Assault on Dark Athena has gone way beyond a simple remake of Escape From Butcher Bay. Find out why.
UPDATE! Before you read the preview, check out this new Dark Athena trailer, then tell me it doesn't look completely badass.
Riddick's got his work cut out for him aboard the Dark Athena.The last time you heard about The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, it was being positioned by then-publisher Vivendi as a PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 remake of the original, excellent Xbox game Escape From Butcher Bay with some new content added in. Then Vivendi merged with Activision and stopped talking about the game for a long time, before finally dropping it entirely post-merger. Now Dark Athena is back, and new publisher Atari came through town to show the latest version recently. And, I'm happy to report, it's become a lot more than a simple remake. If Dark Athena is as good as it looks, it already sits near the top of my list labeled "Must Play 2009."
From the sound of it, developer Starbreeze and Vin Diesel's game company Tigon Studios initially wanted to remake Butcher Bay because too few people played the original, and because the game didn't work well with the Xbox 360's backwards compatibility. But thanks to Vivendi's intervening publishing shenanigans, Starbreeze was fortuitously granted a good 18 months longer than expected to crank on Dark Athena, and because of that, the project has swelled into a far more value-packed and exciting proposition than originally envisioned.
To me, the biggest deal about this whole thing is the new single-player content, the Assault on Dark Athena component itself. The PC version of Butcher Bay that followed the Xbox original got some new content, too--a brief, throwaway action level that lasted maybe 15 minutes. So I didn't expect a lot from the content being added in the Dark Athena remake. But I was dead wrong on that one. This isn't just a brief campaign tacked onto the end of Butcher Bay. It's an entirely new single-player experience that's purportedly just as long as the original game, and looks just as great as that one did. Butcher Bay wasn't the longest game ever--10 to 12 hours, say--but combined with Dark Athena, this will be a serious haul.
This new campaign starts minute one after the end of Butcher Bay, with Riddick and bounty hunter Johns' escape shuttle being picked up and imprisoned by roving mercenaries piloting a ship called--you guessed it--the Dark Athena. The mercs are converting their captives into hellish, armed cyborg drones that stalk the ship's corridors and act as the primary enemies, from what I could see during my brief hands-off demo.
The Ulaks will be Riddick's favorite, deadly new toys.Cyborgs operate in two modes. On auto-pilot, they move slowly and methodically, without much apparent awareness of their surroundings, so they shouldn't be hard to deal with in that mode. They can also be controlled remotely by the mercs, though, at which point they turn agile, smart, and deadly. Autonomous drones have a bright white light projecting from their heads, while this light shows red when they're remote-controlled. So you'll get a quick visual cue to indicate what kind of enemy you're facing even before you observe its movements.
Gone are the DNA-encoded weapons from the first game, but an equally challenging new weapon mechanic replaces them. The cyborgs' guns are built directly into their arms--so to use one, you'll have to hoist the entire corpse up and drag it around. There's a natural trade-off here. On the upside, you've got a gun to shoot and a body to act as a meat shield. Downside: your view is partially obscured, and you also move a lot slower.
There will be a few times in the storyline when you get to take remote control of the cyborgs yourself. These sequences seem to have a run-and-gun feel, since you can just pop out another 'borg when yours gets wasted. And you can use them to solve some puzzles, like jamming one into a giant fan to stop it rotating, then taking control of another to move past the fan into the next area.
All the great combat mechanics from Butcher Bay are still in here--the brutally violent melee combat, the intelligent stealth system that turns your perspective a bluish tint when you're safely hidden. I would imagine all the shanks and shivs of the first game will make an appearance, but Riddick has a set of nasty new melee toys, the Ulaks, that will surely take center stage. They look like some kind of Klingon weapon, with blades curving straight downward out of a knife-like grip and ending in a wicked point. You can just imagine the stealth kill animations that will go along with these.
The savvy sense of dramatic grit in Butcher Bay is also in evidence here, based on the smart casting and tense cutscenes I observed. Not surprisingly, Riddick quickly busts out of his captivity--but Johns isn't so lucky. In one scene I saw, he was being interrogated by Revas, the hard-assed merc captain played sternly by Michelle Forbes (Ensign Ro Laren from Star Trek: The Next Generation). Lance Henriksen (Bishop, Aliens) also plays a role as Dacher, another captive who assists Riddick in his efforts to subvert the mercs. In his efforts to fight back from the shadows, at one point Riddick met up with another ally, a little girl who reminded me of the character Newt, also from Aliens. There's no telling what kind of events will transpire in the bowels of the Dark Athena, but this looks like a good setup.
The only good cyborg is a dead cyborg.Don't think Butcher Bay is playing second fiddle to Dark Athena with a quick, dirty port job. The original game has purportedly been "virtually recreated" by Starbreeze's artists. The levels and character models have been given a new detail pass, or completely remodeled in some cases. The engine (an improved version of the one from The Darkness) is now using uncompressed motion data, giving much finer movements. So you'll see characters' individual fingers moving instead of the entire hand moving at once like a mitten, for example.
New AI routines are going into Dark Athena, and those will be rolled back into Butcher Bay as well, so the prison guards there will be able to knock over tables for cover and blind fire around corners. And the entire experience is receiving some other difficulty tweaks to make it play more smoothly. Dark Athena's team is made up partially of the core team from Butcher Bay; this all sounds a little like a labor of love, for these guys to get to go back and create the definitive version of an already excellent game.
Nobody's talking about the game's multiplayer mode, which I'm sure will be a nice addition, but also seems unnecessary next to all this single-player craziness. But hey, the more the merrier.
Having played Escape From Butcher Bay start to finish, I'm pretty damn excited about Dark Athena. Maybe you can tell. Unless I'm forgetting how good Batman: The Video Game was on the NES, I'm going to call Butcher Bay the best movie-based game ever made. Heck, it's one of the best games of the last generation, period. If you're one of the many people who didn't play it in its original incarnation, Starbreeze is doing you a huge favor in crafting this vastly improved version. Don't make the same mistake the second time around.
UPDATE! Before you read the preview, check out this new Dark Athena trailer, then tell me it doesn't look completely badass.
Riddick's got his work cut out for him aboard the Dark Athena.The last time you heard about The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, it was being positioned by then-publisher Vivendi as a PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 remake of the original, excellent Xbox game Escape From Butcher Bay with some new content added in. Then Vivendi merged with Activision and stopped talking about the game for a long time, before finally dropping it entirely post-merger. Now Dark Athena is back, and new publisher Atari came through town to show the latest version recently. And, I'm happy to report, it's become a lot more than a simple remake. If Dark Athena is as good as it looks, it already sits near the top of my list labeled "Must Play 2009."
From the sound of it, developer Starbreeze and Vin Diesel's game company Tigon Studios initially wanted to remake Butcher Bay because too few people played the original, and because the game didn't work well with the Xbox 360's backwards compatibility. But thanks to Vivendi's intervening publishing shenanigans, Starbreeze was fortuitously granted a good 18 months longer than expected to crank on Dark Athena, and because of that, the project has swelled into a far more value-packed and exciting proposition than originally envisioned.
To me, the biggest deal about this whole thing is the new single-player content, the Assault on Dark Athena component itself. The PC version of Butcher Bay that followed the Xbox original got some new content, too--a brief, throwaway action level that lasted maybe 15 minutes. So I didn't expect a lot from the content being added in the Dark Athena remake. But I was dead wrong on that one. This isn't just a brief campaign tacked onto the end of Butcher Bay. It's an entirely new single-player experience that's purportedly just as long as the original game, and looks just as great as that one did. Butcher Bay wasn't the longest game ever--10 to 12 hours, say--but combined with Dark Athena, this will be a serious haul.
This new campaign starts minute one after the end of Butcher Bay, with Riddick and bounty hunter Johns' escape shuttle being picked up and imprisoned by roving mercenaries piloting a ship called--you guessed it--the Dark Athena. The mercs are converting their captives into hellish, armed cyborg drones that stalk the ship's corridors and act as the primary enemies, from what I could see during my brief hands-off demo.
The Ulaks will be Riddick's favorite, deadly new toys.Cyborgs operate in two modes. On auto-pilot, they move slowly and methodically, without much apparent awareness of their surroundings, so they shouldn't be hard to deal with in that mode. They can also be controlled remotely by the mercs, though, at which point they turn agile, smart, and deadly. Autonomous drones have a bright white light projecting from their heads, while this light shows red when they're remote-controlled. So you'll get a quick visual cue to indicate what kind of enemy you're facing even before you observe its movements.
Gone are the DNA-encoded weapons from the first game, but an equally challenging new weapon mechanic replaces them. The cyborgs' guns are built directly into their arms--so to use one, you'll have to hoist the entire corpse up and drag it around. There's a natural trade-off here. On the upside, you've got a gun to shoot and a body to act as a meat shield. Downside: your view is partially obscured, and you also move a lot slower.
There will be a few times in the storyline when you get to take remote control of the cyborgs yourself. These sequences seem to have a run-and-gun feel, since you can just pop out another 'borg when yours gets wasted. And you can use them to solve some puzzles, like jamming one into a giant fan to stop it rotating, then taking control of another to move past the fan into the next area.
All the great combat mechanics from Butcher Bay are still in here--the brutally violent melee combat, the intelligent stealth system that turns your perspective a bluish tint when you're safely hidden. I would imagine all the shanks and shivs of the first game will make an appearance, but Riddick has a set of nasty new melee toys, the Ulaks, that will surely take center stage. They look like some kind of Klingon weapon, with blades curving straight downward out of a knife-like grip and ending in a wicked point. You can just imagine the stealth kill animations that will go along with these.
The savvy sense of dramatic grit in Butcher Bay is also in evidence here, based on the smart casting and tense cutscenes I observed. Not surprisingly, Riddick quickly busts out of his captivity--but Johns isn't so lucky. In one scene I saw, he was being interrogated by Revas, the hard-assed merc captain played sternly by Michelle Forbes (Ensign Ro Laren from Star Trek: The Next Generation). Lance Henriksen (Bishop, Aliens) also plays a role as Dacher, another captive who assists Riddick in his efforts to subvert the mercs. In his efforts to fight back from the shadows, at one point Riddick met up with another ally, a little girl who reminded me of the character Newt, also from Aliens. There's no telling what kind of events will transpire in the bowels of the Dark Athena, but this looks like a good setup.
The only good cyborg is a dead cyborg.Don't think Butcher Bay is playing second fiddle to Dark Athena with a quick, dirty port job. The original game has purportedly been "virtually recreated" by Starbreeze's artists. The levels and character models have been given a new detail pass, or completely remodeled in some cases. The engine (an improved version of the one from The Darkness) is now using uncompressed motion data, giving much finer movements. So you'll see characters' individual fingers moving instead of the entire hand moving at once like a mitten, for example.
New AI routines are going into Dark Athena, and those will be rolled back into Butcher Bay as well, so the prison guards there will be able to knock over tables for cover and blind fire around corners. And the entire experience is receiving some other difficulty tweaks to make it play more smoothly. Dark Athena's team is made up partially of the core team from Butcher Bay; this all sounds a little like a labor of love, for these guys to get to go back and create the definitive version of an already excellent game.
Nobody's talking about the game's multiplayer mode, which I'm sure will be a nice addition, but also seems unnecessary next to all this single-player craziness. But hey, the more the merrier.
Having played Escape From Butcher Bay start to finish, I'm pretty damn excited about Dark Athena. Maybe you can tell. Unless I'm forgetting how good Batman: The Video Game was on the NES, I'm going to call Butcher Bay the best movie-based game ever made. Heck, it's one of the best games of the last generation, period. If you're one of the many people who didn't play it in its original incarnation, Starbreeze is doing you a huge favor in crafting this vastly improved version. Don't make the same mistake the second time around.
First comments dont seem to be showing up around here...hmm. Oh scratch that, they do and they dont, some odd glitch. Again, looking forward to this i think
I finished the game on PC last year and enjoyed the combat, but I did not care much for the monotonous level design featuring hundreds of metallic walls, floors, and ceilings.
Totally agree with you on BB being one of the best games of last gen. I cant wait to go through BB again, but a whole new campaign with the tried and true BB formula?! Cant WAIT.
SUPER great to hear some news about this coming out. Escape from Butcher Bay IS the best movie-based game ever made, and Starbreeze deserves a chance to bring that experience to a bigger audience. I've got SOOOOOOO many questions that I would love to drill you with, but I'm sure you're a busy man.
Pitch Black still remains one of my favorite movies because there are a TON of unanswered questions from that movie...and I'm sure that Dark Athena will only create more. I'm also curious to see if they play anything else into Riddick's Furyan background...
i just got a BONER and it grew its own little boner, it looks like a tonfa!!!!
LOL im just a HUGE fan of the first game and i became addicted to the riddick universe for a while LOL its not that great but once you get into it, the universe they created for this franchise should be explored so much more.
"i just got a BONER and it grew its own little boner, it looks like a tonfa!!!!
LOL im just a HUGE fan of the first game and i became addicted to the riddick universe for a while LOL its not that great but once you get into it, the universe they created for this franchise should be explored so much more.
"
Damn straight, sir. Not only do we get Dark Athena, but if rumors are true, we should be close to seeing the next Riddick flick. UNDERVERSE!!!
Call me crazy, but I would prefer a talented new developer work on a new IP or something original, not a frickin' remake of a game that isn't even 5 years old. What's next, a remake of The Darkness on the next Xbox because the original didn't sell well on 360?
Call me crazy, but I would prefer a talented new developer work on a new IP or something original, not a frickin' remake of a game that isn't even 5 years old. What's next, a remake of The Darkness on the next Xbox because the original didn't sell well on 360?
Escape from Butcher Bay really set the standards on how you use a movie license and a actor with it. EfBB is really top notch Riddick material along with Pitch Black and this seems to be pretty darn sweet aswell. Starbreeze really knows how to create atmospheric and cool games, they look cool and you feel cool playing it. I think this might be one my top games for 2009. A new campaign AND the old game? Heck, I'm in love already!
Really makes you proud to be from Sweden, when we have fine craftsmen like the boys and girls at Starbreeze.
Really, if you want a great action game 2009, you must get this game. The first game got good scores almost everywhere, and no one bought it! Well, not enough atleast. Don't do a Psychonauts on this game and do take the leap of faith if you haven't played it before. The money goes to a good cause and a good developer atleast, that have some passion for their work. If there is one license-based game that should live on. It's Riddick by Starbreeze!
"i just got a BONER and it grew its own little boner, it looks like a tonfa!!!!
LOL im just a HUGE fan of the first game and i became addicted to the riddick universe for a while LOL its not that great but once you get into it, the universe they created for this franchise should be explored so much more.
"
Damn straight, sir. Not only do we get Dark Athena, but if rumors are true, we should be close to seeing the next Riddick flick. UNDERVERSE!!!"
i know i would love to see them continue with his saga. its just so cool to me. dunno
but anyways. this game sounds like a 2009 GOTY contender for sure.
and it sounds like its guaranteed a 20 hour game, and thats AMAZING for an game in this genre (lookin at you Call of Duty and Gears) ! And we can rest assure that it stays fresh throughout because the second half is a whole new game! And i have complete faith in the mutiplayer, but we all know were here for the single mostly. it would be awesome for this game to have its own horde type co-op to all users to do melee attacks online, i can't see it working competitively
This is gonna be friggin' awesome. Vin Diesel should work exclusively in video games, and he'd be a gigantic success. Plus, he's a giant nerd himself...it works for everyone!
Butcher was hands down my favorite action game for the Xbox. The graphics were as good as some of the next gen games out there! Can't wait to see this. :)
"i just got a BONER and it grew its own little boner, it looks like a tonfa!!!!
LOL im just a HUGE fan of the first game and i became addicted to the riddick universe for a while LOL its not that great but once you get into it, the universe they created for this franchise should be explored so much more.
"
Damn straight, sir. Not only do we get Dark Athena, but if rumors are true, we should be close to seeing the next Riddick flick. UNDERVERSE!!!"
i know i would love to see them continue with his saga. its just so cool to me. dunno
but anyways. this game sounds like a 2009 GOTY contender for sure.
and it sounds like its guaranteed a 20 hour game, and thats AMAZING for an game in this genre (lookin at you Call of Duty and Gears) ! And we can rest assure that it stays fresh throughout because the second half is a whole new game! And i have complete faith in the mutiplayer, but we all know were here for the single mostly. it would be awesome for this game to have its own horde type co-op to all users to do melee attacks online, i can't see it working competitively
"
Hell, dood...the first game was so tightly-made that it'll be fun to play through all that again!!! I was in awe of just how damn good Butcher Bay was.
And yeah, they WILL be continuing the movies. There's two more that Twohy and Diesel have in the works. They are penning out the scripts right now, and it's going to be picking up right where the last flick left off. Diesel has already said, very cryptically, that Riddick is going to be making a visit to the Underverse...and my assumption is that he's going there to claim Kyra back.
I totally look forward to getting it. The original game was amazing, and I never finished or purchased it. I was always bummed it wasn't backwards compatible with the 360. God that was such an awesome, and innovative game. I'd like to thank all those that didn't play it before for making this remake possible.
"i just got a BONER and it grew its own little boner, it looks like a tonfa!!!!
LOL im just a HUGE fan of the first game and i became addicted to the riddick universe for a while LOL its not that great but once you get into it, the universe they created for this franchise should be explored so much more.
"
Damn straight, sir. Not only do we get Dark Athena, but if rumors are true, we should be close to seeing the next Riddick flick. UNDERVERSE!!!"
i know i would love to see them continue with his saga. its just so cool to me. dunno
but anyways. this game sounds like a 2009 GOTY contender for sure.
and it sounds like its guaranteed a 20 hour game, and thats AMAZING for an game in this genre (lookin at you Call of Duty and Gears) ! And we can rest assure that it stays fresh throughout because the second half is a whole new game! And i have complete faith in the mutiplayer, but we all know were here for the single mostly. it would be awesome for this game to have its own horde type co-op to all users to do melee attacks online, i can't see it working competitively
"
Hell, dood...the first game was so tightly-made that it'll be fun to play through all that again!!! I was in awe of just how damn good Butcher Bay was.
And yeah, they WILL be continuing the movies. There's two more that Twohy and Diesel have in the works. They are penning out the scripts right now, and it's going to be picking up right where the last flick left off. Diesel has already said, very cryptically, that Riddick is going to be making a visit to the Underverse...and my assumption is that he's going there to claim Kyra back.
"
rumors and news about these sequels are about as sparse as news about this game was. so i hope it all goes through, i know the budget will be much lower than the last film, but that may help it out big time. i liked the indy feel of the pitch black but i like the epic scope of the sequel. hopefully the underverse is every bit as cool as it sounds. Diesel needs a big hit too, his last movie was a totally dud, critically and box office wise. i think he's an awesome actor just keeps landing crappy roles lately. hopefully the new Fast and Furious is kick ass, and not lame as hell like the last two sequels were.
I loved the original game, but somehow didn´t finish the last level... i´m still left wondering how the ending played out, so this will be a great chance to play this awesome game again with improved... ehhhh.... everything! And this time get some achievements in the process... i´m buying this the minute it comes out!
I love Butcher Bay as well, I wasn't too interested in Dark Athena until I read this as (like you) I expected a quick and dirty port of the original game... which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but certainly not worth $60.00 (as I even bought the original when it hit budget).
What you describe though is a game well worth the full retail price.
I wanted to play riddick because of all the praise it for from pretty much everyone..... but isn't it a corridor crawler? like doom? or quake? Whenever i see pictures its always in a corridor, and this new setup for dark athena "in the corridors of a ship" doesn't sound very imaginative, i've only seen half the film because i keep falling asleep but even there i saw far more than corridors.
Cool, but I'm a bit worried about this thick desaturation filter I'm seeing...I don't like seeing excessive desaturation. Why can't we have colorful games? Are we still doing this shitty cliche?
That second movie was complete crap, so I never cared to play a game. I did read the reviews about how great it was, but seeing where the storyline left off in the second movie, there isn't much to say about the story or Riddick anymore, now that he's Emperor of the Universe, or whatever. I wonder why they wanted to rehash an old game anyway, instead of just making a new one with new stories, etc? Rehashes are lazy, trying to milk whatever remains of the Riddick franchise, if there is any...didn't the last movie come out 4 years ago?
They should do the 3rd movie: Riddick versus He-man: Master of the Universe next.
Don't worry. It's nooothing like Quake or Doom. Sure, it has tons of action, but it's more like a action adventure game, you walk around, talk to cell mates in Butcher Bay and do sidequests for cigarettpacks and credits, with credits you can use 'em to buy ciggpacks, or other stuff from people. It's a much deeper experience than Doom or Quake. It's so much focus on adventuring, talking, and then having some action here and there. Perfectly paced. You never get so much action that you are burned out on it, because before you get too much of it, you are through with one area and you can explore some and talk, which is a nice breather before going into another action part. Always makes you hungry for more. :)
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