“Think someone could spend half their life in a slam with a horse bit in their mouth and not believe? Think he could start out in some liquor store trash bin with an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and not believe? Got it all wrong, holy man. I absolutely believe in God… And I absolutely hate the fucker.”

If you had watched the 2000 sci-fi film Pitch Black, you may remember this line. It gives you a small peek into the harsh upbringing and violent streak of one of the best anti-heroes in the gaming world – Richard B. Riddick. This was also the first time that the character of Riddick was introduced to the world. Four years after Pitch Black a second movie called “The Chronicles of Riddick” was released and this time it was accompanied by a game based on the lead protagonist of the movie – Riddick. The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay released on the Xbox and a little later on the PC. The game turned out to be sleeper hit on the Xbox and even though it was highly acclaimed on the PC, the sales were pretty low. The lack of any kind of promotion for the PC version, save for an odd trailer probably was one of the reasons for the low sales. I wasn’t even aware of the game and happened to pick up the game on an impulse. I came to know it was a movie-based game and I was initially skeptical considering how movie based games always turned out to be mediocre efforts and were mere cash-ins, but I was absolutely blown away when I started playing the game. The game turned out to be a lot of fun and had a great blend and balance of various gameplay elements supported by a good story, amazing voice acting, a great atmosphere and superb visuals. To date it remains one of my favorite PC games of all time.

A year back or so there was news about the remake of the original Xbox game for the Xbox 360 with an added bonus of some extra content. I was happy that there was a remake in the works (for those who missed out on this gem on the Xbox / PC) but hoped that the developers had put their efforts into a sequel instead. The developers started off wanting to re-make the Xbox classic for the new generation Xbox 360 because of its backward compatibility problem with the original Xbox game. There were a few problems along the way; Vivendi Games the publisher of the original game had merged with Activision Blizzard who later on announced they were dropping the game. Thankfully Atari picked up the game for publishing. While all this was going on the folks at Starbreeze kept working on the remake and also started extending on the “extra content”, pushing the storyline of the original game further, soon they had enough content for the sequel and Assault on Dark Athena was born.

The story of Dark Athena starts off immediately after the end of Butcher Bay. For those who have not had the pleasure of enjoying the original game or even those who may have played the original but may have forgotten about the story or just want an excuse to replay the classic, I would recommend starting off with the first game before diving into Dark Athena.

Soon after escaping from Butcher Bay, Riddick’s craft is captured by a gigantic mutinous vessel called the Dark Athena. The vessel has been overtaken by a band of ruthless mercenaries led by a cold hearted mercenary Gail Revas who led the mutiny along with her second in command Spinner. While Johns is captured, Riddick manages to evade arrest; he hides and sneaks around the ship, killing guards and mercenaries who come in his way, all the while trying to make sense of what has happened as he plans to mount yet another escape. Along the way he comes across a few important characters, one is little girl called Lynn who is hiding from the guards in the Air Ventilation System while her mother is being held in the prison cells onboard the vessel along with a few other inmates including the former captain of the vessel. Riddick’s interactions with them sends him on a number of fetch quests, all helping further his plans of escaping from the ship. His presence onboard the ship soon comes to the attention of Revas who is interested in capturing him as she is aware of the huge bounty on his head. Conversations with the antagonist reveals she shares a chequered past with Riddick. The game of cat and mouse begins where Riddick attempts to finish his quests to enable his escape while trying to avoid the mercenaries and guards who have been alerted to his presence.

Coming to the gameplay elements, most of the good gameplay elements from the original have thankfully been retained while a few have even been improved. The Melee combat system which was pretty revolutionary for a first person shooter game in the original is back and has been slightly upgraded with the addition of some interesting timing based finishing moves which look really good when pulled off correctly. The Stealth element which played a big part in the original game has also returned in the sequel; Riddick has the eye-shine ability available from the start since he had acquired the ability in the first game. Sneaking up on the guards and performing stealth kills is just as satisfying as it was in the first game. Decent portions of the later part of the sequel are based in an open area during the day time which does negate of the use of the eye-shine ability and while you can be stealthy and avoid a few enemies every now and then; on most occasions the only way to get through is to fight through. Quite clearly then it is apparent that there is more focus on the gunplay element this time around. There is a standard fare of weapons like the assault rifle, sniper rifle, shotgun, a very powerful scar rifle, pistol and a sub-machine gun on offer. There is also a tranquilizer gun which you can get access to in the early part of the game and it turns out to be an important weapon to have in these parts when the bigger weapons are not yet accessible. To complement Riddick in the melee department there are also a variety of “death tools” on offer, there is the knife/scalpel, a stun club, also a very cool weapon called the “ulak” – (the weapon you see on the box art) and a hat pin that he acquires pretty early in the game. There are a few new enemies as well, most notable of which is the drone soldier which is essentially a drugged/near dead/mindless human being “fitted” with machine parts and controlled remotely. Riddick can use the gun attached to the drone when needed. He also gets access to controlling these drones at one point in the game. There is also a small level where Riddick gets access to controlling the powerful Mechs. The platforming elements from the original have also returned in the sequel.

The fetch quests are crucial to the main quest and are fun to do; but they do entail a lot backtracking, which may annoy some. This is one of the places that the original bests the sequel. The original had a better variety of locations, a bigger number of characters to interact with, more side quests and an overall better “RPG-Lite” adventure to be had with an engaging main storyline.

While the re-make of the original on the Xbox 360 is a significant visual improvement over the Xbox version, the same is not true of the PC version which was pretty good to begin with. There are a few improvements in the lighting system, there are a few new post processing effects on view, and the colours also look slightly better but nothing you would call as a significant improvement. Still it’s better than them having just added on the original “as is” without adding the few improvements and touches that they did. Dark Athena on the other hand is based on the new Athena engine and is a pretty good looking game sporting all the latest visual post processing effects like depth of field and motion blur and the like. The animations are pretty well done and as was the case with the original, the character models are pretty detailed and look great.

It is possible to customize a decent range of settings on the PC version to get the best balance of looks and performance. The test system (E6600, HD4870, 4GB and WinXPSP2) ran the game pretty well at medium to high settings at a resolution of 1680×1050. There were a few hiccups when there was a lot of action on screen but overall the game ran pretty stable and smooth. There are a few settings I would recommend keeping off unless you have a top of the line system. One of them is the SSAO setting which can drag the frame rates down without making the game look significantly better to justify having it on. The second setting is the model shadows setting, in slightly large open areas. Keeping this setting on resulted in the frame rates dropping pretty low and any changes in the resolution and other settings had no effect on getting the game to run faster while this setting was on.

The one place where the sequel truly shines (which is also true of the original) is the spectacular voice acting. All characters voices are solidly done and combined with the fluid facial and body animations really pull you into the game. Riddick off course has his awesome “bravado filled” one-liners which he delivers in his amazing baritone voice. The rest of the sound department, including the music is adequately done. All of this put together results in a superb overall presentation. There are a few occasions however where there is a lip-synching problem, more so in the remake than the sequel, which seems pretty weird considering it could have been so easily rectified.

The PC version has a DRM system in place which allows for three simultaneous installations of the game. The game needs to be activated every time it is installed. You CAN get an install credit back when you uninstall the game, so just make sure you are online when you do the same. This essentially means you can install as many times as you like.

Unlike the first game, Dark Athena sports a multiplayer mode, but quite frankly it isn’t one the games selling points. There is the standard fare of game types like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the flag. There is an interesting mode though called “Pitch Black” where one player is assigned the role of Riddick, complete with eye-shine ability in a dark arena while other players try to take him on. Upon being killed, another player is assigned the role and so on. There are hardly any people playing the multiplayer portion on the PC. On a few occasions that I tried to search for games in any of the modes I could manage to find just a handful of servers with a small number of players.

Dark Athena on its own is a pretty good game, but when you compare it with its predecessor it falls short. The sequel has deviated from the original by reducing the game to a more run and gun affair. There are also very few side quests and the RPG-Lite like adventure from the first game is also missing. The multiplayer seems tacked on and isn’t something people are likely to buy the game for anyways.

This feels more of an expansion than a full fledged sequel; I expected a bit more since I am a BIG fan of Butcher Bay but overall I am very satisfied with the effort put into Dark Athena and I really enjoyed the game. Fans of the original should definitely pick this up for the sequel (the original re-make is a bonus); also people who missed out on the original, now have a chance to play one of the best games from the previous generation along with the sequel, please do not miss out again.

8.0 / 10

Review Copy Courtesy:

Price: INR 999

Distributor: Milestone Interactive

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