combat system a step further. Just a few years ago, the first-person shooter didn't impose any limits upon the gamer's capabilities, and that was a drawback; you could, for instance, tote around scads of weight firearms and never be slowed, much less forced to decide between the lightning gun or the rocket launcher. Here, Riddick can't even carry a shiv into certain secure areas of the prison yard without the guards getting uppity--brilliant, and accurate. The mission structure of "Butcher Bay" works remarkably well, too. You don't have to execute every single menial task that each scurrilous convict solicits, but hey, if you want to make a name for yourself, you can get your hands dirty in just about any way. The non-linear layout of the game isn't necessarily uncommon, but it's refreshing and, yet again, probably true to life when said life is spent in the throes of incarceration. It's a spectacular game, folks, to put it all very succinctly. You might have some minor quibbles (the reviewer who noted his dismay with the quality of the 480p graphics makes a lucid point, indeed, but must keep in mind how much poorer this game would look if a PS2 or GameCube was running the show) but you can't deny that the game is appealing, addictive, and anything but formulaic. A rousing "bravo" to those responsible for "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay"--this is some of the most engaging gaming my XBox has provided in a while.