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Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
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Game Name:
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Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay |
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Console:
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Macintosh |
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Reviewed:
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Unknown |
Frequent moviegoers are likely to know who Riddick is. He’s been in two movies so far: Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick. From what I understand, Pitch Black was successful enough that they decided to make more movies using the same character. For those who haven’t seen the films, Riddick is a criminal. He’s extremely strong, stealthy and very good at fighting. He is a true survivor and won’t hesitate to kill anyone who gets in his way. He doesn’t seem to have any particular long term ambitions though; he just wants to be left alone.
The game is set in two periods. The very start and end of the game are short CGI movies set just before the start of the second movie. The playable parts of the game are set some time before the first movie. Riddick has been captured by Johns, the bounty hunter from the first movie who had him as a captive then as well. Johns is taking him to Butcher Bay, a very rough prison on a desert planet. Both the movies and the game don’t explain the penal system particularly well – it seems that bounty hunters bringing in a prisoner can negotiate for the amount of money they get. It’s not clear why the warden would want to pay more than the posted bounty for a particular prisoner. I assume it’s some kind of prestige thing for having such a dangerous criminal behind bars or perhaps the government pays the prison based on the number and danger level of the prisoners they are holding.
Escape from Butcher Bay is a first person game with the occasional third person view. When Riddick is walking around the game is first person, when he is climbing or is using an item, the game switches to third person to give you a better look at the action. Unlike many FPS games, Riddick is not about shooting from start to finish. Being a prisoner, Riddick doesn’t have easy access to guns; even getting a shiv (makeshift knife) isn’t a simple task. When you do get hold of some firepower, the prison guards and security turrets will start shooting at you if your weapon is drawn. The AI of the guards is pretty good when it comes to watching you. If you get too close to one, they will curse at you and belt you away.
The game is a combination of adventure, stealth and action – usually in that order. Riddick can do quests for the prisoners to get items or favours from them. This will usually lead to him being able to sneak into an area in order to help enact an escape plan. Soon after that he’ll typically get a gun and be able to start dealing out death and destruction.
During the stealth part of the game, or even during the action part, Riddick can use his natural stealthiness to get past guards in several ways. If Riddick is crouching within a shadowed or dark area, the screen will be shaded blue to indicate he is fully hidden from sight. In this state, guards cannot see you. Making use of the shadows can let you get past the guards without them ever suspecting you were there. Alternately, if Riddick sneaks up behind someone, he can break their neck. This can be done quickly and loudly or slowly and quietly – the latter is better if other guards are nearby. You can also drag bodies away and hide them in shadows or behind objects to avoid alerting the other guards in the area. You can’t use stealth for the entire game though; in some locations a fight is inevitable with some enemies spotting you even if you are hiding in the shadows. Even if a guard does spot you while you are unarmed, if you are close enough, Riddick can grab their gun, spin it around and blow their brains out with it. That isn’t to say he can just kill a guard and grab their gun. Machine guns have a genetic sensor which stops anyone other than guards from using them. For some strange reason, other weapons like shotguns and pistols don’t have this lock. Not that having one of them guarantees success; the prison does have guard turrets which are very deadly shots. These will open fire on you if you misbehave by carrying a weapon around openly or start assaulting the guards or other inmates.
Some guards are wearing special powered combat armour; under those conditions you can’t kill them with normal weapons. However, in some places Riddick can steal one of these suits and go on a rampage of his own. There isn’t a huge variety of weapons in this game. It’s understandable though, this is a prison, not a military base. As far as prisons go though, it’s not exactly the cleanest operation. There are underground black markets for shivs and drugs. The guards often look away for organised fist fights to the death or even kill indiscriminately in order to keep prisoners under control.
Riddick is famous in the movies for his special eyesight. His eyes have been modified so that he can see extremely well in near total darkness. In fact, his eyes don’t work well in normal light levels as they are far too bright for him. He normally wears a pair of tinted goggles to filter out the light. During the game, you will see Riddick get his special vision. It becomes very useful when moving around dark areas from that point on as you can toggle it on or off at will. It’s important to note that the enhanced vision is useless in well lit areas as you practically can’t see anything. Care must also be taken when emerging into a well lit area from a dark one as a guard might begin shooting at you before you can switch vision modes back.
The health bar in this game is a bit different than other games. Instead of being shown as an absolute number, health is shown as a series of small blocks. When you take damage, a block begins to reduce in size until it vanishes. If you stay out of trouble for a short time, the block will restore itself to full size. If you take more damage however the block vanishes and the next block starts degrading. If you lose all of your blocks you die. Health can be restored from various health stations found throughout the game. There are also some special health stations that increase the maximum number of blocks you have by one. The regular stations have a limited number of healing charges; you can find reloads for them in some locations or recover them from dead guards.
The sound in this game is quite good. Vin Diesel does the voice acting for Riddick and, judging from the credits, he helped with some of the game design as well. The graphics are, quite simply, excellent. I’d personally rate them as being better than Half Life if only because of the animation quality. Early in the game, Riddick will be involved in a series of melee fights (i.e. fist fighting, unless you locate a shiv). The prisoners who you are fighting are animated extremely well and realistically. The game supports DirectX shader models 1 and 2; you can select which you want based on your hardware. It also has a mode called 2.0++ which is supposed to be for Geforce 6 series cards only. However, I have one of these cards, and while turning this mode on looks great, the frame rate is really lousy. I have heard that the new Geforce 7800GTX cards can handle this mode though. Either way, the game looks amazing even with the lower settings.
Aside from my confusion about how the penal system works with regards to bounties, there is another part of the game that confuses me. The extremely dangerous criminals are placed into cryo sleep where, except for a few minutes of exercise time each day, they are kept on ice all the time. This makes no sense no matter which way I look at it. The idea of prison is to keep people behind bars so that they hopefully learn their lesson and reform. Keeping people in cryo sleep for most of the time wouldn’t do anything to help reform someone since most of the time you are, literally, out cold. If the person’s time in cryo sleep counts towards their sentence then they will leave the jail without even having spent an entire day conscious. If it doesn’t count towards their jail time or if the prisoner is never to be released then they are just wasting resources. If, as I guessed, the government pays them money just for having a particular prisoner under lock and key, then I doubt the government would be happy with prisons profiteering by keeping high value convicts on ice indefinitely.
There is a gripe I have about many of the quests you undertake. For a lot of them, your reward is a pack of cigarettes. In game terms, this unlocks something in the extras section – concept art, preview movies etc. That might be interesting to some but I found myself wishing for something more useful like a weapon, ammo or weapon upgrade.
All things considered, this game is practically a must for fans of the movies and most fans of FPS games. It may not be as appealing to people who prefer their FPS games to be full of mindless action. If you prefer a more atmospheric FPS which requires you to think in parts, Escape from Butcher Bay should be right up your alley.
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