Assault on Dark Athena Game Review (XBox 360)

I do want to begin by clarifying, the newest Riddick installment released on the Xbox 360 is titled “The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena”. What I did not know before purchase was that this also includes the stellar title released on the original xbox formally called “The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay”. This particular review will cover the new game, Dark Athena, and will not include Butcher Bay as I will be reviewing that separately.

The first Riddick game on Microsoft’s first console shocked a lot of people. Many wrote it off as a typical mediocre film to game title that contains bland gameplay and clunky controls like many do. What those of us did play it discovered was the complete opposite, Escape from Butcher Bay was absolutely fantastic. It received a lot of praise from many gaming sites across the internet, was a multiple Game of the Year nominee and winner, and is questionably the best looking game ever released on the Xbox. It snuck up on people, as it offered very tight gameplay, excellent visuals, and an overall innovative experience.

So with the announcement of the newest installment, Dark Athena, I was very quick to learn more in great anticipation. In an “Orange Box” like fashion, they revamped the original Butcher Bay and packaged it up with the new Dark Athena and put it on shelves. Make no mistake, Riddick has impressed again, and the new experience is just as good, if not better than the first.

You begin on a beach outside of an enormous metal building. The world around you is vibrant, the water effects from the ocean are beautiful, and it throws you right into the action from the get go. One of the first things you notice is that in the beginning, stealth is key. You do have Riddick’s eyeglow ability allowing for exceptional night vision, which means you can crouch in the shadows and see the world around you, when your foes cannot. The stealth is nice, if you are in a position where the enemy cannot see you, your vision will tint blue indicating this. Lights around you can be destroyed to create more shadows increasing your chances of silently killing drones and guards within this building, so shooting out fluorescent bulbs becomes necessary.

Head-on combat is definitely possible, but difficult. You can run and gun if you choose to, but it’s hard to recommend without using tactics with the darkness. You can also pull corpses out of the light into a darker area of the room you are in to avoid other guards seeing their fallen comrades and alerting security.

As the game progresses, you find yourself on a Mercenary Slave spacecraft, where if you did indeed play Butcher Bay, some faces may be familiar to you. There is a decent level of puzzles to figure out as you navigate the ship. There are also a heavy amount of collectable Bounty Cards scattered throughout Dark Athena, they unlock bonus content when you pick them up, and you gain an achievement for locating all of them. Some are easier than others, and it adds a little depth to the experience. At points you do control for various mechanical weapons, including Drones and Mechs. The physics are just flat out fun, and the concept behind it is brilliant. You do not spend the entire game on this spacecraft, but a good portion of it is indeed on the gigantic steel vessel.

Some of your personal weapons may be very familiar, but they did add just a few others, including the SCAR. The SCAR, once gaining it is a very fun and vital piece of weaponry. You can fire up to five mines at a time, which do fire out like a rifle so you can be precise, and detonate them when you choose with the Left Trigger. This gun is about all you’ll use after you obtain it, it’s handy, powerful, necessary for some bosses, and all I have to say is spider drones, oh those freakin spider drones.

The visuals in this game are exceptional. They aren’t nearly “wow” worthy like the original is, but they are extremely well done. Lighting effects are among the best I’ve ever seen in a game, the glow of flashlights, the shadows cast, down to the incredible reflections. The enemies look great, especially the drones, along with some great animations to coincide. The character models are just awesome, at times you do wonder if you are watching a cut scene and not in-game footage. Riddick is undoubtedly modeled after Vin Diesel, and it’s almost a dead on likeness. If you enjoy good looking games, this is one of the best on the console to date.

There is online play, with a decent population playing, and it’s honestly average at best. You can tell it was influenced by Unreal Tournament, with the fast paced action, scattered spawning weapons, and furious gameplay action. Pray and spray applies well here, but it’s just not as good. Straying from the single player mode, the controls don’t feel nearly as good, I did drop on average of one out of every two games due to someone quitting or a connection error.

The players move around fast, almost too fast for the lack of spray the weapons have. You have one laser dot to aim with and hit your target that is reasonable accurate, which makes it very difficult to hit strafing enemies at a short distance.

Better weapons that had more of a wide spray range would have been much better, but the lack of weapon options and the speed of gameplay makes skill turn more into luck. Much like most online games, there’s too many quitters to have the game end when the host leaves, resulting in your stats for that game disappear. Very fustrating when attempting to gain achievements such as “Gain 100 kills in multiplayer”, as you can have a 22 kill game, the host leaves, and those kills just go away. Blah.

Dark Athena was a reasonably lengthy campaign, about 10-12 hours depending on skill and difficulty level, and with the original Escape from Butcher Bay not only included, but remastered and tightened up for the 360, This is a great value and two phenomenal titles for the price. There isn’t too much to go back for once you complete both games, unless you decide to go again at a higher difficulty, which you may avoid. Even normal difficulty is quite difficult. I loved this game, and look forward to my 2^nd plunge into Butcher Bay, and I can easily recommend this to anyone that owns an Xbox 360 console. Two great games and a great value, check out the demo on Xbox live today.

Gameplay: 9.5

Although difficult and at rare times seems unfair, Dark Athena is an excellent experience. It handles well, the controls are tight, there’s a lot of varied and innovative gameplay, and definitely lives up to the original. There’s enough here to please fans of both First Person Shooters, and Stealth Games, and they both work well together. Points lost unfortunately due to the poor multiplayer.

Graphics: 9.75

Just amazing. Everything about the visuals capture the environment around you, and you will stop more than once just to look at the quality of some of the lighting effects. It stacks up with some of the best looking games on the console to date, and you don’t see too many games beat this one out graphically. Very well done.

Replayability: 7.5

You may enjoy the multiplayer, but I really didn’t. Regardless, there’s two games here, with a lot of gameplay and some may be driven to play this one through twice. With collectables available, there is a certain level of replayability in the campaign, but not comparable to other current titles.

Overall: 9.25

I was impressed yet again by how well Dark Athena was produced. It’s fun, it holds your attention, and everything about it just feels like a fresh experience and a nice break from your typical shooters. It’s got something for everyone, and if you just want to replay the original hit Escape from Butcher Bay, well that’s here too. A nice bundle, especially for fans of the films, and I can easily recommend it to next gen console owners everywhere.

By Paul Theimer

A second opinion

When you hear Valve, you think quality. Responsible for multiple Game of the Year award winners in Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and The Orange Box, Valve has unmistakenable wedged themselves into gaming history with a number of brilliantly concieved, innovative, and technically sound video games. Unlike my counterpart who began Left 4 Dead before the fixes and survival pack, I recently took a crack at the title the same week the new and free expansion was added. With Valve being the developer, my expectations were high, myself being a little tired of the zombie genre in movies and games, I wasn’t sure what my reaction would be to this game and how much I would enjoy it. Valve failed to disappoint yet again, and not only did I fall for the Left 4 Dead world almost immediately, i’m still addicted to this gruesome and chaotic zombie masterpiece, and my disgruntled opinion on the overused zombie genre quickly dissolved.

The game itself takes itself in the form of four zombie films, telling the tale of four survivors struggling to reach numerous safe houses in efforts to finally be rescued and removed from this apocalyptic hell. The streets are littered with the undead, who react to light, loud noises, and certain interactions with the enviornment around you. There are scattered and dumb undead that trip over their own feet after being startled upon viewing you, to the hordes that sprint in your direction in a blood thirsty rampage, and the special infected that are stronger and much more deadly. Car Alarms are sure to awake the dead and cause you a handful of brain craving zombies swarming to you, but luckily the pulsating blip from a pipebomb attracts them just as effectively. The AI Director literally rewrites the script everytime you play, no memorizing enemy placement here as it’s all regenerated everytime you play. This adds a ton of depth and replayability, as it’s never the same experience twice even if you continue to replay the same scenario. Teamwork is the key to survival as the game will remind you constantly, and this offers the true meaning of complete teamwork and tactics.

You have the choice of either a sub-machine gun, a shotgun, an assault rifle, or a hunting rifle as your primary weapon, and carry a sidearm with unlimited ammo just in case you are in a tight situation and cannot reload or run out of ammo. The start of each chapter begins within a locked safehouse, the walls are desperately scribbled with notes and warnings of those who sought shelter there previous to you. You tend to stop and read some of what’s on the walls, notes to loved ones from family who just couldn’t wait for them any longer, banter that the military isn’t sending help, and dying cries from former survivors claiming that “This is our fault” and “We deserve this”. It’s a small detail that adds to the overall feel and experience, and it adds that Valve charm that we have all come to know and love. I would have liked to see more variety in weapon choice, as what is listed above is really your only option aside from upgrading to an auto-shotgun later into chapters. Even if they mixed up the appearance of the provided weaponry, it would have added just a little more to the game. A M-16 on “death toll” as an assault rifle option, and an AK-47 on “dead air” for example, even if they functioned identically, the difference in appearance would have made things slightly more interesting.

Online play is a blast, and I agree completely with D that being the infected is a little more enjoyable. I remember the first time I hid on the bottom level of an airport and lassoed a straggling survivor with my tongue on the upper level and dragged him to his demise. It’s a completely innovative experience that they’ve never really mastered in a multiplayer mode until now. It leaves for a great online experience that has more variety than your typical human vs human deathmatch. You can also go four player cooperative and blast through the scenarios with your buddies or take on survival mode and see how long you can last. There’s a lot of option, and the cooperative gameplay tends to be a little more attractive than the single player experience. The survivor AI is okay when you are playing by yourself, with minor issues that I ran into including being the first to ascend a ladder, being incapitated, and my three AI teammates being unable to figure out how to climb the ladder and save me. This only happened on two occassions, and it was reasonably my fault for getting further ahead, but a little more attention from the AI would have been appreciated. They will also not let human players take priority on medical supplies, they swarm first aid kits like jackals leaving you at times without one strapped to your back.

With very minor issues aside, Left 4 Dead is a fresh and inspiring take not only in the First Person Shooting genre, but in the whole Zombie genre as well. It’s different, addictive, completely fun especially with friends, and if Valve continues to support the game with downloadable content, especially free DLC, Left 4 Dead is going to be around for a long time. A lot of people play it online, and there’s really no arguing why the population is still so heavy because it’s just so well done. I can’t help but to agree with the Game of the Year status, as Left 4 Dead puts itself in the ranks of some of the best games available to date, and with Resident Evil 5 being released and RE supposedly being the authority in zombie gaming, I think Left 4 Dead beats it out on many levels. Buy this game, don’t even rent it, just go drop the cash into it today. You’ve already waited too long to play this game if you haven’t tried it.

Gameplay: 9.0

Graphics: 7.5

Replayability: 9.5

Overall: 9.5

P. Theimer

paulrtheimer@yahoo.com

Game Discussion with our Staff http://mabusincarnate.8.forumer.com/viewforum.php?f=26

The Wrestler

Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei star in this “behind the scenes” look into the life of a professional wrestler. “The Ram” has his life followed as he goes through hardship and physical disability.

With this film being directed by Darren Aronofsky, you can expect a more unorthodox perspective that is heavy on the film grain. With previous films including Pi and Requiem for a Dream, the expectations were high and it really didn’t fail all in all.

A solid rental, with good acting and a dramatic story telling. Not Aronofsky’s best film to date unless you enjoy this film enough to watch it twice, once should be plenty.

Igor

MGM created this drab computer animated film, and it can easily be set apart from Pixar considering it was pretty much bad. With John Cusack and Jay Leno doing the voice overs, Igor is for the most part unentertaining and can’t be compared to some of the better Computer Generated films available.

It lacks quality and personality, and visually it just isn’t that interesting. A rental maybe, but i’d wait for the television release if it makes it that far.

Fans of “Finding Nemo” and “Kung Fu Panda” should stick with your Pixar roots, MGM really doesn’t deliver on this one.

Pineapple Express

A stoned Seth Rogan witnesses a murder while puffing on a spliff of the rarest strain of pot in the world. Burnout friend joins him in a mindless and idiotic journey running from drug dealers.

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Might be a decent “Party Movie” but nothing that you are really gonna enjoy if you want a good comedy. Rental at best if Half Baked is in your dvd collection.

Paul Blart Mall Cop

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It’s not funny, in fact I didn’t laugh once during the entire thing. I think I was more entertained with Zoolander, and that’s saying A LOT. Downright horrible, should not be viewed by anyone. Ever.

If you see it in the video store, redirect your eyes to the “O” section.

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Adam Sandler stars in this movie about his life as a hotel handyman trying to run the hotel himself as promised during childhood by the owner. He is called on to babysit his sister’s kids that he hasn’t seen in years for a week, remembering his father’s bedtime stories, he begins to tell tales that become reality.

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Worth a rental, maybe even a purchase at a discounted price. It will entertain you more than most of the recent “Comedies” that have released.

So here’s some glimpses of the next Bad Company game, and since I’ve been a BIG fan of the first Bad Company, just had to share it.

What sets this game apart from other Shooters, is the amount of destructible environments, vehicle play and use, and amount of weapons that were available for unlock after gamer scoring on Live. The single player game had a lot of unlocks and achievements as well, so this sequel should surpass what we got before and go beyond and provide a lot more Bang for the Buck

You Mercs out there will love it.

It’s on the way, and the official Television and Web Release Trailer is out and looks fantastic!

Here’s some screenshots

Check out the new videos on ModernWarfare2.com

More news to come from Infinity Ward for this AWESOME game. We look forward to playing it and giving a very in depth review and article on this game once it’s out, also featuring comic or art from us as well.

Stay with us every other day for new updates, news, reviews and comics!

D.