Let me confess from the outset that I was planning to skip this game altogether, simply because I've been pretty unimpressed with Vin Diesel in the past. Yes, I enjoyed Pitch Black, and I do intend to watch The Chronicles of Riddick someday, but the whole I'm-a-badass-anti-hero thing has been done before and arguably done better. After a while, Hollywood's attempts to find ever darker and edgier characters just gets silly, and the character of Riddick is pretty hard to take, for me at least. Yet having said that, I have to say this about Mr. Diesel: he's got a bright future in the game development industry if he really was involved with The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (TCoR:EfBB) in the substantive way what I've read about it suggests.
Holy eye-shine, Batman! I guess I shouldn't be as surprised at great graphics in the era of Far Cry (FC), DOOM 3 (D3), and Half-Life 2 (HL2), but TCoR: EfBB looks as good as any of them and plays almost as smoothly as HL2. This is one of those rare occasions when a group of developers comes wholly out of left field with their own proprietary engine and stacks up nicely against every other industry heavyweight. That's indeed an accomplishment, and it's absolutely true of TCoR:EfBB. Still more impressive, perhaps, is that it didn't take them five years to develop it.
The texture work is the best I've seen in a game—right down to the whiskers on Riddick's scalp—the animation is fluid and realistic, the shadows are well done, the various shader effects are fabulous, etc. In fact, the only complaint I can raise is that I have occasionally seen the edges of polygons in some of the cut scenes. It's a little distracting to see lines in Riddick's neck, for example, but this is an extremely minor complaint against a game with otherwise bleeding-edge graphics.
I can't imagine how this thing runs at all on the Xbox, given how good it looks, but I really don't care. It looks fabulous and runs well on my PC, even at 1600 x 1200 x 32 bpp with 2x anti-aliasing (AA) and 16x anisotropic filtering (AF). I can even crank up the AA to 4x if I'm willing to cope with a little framerate stutter here and there. For as good as this game looks, that's pretty amazing. Seriously, the engine developers seem to have pulled off about 90% of what the HL2 engine can do in about half the development time. Oh, and did I mention that game levels load in about a third of the time of FC, D3, or HL2? The engine is amazing.
Color me surprised, but the voice acting in Riddick is positively superb. Vin Diesel is again to be commended for providing such a powerful performance. True, Riddick is a one trick pony, his entire range of expression varying from menacing to extremely menacing, but it works nicely for the game dialogue nevertheless. The music is surprisingly good, the sound effects are well done, and the overall implementation seems to be completely bug and stutter-free. If I seem like I keep gushing about the technical merits of the game's engine, it's because I am. I'm very impressed with it. The audio is great and bug free; what's not to like?
A few minor complains mar what would otherwise be perfection, first among which is the lack of weapon selection options. Yes, I can hit the tab key to cycle through my weapons, and yes I can hit number keys to select them directly, but whatever happened to the middle mouse button?! This may seem like a small thing, but I've grown so accustomed to it in other first-person shooter (FPS) games that I really missed it in TCoR:EfBB. How hard would it be, developers, to fix that one, small omission?
I must also gripe about the lack of explanation for the hand-to-hand combat interface. The interface itself works nicely, letting the player block, choose various punches, etc. with ease. But I had to go to a third-party guide for the game just to find out how it all worked. The in-game tips could use some beefing up in this regard, as it made the early sections of the game a lot tougher than they otherwise would have been.
Finally, the interface for leaning is a bit weird. Perhaps I've just grown so used to having separate keys for leaning left and leaning right, but it was odd to have to hold down one key while pressing another to lean in TCoR:EfBB. If the developers do make a sequel, I hope they provide the more typical approach. It took me quite a while to get accustomed to the double-key method.
Aside from these complaints, all is great. The lack of on-screen elements really helps suck the player into the character, the cube-thingy menu system is unusual and entertaining, keys are easily remapped (though the defaults work pretty well), and so forth. The interface is pleasant, functional, and easy to navigate.
First, a big congratulations to the developers for handling quick saving and loading so well. I don't normally mention such things, but with other games of late taking forever to "quick" save/load, TCoR:EfBB stands out as a game that makes saving and loading almost completely painless. Frankly, it saves so quickly I wouldn't know that anything had happened were it not for the text that appears.
Second, the whole idea of the health boxes and how they regenerate is effective but weird. On the one hand it rewards careful play, letting the player duck behind cover to heal up a bit without losing a square. Yet on the other hand it raises an obvious question: why is it that Riddick can take a few bullets and just get better by remaining behind cover for a few seconds? It's a weird mechanic to say the least, in terms of realism, but it works quite well for the game.
Odd health-box mechanic aside, though, the rest of the game mechanics are very nicely done. Stealth works as well, or arguably better, than in any other stealth game, giving the player a clear feel for just how stealthy he's being when crouched; the simple screen-fades-to-blue-when-unseen approach provides very effective feedback. And the various quick-kill moves that can be executed from stealth mode are all fabulous. I never got tired of creeping up on some unsuspecting guard and snapping his neck.
Speaking of cool moves, the whole flip-the-enemy's-gun-against-him trick is fabulous. I never really got all that good at doing it, but it was a real hoot when it worked. It gives the unarmed player a much better chance against gun-toting opponents, which isn't a rare situation at all. The same goes for the other melee combat moves. There aren't all that many, but the ability to chain them together in combinations was pretty helpful. Suffice it to say that this game does more with unarmed combat than most games I've seen, which I find refreshing.
The developers also took a slight departure from the mechanics of typical FPS games when it comes to ammunition and reloading, one that makes a huge difference to me at least: weapon reloading discards any rounds remaining in the current clip. That might sound like a negative at first glance, but after playing for a while I'm sold on it. In other games I'm constantly worrying about when to hit the reload key, so much so in some of them that managing one's ammunition becomes a significant factor. TCoR:EfBB gets rid of the hassle by providing the player with plenty of clips but also giving him a reason to want to drain them fully. It may seem like a small thing, but I was absolutely hooked on it by the end of the game. It let me stop thinking about reloading altogether, and that was great.
Surprisingly, the story is worthwhile. True, there are some pretty forgettable characters, but overall it tells one some interesting things about Riddick himself, his relationship with Johns, and so forth. It's not at all clear to me how killing Johns in the introductory level makes any sense, particularly given the way the game ends, but maybe that's something better left unexplored. Suffice it to say that the idea of escaping from Butcher Bay is compelling enough to drive the action, which is really what a game of this nature needs.
Honestly, I think Riddick is one of the best paced games I've ever played. It starts off like a standard FPS, then quickly becomes a stealth-oriented role-playing game. Once Riddick makes his first break it's again a fun shoot-em-up with even cooler weapons than before. I don't want to give it all away, but just as I was getting tired of being caught and returned to a cell, I hit the amazing endgame that serves up some fabulous carnage. Even the final boss battle was one of the more interesting ones I've played. The game manages to bring all its elements together in a way that ensures it's always fresh, never dull. Even the best games usually have a couple of levels that are clunkers but not TCoR:EfBB.
In terms of the total amount of content, I know some reviewers have given the game a hard time. I was trying to find all of the packs of cigarettes, so I was being pretty careful. Playing through the game that way gave me about fifteen hours of fun during my first pass. Given that I got the game during a 48-hour madness sale at GoGamer for a mere $14.90, I certainly feel like I got my money's worth. I suppose I can see how those who paid full price might complain, but it seems to me like the game does have pretty good replay value, particularly because of the various quests that one might well ignore during the first pass through. Fifteen hours doesn't make for a really long game, but these days it's not too shabby. Take that as you will.
For a game that focuses upon a prison escape, it TCoR:EfBB has a healthy variety of environments. The initial level gives way to the prison recreation yard and cell block, which is followed by a rousing trip through the guard quarters, down into the freaky sewers, and so forth. There's a lot of crawling through vents, sneaking around in the mines, etc. The environments are all pretty neat and don't get old during the game. I personally think it would have been neat to get to play a bit on the icy world where Riddick's recollections begin and end, but perhaps that's better left for another day.
The enemies and arsenal are also nicely varied, though I suppose the choices are ultimately limited. In terms of enemies, the player will face plenty of guards, some other prison staff, riot guards, heavy guards, some security bots, a few yucky creatures, and that's about it. The bestiary is limited but worthwhile. Similarly, the weapons, while quite limited in number, are one hell of a good time. The pistol may be mostly useless, and the shotgun and assault rifle may be pretty standard fare, but the tranquilizer gun rocks! I think that's the coolest weapon in a stealth game I've ever seen. The prototype rifle and minigun in the later game are also quite a bit of fun. In short, though the numbers of enemies and weapons are limited, what is there is a solid bunch of fun.
Even the quests are pretty neat. True, they all involve the typical killing, collecting, or being a FedEx guy, but they still manage to be interesting. TCoR:EfBB is a stand-out in the FPS genre in this regard, for it sometimes feels like a first-person role-playing game instead. Better still, the player who doesn't feel like messing around with such things can simply skip the majority of them without any serious penalty, which is great. The game doesn't force the player to do everything exactly one way; rather, it allows the player to make some interesting choices instead about what he wants to do.
And that's to say nothing of the great "vehicle" sequences. One of the things I liked most about Red Faction was how it used over-the-top vehicle sequences as a sort of reward. After the player would make it through some tricky section, he might get to drive a digging machine, a fighter, etc., the point of which being that such vehicles could mow through the bad guys like they weren't even there. TCoR:EfBB is the same in this regard. After having to run and hide from those nasty riot guards it was incredibly satisfying to hop into an empty rig and lay waste to everything that moves. The insanely powerful heavy guard at the end of the game was even more fun.
It should probably be noted, though, that not all is wine and roses. The artificial intelligence (AI), while not obviously stupid, is weak. Enemies seem to have two basic directives once triggered: (1) maneuver to attack position, and (2) attack. Lather, rinse, and repeat until the player dies. I did like how Riddick could sneak away from a firefight and then, while his enemies were busy shooting at his previous position, sneak up behind them and snap their necks. That's a great feature of the game AI, that the enemies don't psychically track him; they have to see him to know where he is. Still, it would have been more challenging if they took better use of cover, worked better as teams, etc.
It also shouldn't be missed that this is definitely a mature game, particularly in its use of profanity. Honestly, I'm glad the characters spew vulgarities insofar as anything else would seem silly. I mean, come on, folks, this is supposed to a game set in a seriously hard-core prison; it's hardly reasonable to expect Emily Post etiquette from the inhabitants thereof. To be clear, it doesn't strike me as gratuitous or overdone, not at all. No, it seems very realistic to me, as does the splattering of blood as the result of gunshots and other wounds. Just be warned ahead of time that most people probably wouldn't want their young kids to be playing this.
Given that there is no multi-player aspect to the game, there remains little else to say here. It's a pity, really, insofar as the game's weapons would have made for some fun deathmatch modes. I've also had some interesting thoughts about a guards versus prisoners mode, an everyone versus Riddick mode, etc. There's a lot of untapped multi-player potential in the Riddick franchise, but this isn't the game that's going to tap it.
In the final analysis, TCoR:EfBB is a game that looks great, sounds great, plays great, and is a rollicking, well-paced, fresh, funny, and exhilarating ride from start to finish. It manages to weld both stealth-action and role-playing elements to an otherwise solid FPS game, driving the action with an interesting story told through the eyes of a surprisingly intriguing anti-hero. Anyone who likes single-player FPS games, and has a stomach for mature themes, won't go wrong in buying this game. I salute Vin Diesel and his colleagues for producing such a great game on their first attempt. Nicely done!
03/31/2005