I just finished Chronicles of Riddick Assault on Dark Athena, the sequel to 2004’s Escape from Butcher Bay.  I’m very impressed, it has the same level of fun, with just increased graphics and some new weapons.  The stealth elements are still very fun to play, and they gave plausible reasons why you wouldn’t have guns at the begining and middle parts.

I was also impressed that this disc includes the original Escape from Butcher Bay game in it’s entirety.  I think they cleaned up the graphics for the PS3, because it was originally an xbox/ps2 game.  This makes it a tremendous value if have never played the original and you like this type of game.  This is important for story games, and I think every game like this should do it, are you afraid of losing out on sales of a 5 year old game now?

The voice acting and motion capture are excellent, really good casting also for the main roles.  There are a few AI glitches in the game, where people will run into a spot and get stuck and you can walk right by them and then kill them, but it’s definately the exception.  Some of the puzzles are difficult to figure out, but a really great feature they added is if you don’t progress for a while and it looks like you are circling, a help entry will be made in the pause menu; that’s a great idea.

Something else I really like that more games should implement, if you hit a save point with only one health bar and there are no refill stations handy and you start a boss fight, the odds are you will die, but instead of being stuck like this, after you die two or three times to the same boss, it will give you more health when you restart.

Summary: If you like this type of stealth gameplay, you should not miss this game.  If you really like the character of Riddick, and want to feel like you are him, get it.

• Game Review
• PlayStation 3
• Riddick