Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena Demo Impressions

I have to confess that this isn’t so much a preview as it is a reassurance. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena will be an excellent game. Unfortunately, if you go entirely by the demo you might decide otherwise.

For starters, the demo is incredibly short, 10-20 minutes at best. There’s also not much to see or do, particularly in regards to the game’s best feature: stealth. Incidentally, I’ve always preferred first-person stealth games like Thief, to third-person ones like Splinter Cell, so that’s one reason I was hoping to see some here.

What the demo gets right is the voice acting, complete with Vin Diesel’s titular killer. The story will undoubtedly be great and very well told, but we only get a little bit of that here. All we get in the demo is Riddick’s breaking into somewhere, told he shouldn’t by someone, and that he has to do something.

The demo just doesn’t give you very much information, not even your objectives, or controls, or even how to play the bloody game at all. It took me ages just to work out how to change my weapon. There’s no tutorial or anything.

Getting back to the stealth problems I mentioned. Despite this being a game where creeping about unseen is encouraged (it’s so dark, even the flash-light barely does anything) there’s few places to hide and not many opportunities to sneak up on people. It’s all very linear too, so there are no alternate routes that might allow you to get the jump-on or bypass enemies.

Speaking of the enemies, they’ll seem familiar to anyone who’s ever played any FPS. Grey armour with faceless helmets = bad, so shoot them.

As for the graphics, you do know this was an Xbox game right? Well, it shows. Character models are nice and everything has a decent sheen, along with a much higher-definition resolution, but it’s certainly not challenging Killzone 2. Hell, it’d barely challenge Quake Live.

There are some lovely ideas, such as taking control of a clone-grunt to force him into committing suicide in a large fan. With the fan stopped you now take control of another grunt, go under the fan and take out all the guards who’re trying to break into the room Riddick’s hiding in.

And then the demo ends. One great moment; the rest of it is either mediocre or confusing. An interesting thing to remember is that the demo for The Darkness (also by Starbreeze studios) was equally rubbish, whereas the final game was pretty great. The same thing is going to happen here.

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay was a great game. It didn’t force you to be stealthy, you merely did so because it was far more satisfying. The level design was superb and challenging, the story and writing was great, the atmosphere and tension was up there with Thief: Deadly Shadows and it’s rightly considered a cult classic. Not only is Assault on Dark Athena a sequel to this, it’s also got the whole of Butcher Bay in there – so unlike this demo, you can’t quibble about size or quality.

I am certain that the full Riddick game will be absolutely outstanding. This demo, however; is not. You’re going to have go on a bit of faith here and keep that pre-order. If you’re still not sure, wait for our review. Trust us!

The Assault on Dark Athena demo is now available for download from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. The game will be released on April 7th in the US, with Europe to follow on April 24th.

Chris Capel