Assault on Dark Athena picks up moments after Riddick's escape from Butcher Bay. In flight away from the prison, Riddick and Johns' vessel is drawn into the clutches of a mercenary ship called the Dark Athena. Johns is taken captive while Riddick manages to awake from cryo-sleep and evade capture. With mercenaries in pursuit of the bounty on Riddick's head, Riddick must do what he does best - kill those who get in his way and escape, using sneaking, hand to hand combat & guns anything it takes. Starring Vin Diesel as the voice of Riddick.
The plot's less interesting than Butcher Bay's, though new darker graphics and ulaks are defenitely an asset.
Buy this just to play the first game; Escape from butcher bay.
You get improved graphics and gameplay than the original had.
Dark Athena is sadly worse: boring level design and tedious quests.
Still an okay game though.
But again: Buy this to play Escape From Butcher Bay! Best movie licensed game ever!
Thanks!!1
Really underestimated game by players one of the best legendary FPS!
What a wonderful game, with a wonderful protagonist and great gameplay, a mix of stealth, FPS and hand-to-hand fighting in a greedy dark sci-fi setting. And there's Vin Diesel too ^^
A great sequel, imo even better than the original game :)
Just like Escape from Butcher Bay, Assault on Dark Athena is a pretty good game. Its got the same things i liked but also the same things i disliked from the previous.
Stealth is the best part of this game, when it works.
Riddick can see in the dark so you must shoot out the lights and use his night vision. However often even when its pitch black enemies will still see you and just riddle you with bullets.
And some lights are covered in bullet proof glass for some reason so there are some you cant shoot out.
Worst part is the shooting. Guns act weird. When too close to a wall, object or enemy the gun disappears and you cant shoot.
At some points you use mechs also fun.
Hand to hand combat also good when it works, though there is less here compared to the first game.
The voice acting is again very good.
I also have to give an extra point to this game for having a way more interesting antagonist. Gale Revas: beautiful, sexy, mean and dangerous.
Each section is designed for a particular style of gameplay. So you'll be going from a stealth section to a brawling one, then the last third of the game being an all out shooter. This is really jarring having to switch from one to other. Rather than having any emergent gameplay, you are forced into one or the other.
+Graphics are nice and have a distinct design
+Voice acting is top notch
+Multiplayer is surprisingly fun on pitch black mode
+We get to see a brief glimpse of a planet that is real beautiful and serene.
-It seems to lack ideas, this sequel if you can call it that.
It feels like the chronicles of riddick movie in that it feels like a ham fisted attempt at squeezing all the mystique out of everything while giving us only the bare bones of story, characters. We aren't even given any side missions to do like we could in escape from butcher bay.
-a fair bit shorter than the previous game, and for such a short game you do a fair bit of backtracking.
-level design is no where near upto par of the previous games, dark athena isn't the big sprawling ship you think. Its basically a series of corridoors with some storage areas and robot storage. One short section in the "labs".
-gameplay isn't up to par, you are always forced into stealth, brawling or shooting. You're never given a choice, its always one course of action that a section is designed for.
-Ironlord is the cheapest enemy in the series, he counterattacks you every time (and it takes out one hp each hit) so you can never hit him first. This is why the counter attack system is always so stupid to be included in multiplayer or against unfairly cheap AI. You can never attack first or you automatically get hit.