The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

The Story and the Gameplay

Assault on Dark Athena‘s timeline continues immediately after the escape from Butcher Bay, with Riddick and Johns flying through space in sleep chambers as they are captured and “salvaged” by the mysterious Dark Athena predator salvage ship.

You escaped Butcher Bay for something more sinister

You crash land on Aguerre - but now have to get back to Athena!

The AI in Assault on Dark Athena is variable and somewhat mediocre compared to other games.  The drones are mindless and only some are controlled by mercs, but they generally follow patrol patterns and ignore everything not in their line of sight. The former mercs, now mercenaries under Rivas, also have limited AI but it is more aggressive and aware than the drones.  Some fall back and take cover while others run forward and confront Riddick in different patterns. After awhile, you can predict their sequence but their sheer numbers make it reasonably challenging.

Dark Athena is not a very difficult game and if your Riddick dies, you simply have to go back to the start of the checkpoint with no further penalty imposed.  Fortunately, there are many checkpoints, but it is still annoying for a PC gamer to not have ‘anytime save’ available as an option, especially because there are anytime saves available in the ’04 game (F5) although ‘F9’ still loads the last saved game in the new game.  Occasionally it may get confusing but there are maps you can refer to on the Dark Athena and also on the planet’s surface to help you get around.

If you get lost, check the maps conventiently located on the ship and on the planet also.

The difference now is that Escape from Butcher Bay was rather new and refreshing for a 2004 movie-licensed game but Assault on Dark Athena attempts little new for ’09. Dark Athena simply continues the Riddick escape story with the emphasis shifted a bit more toward action and shooter-oriented than EfBB. If you like EfBB, then Dark Athena is more of the same. Escape from Butcher Bay was relatively short, around 8-10 hours and Dark Athena is probably about the same length or perhaps a little longer.  They both follow the same pattern – tutorial dream sequence, escape and boss battle, recapture and final battle but with a little better final boss battle in Dark Athena than in EFBB.

Rivas - Riddick's enemy

You may spend a total of 20 hours for EfBB and Dark Athena combined if you run right though it.  It takes more time if you explore and get every bonus card which unlock parts of the story and give Riddick the option of some side quests. It is varied and you do not do the same thing over-and-over, nor do you feel you are given a “shopping list” where you have to run back and forth across the map to stretch the game out. By the time you are starting to repeat something, you have new challenges to face. For example, climbing a seemingly endless wall of storage containers while avoiding the guards and piercing searchlights should have been tedious – but it was actually quite exciting as you had to time your moves really well or you ended up in the spotlight bleeding from multiple weapons’ fire.

You have nowhere to go but up .. and up and up and up! Don't be seen!!

Unlike with EfBB we even have the makings of a Ripley-little girl type “partnership” where Riddick is a paternal protector and she plays an important part in the end.  At least one scene reminded me of the Big Daddy-Little Sister relationship in BioShock.  Dark Athena’s story is good and probably of the caliber of EfBB and Pitch Black the Movie.  The story is not outstanding but it serves to tie the action sequences together pretty well and it advances the plot without huge plot holes.

Riddick's Drone Warrior to the Rescue!

Voice acting is a “10”.  Vin Diesel of course voices his Riddick character in his best style.  For example, as a dying Merc boss gasped out at Riddick in defiance, “I could have had you”, Riddick replies, “Well, you were better than average, that is some consolation” … so you get these classic “Riddicisms” all throughout the game. One well-known quote from EfBB is when Riddick wastes all the guards around him in his Fury-rage mode and blasts the boss through the door declaring, “See what you made me do.”

See what you made me do

The audio is very good and you get clues where your enemies are by listening carefully to their footsteps and voices besides using the visual clues such as shadows and searchlights.

There is humor and it is very black and mature. Riddick’s enemies may even curse like many of us do while playing it and there is real humor in eavesdropping on the mercs’ conversations. There are some side stories but they are never developed well except for the little girl, Lynn and her family. And you know not to care about them because Riddick himself warns that people he cares about seem to die.  But Dark Athena has a sufficient story – one of escape, impossible odds and survival.  Riddick wears no armor, so he can die relatively easily, but fortunately his health will regenerate a little.  And there are plenty of health stations and the charge for them is easy to find.

The med station is the equivalent of a health pack and will restore the Health boxes that were lost

Ammo is too plentiful mostly and you almost never have to really conserve.  Weapons are varied and include melee as well as ranged weapons which are quite accurate if you use the aiming feature.  They are intuitive to use and some are better than others; it is easy to pick four perhaps and stay with them through the entire game.  The SCAR weapon you get later on is pretty clever as it fires unlimited single shots of energy blob that sticks to your target and up to 5 may be detonated at one time for maximum effect and to solve puzzles that cannot be solved in other ways.

Stealth is awesome as in EfBB. As you are progressively more hidden, the screens turns more blue until you are invisible to your enemies. You also have a lot of very nice stealth kills available.  The cutscenes are good with the only flaw being that the lip synching is still poor – but not as bad as the original EfBB and Dark Athena is improved even over the remade EfBB.

Since enemy AI is inconsistent, sheer numbers and especially hidden placement of your enemies is what make it a real challenge. Of course, you can also adjust the difficulty level at any time, up or down.  You generally scope out a room and enter slowly – remembering to also look up.  Enemies tend to be drones or mercs; humans or spider bots and turrets and smaller bosses. These bosses include the Alpha Drone that requires special targeting in a hide-and-seek but will release a grenade that proves useful in advancing when you finally perform a close-up finishing kill that is pretty satisfying.