By now, reams have been written about the excellence of the original Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. I don't need to spend even more time telling you how good it was, or how good its upcoming remake-slash-quasi-sequel Assault on Dark Athena is looking (we've covered that ground before, too).
But one thing Butcher Bay lacked was multiplayer. I didn't necessarily feel it needed multiplayer at the time, great as its story mode was, but Starbreeze has gone and filled in that check mark on Dark Athena's list of marketing bullet points anyway. The most interesting mode to me is Pitch Black, and we made this quick video to show you why.
I'll just add that Pitch Black has a great, tense cat-and-mouse feel to it. It's pretty different from the sorts of modes you've seen in most online shooters.
Dark Athena's basic deathmatch didn't do much for me, but to be fair, deathmatch in general is a little played out these days (unless you're Call of Duty 4). Two other new modes also stood out, though.
- Butcher Bay Riot: This one is kind of like a three-way Counter-Strike match. The three teams start out with currency they can use to buy weapons, ammo, and armor before each round. There's a single power node located in the middle of the map that you have to deliver to your enemy's base to win the round and score a point. The weird catch here is, each team has only one specific enemy, so prisoners may have to attack the guards' base, while the guards would go after the mercenaries, and the mercs would target the prisoners. This seems like it might create an interesting dynamic in the late match, though it's still a raucous free-for-all early on when everyone is vying for that node.
- Arena: Did you ever play the Rocket Arena mod for Quake III back in the day? Then you know what's going on in Dark Athena's Arena. This creates one-on-one or two-on-two elimination matches inside a small, contained map, with the other players spectating until it's their turn to throw down. Arena isn't a new idea, but it's one that not many online games are doing these days. So I'm glad to see it in here.
If I'm reading the ebb and flow of Atari's PR campaign correctly, it seems like Dark Athena's release may be nigh, and I'm really excited to see how the new story action has turned out. Whether the online modes will keep the game in rotation long after the story is over remains to be seen; we'll bring you that verdict in due time.