The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay is preparing to turn everything you think you know about first-person action games upside-down. With an aggressive convicted-felon anti-hero, a prison full of Rated M dialogue, and a unique gameplay mix of stealth and all-out warfare, this title is intense, gritty, and violent. It’s also packing some powerful graphic innovations that make it a joy to behold.
The title character comes from Vin Deisel’s role in the excellent (although overlooked) sci-fi gem Pitch Black. Deisel will star as Riddick in another movie in 2004, which will also be called The Chronicles of Riddick, but the game’s plot is nowhere near the same as the movie’s plot. Instead, the Xbox title will start with a flashback to the pre-Pitch Black era, when Richard B. Riddick was just another inmate in a futuristic a maximum-security prison.
Bad guys finish first.
The Chronicles of Riddick uses a first-person point of view, but it’s not just another shooter. In the first few levels, you don’t have access to any firearms at all. In fact, you can’t use them even if you find them. Each of the prison guards’ guns is protected by a DNA lock that delivers a powerful jolt of pain to anyone who isn’t the owner. So, you must rely on stealth, homemade knives and clubs, and your own hand-to-hand abilities instead. First-person fist-fighting is still new territory for console games, but The Chronicles of Riddick does it with characteristic style. The combat system includes reversals, which let you take an opponent’s weapon and turn it against themso even if you don’t have a weapon, you’re far from helpless.
Fight dirty, live longer.
Eventually, you’ll reach the prison’s computers and be able to upload your own DNA into the system, which will allow you to use guns. From there, the game becomes an adrenaline-fueled firefight against heavily armed correctional officers and the occasional ‘Mech-like suit of power armor. Human foes are actually the least of your worries because there is a race of murderous mutated freaks in the tunnels below the prison. You’ll have to fight your way through them, too. Only down there, it’ll be much, much darker.
That’s quite all right, though, since seeing in the dark is one of the things you does best as the hero of this thriller. The game will show how this “surgical shine job” was acquired and how it now allows you to see in the dark (and makes your eyes reflect light like a cat’s). With the “shine” enhancing his senses, you can perform even better in stealth mode, seeing and hearing without being seen or heard. The A.I. will know enough to come looking for you and point their flashlights into every corner, but if you’re slick and you keep moving, you’ll take out the enemies long before they ever find you.
The Chronicles of Riddick makes use of advanced mapping, per-pixel shading, and dynamic lighting to create some of the sharpest graphics to date on the Xbox. This makes the game look spectacular, but the graphics also allow for (and sometimes demand)Splinter Cell-type strategy, like when you’re sneaking around the prison. When a single light source can reveal you to the armed guards, you want to avoid that light source … or even better, destroy it so that you have the advantage.
Riddick is a tough character, but he’ll have his work cut out for him in The Chronicles of Riddick. If you’re ready for a hardcore first-person experience with a handful of innovative twists, polish up your eyeballs and prepare to descend into darkness.
