The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (Xbox 360)

Assualt on Dark Athena is the second game to come from the riddick universe. After the critically acclaimed Escape from Butcher Bay, fans knew it was only a matter of time before a sequel was made.

The game is made up of two campaigns, the new Assault on Dark Athena story and the old Escape from Butcher Bay story. The Escape from Butcher bay Stroy has however beeen given a massive graphics update and some minor touches to make up ...
...and is a continuation of the story where Riddick finds himself on the ship, Dark Athena and must escape.

The gameplay is as good as ever, with some new additions. The combat is still gory violent fun, with huge gaping gashes apearing from stabs and slashes with knifes and such. the combat is engaging and fun, you feel really good when you succesfully get a special kills or counter-kill and are rewarded with a bloody show where riddick ... more

Assualt on Dark Athena is the second game to come from the riddick universe. After the critically acclaimed Escape from Butcher Bay, fans knew it was only a matter of time before a sequel was made.

The game is made up of two campaigns, the new Assault on Dark Athena story and the old Escape from Butcher Bay story. The Escape from Butcher bay Stroy has however beeen given a massive graphics update and some minor touches to make up for previous critisisms. The Assault On Dark Athena campaign is set almost straight after butcher Bay ends and is a continuation of the story where Riddick finds himself on the ship, Dark Athena and must escape.

The gameplay is as good as ever, with some new additions. The combat is still gory violent fun, with huge gaping gashes apearing from stabs and slashes with knifes and such. the combat is engaging and fun, you feel really good when you succesfully get a special kills or counter-kill and are rewarded with a bloody show where riddick kills the victim in various ways with various weapons.

There is some platforming and you can climb, jump and shimmy along ledges. dark Athena takes these platforming elements more into play in the second half of the campaign. Most of the gameplay also uses FPS elements where Riddick usies a variety of assault rifles and shotguns to take down enemies in traditional FPS gameplay.

Another new element added in Dark Athena is controlling drones which happens twice and lets Riddick control droness, robotic humanoids and lets you kill people without being killed yourself. You can also grab a mech suit for some fun scenes.

The best moves are silent kills. The use of shadows comes into play throughout the game everywhere and are vital to surviving. Riddick can sneak up on unsuspacting enemies and silently and violently kill them from behind. he can then drag them into the shadows as to not alert other guards who spot the bodies.

The graphics in the game are brilliant with Riddck looking awesome and no two characters looking the same, bar the guards who all wear the same uniforms. the lighting is the best i have ever seen in a game and without them the game looks slightly wierd. When in a well lit area you can see inconsistencies in the character moddels and also on some poor textures. Overall though the games graphics are great.

Enemy AI is very buggy. Enemies can see you even if you come out of hiding from behind them in sneak mode. They can even spot you in the dark just by being near you. They are also rubbish at combat and can eaily be taken down by Riddick in seconds when they aren't in a group. They never go behind cover and stand still to shoot Riddick, easy pickings with riddicks almost perfect aim. They can also kill Riddick in seconds with there advanced guns from afar which makes for annoying scenes. There is plenty of variety in enemies to be had however and when you meet the new ones they make a great entrance every time.

The rag doll physics are also laughable. Bodies will drop heavily when a grenade goes off beside them but will randomly fly sometimes when hit with a club. They will fly off screen for no reason other than being hit with a tiny club. When shot they will react realistically however. When killed in a special kill, there bodies will go into rag doll half way between falling over, resulting in them looking fake. They will also glitch through objects all the time and be stuck in between walls.

The multiplayer will satisfy most players but it does feel tacked on. One great mode is Pitch Black mode which i won't spoil for [people, but it really is awesome fun. Guns and kills is mutiplayer aen't made so satisfying as it is limited to mainly gun kills and when a melee weapon is used it will take ages to kill someone, resulting in no special kills.

The Voice acting is the best on a game to date with even minor characters sounding great. riddick's heavily deep voice sounds awesome and never stops being badass. Dark Athenas new characters are all really good and sound brilliant.

Overall, Riddick is an awesome game, Great graphics and extremely fun and engaging gameplay makes it one not to miss. 

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