The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

[AlexBrady]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

Sounds incredible.

[Candyman5]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

Never played the first one but heard it was great. I may have to give this game a look at.

[bigfnjoe96]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

Develop Q/A Session from TXB:

http://interviews.teamxbox.com/xbox/...-Interview/p1/

Bigfnjoe96: How close will the storyline of Dark Athena be to the Pitch Black/Chronicles of Riddick movie storyline?

Samuel Ranta-Eskola: Everything in this game is happening before the Pitch Black movie. But we’re building the game out of concepts and ideas presented in the movies as well as adding our personal touch to the franchise.

[Flawless]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

New Screens

[jmood88]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

Damn that's nice.

[Flawless]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

Eurogamer Hands-On

While the gameplay focus is the same for this outing, over the past year the sheer scope of Dark Athena has changed considerably. What was originally envisioned as an HD remake of the first game with a single extra level attached, has blossomed into an - alleged - eleven-hour adventure that is now being pitched as a true sequel, with a reworked Butcher Bay thrown in as a friendly treat. Unlikely as that transformation sounds, a chance to play a fat three-hour chunk of the new campaign suggests the slant is entirely justified. Dark Athena, the towering pirate spaceship fortress where almost - but not quite - all of the new story unfolds, is shaping up to be an excellent playground for a game that feels suitably weighty.

A landscape of crates, steel plates, rusting airlocks and copious venting, Dark Athena's interiors are familiar but never predictable, the work of a developer with a confident eye for the right detail - a hasty patch of botched soldering, or an artfully sparking control panel - as well as a sixth sense for knowing when to break up the machine-riveted wall panelling with a window providing a gaping angle out onto a distant nebula and skybox filled with twinkling stars. Athena is also filled with devious level layouts and a casual sprinkling of brain-teasing environmental puzzles. Shadowy and claustrophobic, it's tailor-made for decent stealthing, and reinforces the notion that Riddick is a hunting game more than a shooter.

Proper guns are glimpsed in the game's brief dreamy prologue, and heavily hinted at for much of what follows, and, in a design u-turn from Butcher Bay, they're no longer DNA coded to their original owners, a mechanic which called for an irritating unlock ritual. It's an indicator of a new focus on more accessible action; another one, which is easier to evaluate, is the tweaks that have been made to the first game's hand-to-hand combat. Both punching and blocking have been notably tightened, and a range of suitably sadistic melee weapons (the most brilliantly unpleasant being the Ulaks: twin serrated scythes that create a decidedly unnerving squelch as they cut through someone else's skin and which I hope to never accidentally drop on my own foot) have improved what was slightly fudged with the first game.

Alongside the brawling, as with Butcher Bay, the game's environment encourages gruesome experimentation, whether it's hiding in a corner and breaking someone's spine as they stroll past, or even picking your moment and landing on them from above, like a shaven-headed Super Mario decked out in a sexy pair of cyber-goth swimming goggles.

Breaking up the combat is a fair degree of variety, even in the first few hours. Starbreeze knows this genre so well by now it can construct a set-piece from almost nothing: a climbing-frame room full of empty crates and some patrolling guards, or a locked-door puzzle involving a Drone and the game's first weapon - a rather sharp hairpin. Equally, the series' habit of switching to third-person whenever you scramble up a ladder or climb onto a crate, makes it a nurturing environment for surprisingly involved platforming sections, including one sweaty crawl up an almost sheer wall, avoiding a roving searchlight.

Elsewhere, even Butcher Bay's RPG elements have had a reworking, benefiting from clearer objectives and the deviously compact design of the maps, which shortcuts backtracking. They also serve to show off the pretty dazzling character models and animation. The textures may be less detailed than Crysis, a game in which everybody appeared to have their ravaged, dirty-pored skin cloned from a single reference photo of Bill Murray, but the performances are far more actorly - subtle facial movements add a peculiar force to the dialogue, and there's a notable absence of the near-omnipresent shrugging that passes for physical performances in many games.

Besides all this are the tweaks you might expect: better lighting, better textures, a streamlining of the first game's weapon-selection system, and a more refined use of Riddick's night vision, which sees it playing a subtle part in many of the game's puzzles as well as helping you to spot Drones lurking in the darkness. All of these upgrades have apparently found their way across the disk to Butcher Bay, too, suggesting that there will be more than enough reason to break out of its prison once more.

However that turns out, Dark Athena itself is shaping up to be one of the first big games this year that you might want to start getting excited about. It may be more crates, more spaceships, and more breathy snapping of necks, but the moment you first see that predatory shadow inching along a wall and realise that it's you, and that you're about to do someone a rather nasty injury, and that you're really, really looking forward to it, memories of other games and other kills will likely fade into the darkness.

[bigfnjoe96]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

New Trailer: "Desperation"

http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/907533/the-chronicles-of-riddick-assault-on-dark-athena/videos/riddick_desperation_012009.html;jsessionid=3aupx21t3hogp

[CaptainZombie]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

This game is looking great.

[bigfnjoe96]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

Gamespot Preview... Warning info may contain spoilers

http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/chroniclesofriddickassaultondarkathena/news.html?sid=6202859

Our three hours with Dark Athena were incredibly enjoyable, and we really wanted to stay longer and play more. The game offers all of the elements that made the first game so great, and the voice acting, set pieces, and new combat elements added even more to the experience. Atari claims that the game is finished, and that the team is now bug testing and polishing ahead of the March release date.

[WDOgF0reL1fe]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

I dunno if this was posted yet... but check this video out!
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[Flawless]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

Release set for early April.

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[Flawless]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

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[WDOgF0reL1fe]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

Is it true they are packaging Escape From Butcher Bay with this game? That's what I heard... and since the game is not BC on 360 that would be awesome...

[Flawless]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

Yep, a remake of Butcher Bay will be included.

[Goffs]

Re: The Chronicles of Ridd ick: Assault on Dark Athena (360/PS3)

^^ WHICH IS F'N AWESOME!! A must buy for me on the PC...