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I've finally got around to playing "The Chronicles of Riddick : Escape From Butcher Bay" from start to finish. The general expectations for games made from movie licenses is for them to be a rushed, dodgy experience but I must say that this game is really quite polished and damn fun to play.
The character of Riddick was so successful in the films due to him being such a dangerous and uncontrollable force and the game has managed to bring that character to life perfectly. While playing as Riddick, you really will feel like the ultimate tough guy. Snapping guards necks when they least expect it, turning their guns on them during a struggle and generally taking down anything that comes your way. It really helps that Vin Diesel does the voice for Riddick in the game as he has such a distinct, gravely way of speaking. The likeness of the character in the game is also spot-on, so in other words, they've absolutely nailed the Riddick character in every way.
The whole game is based around escaping from the Butcher Bay prison system (as if the title didn't give that away). It involves working your way to the top of the system by taking out key cell mates and finding ways of moving between locations such as the mines and security centres. Most of the time, you have choices as to how any of these objectives are to be achieved. You can fight your way from location to location, taking down guards through pure force. Or you can take a more stealthy approach, taking out lighting systems and using your Riddick night vision to sneak up and take the guards out silently. There are actually plenty of times during the game where you have basically no weapons, so it's quite important to learn both aspects of the game.
The graphics are fantastic. They have a really gritty feel to them that suits the setting perfectly and the characters themselves look pretty good. The lighting and shadows are what make the game though. With the player trying hide in the shadows and the enemies having torches on their guns, things become really interesting and it looks extremely realistic in that department. There is quite a bit of fracturing in the textures where they overlap, but that's a minor qualm and doesn't effect game play.
The game isn't very long and it also isn't very hard. I finished it in just a few hours and only found one section to be quite hard which was halfway through the game. The rest is pretty easy but totally entertaining. There is some replay value to the game as there are packs of smokes to find that open up special features and bits of information. I must admit that I had no interest in these options, so the whole collecting thing was fairly redundant for me, but others may find it interesting and challenging. I guess the best reason to replay the game would be to try to get through sections using stealth rather than force or vice versa.
"The Chronicles of Riddick : Escape From Butcher Bay" is a great game that is a lot of fun to play. It's not on par with games such as Half Life 2, but considering how bad movie license based games normally are, this one is exceptional. You can pick it up really cheap these days too.
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This game was very good, although with work, food, and sleep, I could only play it for maybe 2 hours a night. I beat it in a week. It was only $15 though. So I feel like it was a deal. It's the kind of game you beat once and then up the difficulty level. Very unique in that it's a good stealth ops game with a twist: anti-hero convict Riddick has to escape the unescapeable Butcher Bay. Most stealth ops games involve government agencies or "good guys". You won't find that here.
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First I'd like to mention that I have been playing FPS games since DOOM and have not missed one since (except those who have had bad reviews), and I was always interested in this game but no THAT much. It was released on December 2004, I started playing it 4 days ago and finished it today, and I must say it is an incredible game! I regret not buying it earlier!
Grapichs: 9.5/10 (Just almost DOOM3-like)
Sound: 10/10 (It is just SUPERB)
Gameplay: 10/10 (Great stealth, action and adventure mix)
Length: 8/10 (Just a few hours long, but GREAT few hours)
Replayability: 8/10 (No multiplayer, not really a "re-playable" game, but has director's comments unlocked once finished and other bonuses)
Value: 10/10 (It's way cheap, BUY IT!)
Parts I liked the most: The intro (basically the first 20 minutes will prove to you that this is a completely different and original game), the "Riddick Feel" (you just can't get over feeling like you are actually Riddick), the real Vin Diesel voice, great gameplay, videos are also great (intro is the best).
I would also like to mention that it is more inmersive than F.E.A.R. in the FPS "feel", more fun than Half-Life 2 overall, and it's almost as good as Doom 3. I would have liked it to be longer and have more weapons, though. It is also a bit buggy.
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The moment we've all been waiting for has arrived, or you're just curious about the game, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Either way, I hope to enlighten the uninitiated and maybe rouse a little indignation in the hearts of those dangerous religious cultists otherwise known as "Riddick fans." I've heard so much about this game, and it has received almost universal hoorahs from reviewers and players alike. Well, ALMOST universal as you shall soon see (I left my opinion of the game until last assuming that my opinion isn't all that important).
So what kind of a game is Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay? At first blush it may appear to be a first-person shooter. However, the game is by no means all shooting, at least on the player's part, and you'll spend a lot of time sneaking around hoping that some huge sentry doesn't spot you and blow you all to hell. As a result, I'd describe Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay as a "first-person stealth-action game."
Stealth makes up the bulk of the gameplay, and you'd be wise to find places to hide. Fortunately, most of the levels have ample places to hide like dark corners and behind large crates (yeah, as if we've never seen a lot of crates in action games). As a shooter fan I found such gameplay to be a bit awkward, and many times I found myself pining for a huge gun to blow away those pesky guards. But all is never lost, of course, and after perhaps a few unsuccessful attempts I finally found a way through a tough level.
This emphasis on stealth is possibly the reason that the levels seem relatively small. I found some levels to be so small that I kept running into the loading screen that takes you back and forth between these levels. Similar to Doom 3, these levels are very often dark, and you can even shoot out lights making them almost pitch dark. Fortunately, you have a "night vision" available to you so you can still find your way around all the while being able to sneak up on the guards who presumably cannot see in the dark. I found myself hesitating to take this course because I liked the looks of the levels with the lights on, and although the levels are largely bare and empty, they have some very nice textures.
The difficulty of the game oddly reached its peak at about the halfway point, and I was surprised at how easy it got toward the end. You then have available to you ranged weapons like a heavy mini gun, and you'll then delight in filling full of holes those guards that made your life miserable. You even get to don their armored suits and shoot them with some powerful weapons. Why the developers decided to ease up on the difficulty this way is anybody's guess, but I got the impression that they wanted to cater a bit to shooter fans by giving them some run and gun. In any event, I'd say that Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay is a relatively easy game overall.
How difficult is this game on your hardware? The box lists the minimum requirements as a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4, 256 MB RAM, a 64 MB graphics card, and 3.7 GB hard drive space. The only specification on that list that appears to be reasonable is the hard drive space, and I'd recommend a much more robust PC to get this game to play smoothly. I played it on my Dell Dimension 8300 configured with a 3 GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, and a 128 MB Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card. Even then, I experienced some hiccups while playing.
So what's my verdict? Frankly, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. This is a decent game, but there's a lot of better games out there. It's possible that the relatively complicated gameplay grows on some players, and as you replay the game you get better and experience more of what Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay has to offer. But hey, at $15, you don't take a big risk at paying a lot for a game you end up not liking.
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The story driven game play and the top quality voice acting really put this game above the rest. This game might be out for 2 years already, but it still has some of the most impressive graphics I have ever seem. This game really make you feel like you are Riddick, a total bad a&#. I truly hope future FPS follow the same footsteps.
As for buy.com, 100% reliable like always. Thanks guys.
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