Chronicles of Riddick Initial Impressions

Never one to pass up a good deal, I recently picked up the Chronicles of Riddick from Direct2Drive for $5 as part of their five-year anniversary sale. While my previous experience with Direct2Drive wasn't great, it really wasn't that bad this time. Turns out they use the Fileplanet download manager which I had installed to obtain the Fallen Earth and Champions Online betas. With that installed properly, I must admit the experience was much smoother. However, given equal pricing, it offers me NOTHING that Steam doesn't already provide, with a loss of a friends list. In fact, I enjoy the friends chat there so much, that I actually added Riddick into Steam so I could still use the overlay.

As for the game itself, I must admit I was pleasantly surprised. Movie-licensed games are often notoriously bad (as my own game, The Tale of Despereaux, can attest); however, I'd heard good things about Riddick. I was not disappointed.

The version I purchased came with the original game, Escape from Butcher Bay, as well as the sequel, Dark Athena. Escape from Butcher Bay is a five-year-old game at this point, nevertheless, the graphics have held up surprisingly well. I instantly turned the settings most of the way up and found the game to not only look quite nice, but also run smoothly. Furthermore, the game doesn't even have any annoying graphic glitches on my ATI card... something that has become increasingly common lately.

The basic premise in Escape From Butcher Bay is that you have been captured by a bounty hunter and are dropped off at the high security prison, Butcher Bay. The game plays from a first person perspective, with all the typical trappings you'd expect from a shooter. There is a decent variety of ranged weapons (shotguns, assault rifles, etc), as well as melee weapons (shivs, clubs, screwdrivers, knuckledusters, etc). Additional, there are some basic stealth elements in which you can sneak around and perform some "stealth" kills. I've been quite pleased with the combat variety so far, and the overall difficulty also seems pretty good.

The place the game really shines though, is in its "adventure" features. Besides being able to fight, you also get opportunities to talk to other inmates and guards, taking quests for them or just being snarky. You can collect cigarette cartons to unlock extra features, collect money from hidden caches, and even gamble in a simple craps game. My favorite thing so far is when one drug addicted inmate asked me to gather some moths for him that were flying around the yard. When I got back to him, he was VERY happy; I must admit I chuckled a bit. While it's certainly no Fallout 3, it does provide quite a few interesting diversions and even some alternate solutions at times.

I honestly can't think of any real complaints I have with the game so far, but will definitely point them out in my final review.