Xbox 360 Review: Chronicles of Riddick – Assault on Dark Athena

Expanding the cinematic role that Vin Diesel’s brutal alter-ego onscreen is famous for, Riddick returns in the sequel to Escape from Butcher Bay and it’s every bit as fun. You could lift the story from this game and drop it into an animated sequel direct-to-DVD, but it wouldn’t be as entertaining without the gameplay. Even if you’re not a fan of the Vin, the Assault hardly holds anything back with its depiction its twisted inhabitants whether they’re desperate to escape or simply thirsty for bloodthirsty revenge. It’s definitely as unique as Butcher Bay whose melee fighting is more satisfying than the actual FPS gunplay and packed with multiplayer for those moments when being the lone wolf on the loose in the prison population isn’t enough. Solid stuff, Starbreeze.

My prison writeup is always available here.

Riddick prefers the hands-on approach to interpersonal conflicts

Mob Ties Tokyo Demo

Indie developer, Electronic Visual Elements, has released a demo of their shooter, “Mob Ties Tokyo” which casts the player as a hitman helping his boss, Takuma Ishikawa, go legit. Unfortunately, it seems that the dirty underside of Tokyo isn’t quite ready to let him go and have gone to great lengths to remind him of his obligations…i.e. moving in on his territory and using them to continue plying their trade despite his decision to leave it all behind. The only solution? To wipe them out.

E.V.E. and its first game are actually the product of Chance Miller and Jillian Fontaine, two Hollywood alums that have turned their experience into creating a game as their next big thing. It a wholly owned IP and is being sold as a downloadable game via the web in two flavors: a rated “T” version at $14.95 with the usual blood and gore, and a rated “M” version at $19.95 that is supposed to show a little skin along with the blood and gore via Paypal.

I’m all for independent development and watching what comes out from their secret workshops is always exciting…but not everything independent is necessarily great. The game hearkens back to the nineties…the very early nineties…with its gameplay and the visual aesthetic which graphic obsessed players in today’s market have left behind almost twenty years ago. As an FPS, it’s under additional pressure to distinguish itself from the vast number of those already out there, past and present, commercial or freeware. The voice acting doesn’t sound awful, the concept is neat, I’m not a graphics whore (Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection has a home on my 360 and my classic consoles are still hooked up to my flat TV), but everything else such as the gameplay have serious issues that should have been addressed…not the least of which is the AI which can often be found doing nothing, or the the fact that enemies can be punched with brass knuckles and continue to get up as if they were made of titanium.

It certainly earns points for the hard work that the two have put into it as well as getting the word out, but it also doesn’t seem as if they had done their homework on what is going on in gaming today especially from the modding community with its budding crop of future talent, or have seen what has been coming out from events such as the Independent Games Festival. Then there are the re-released, DRM free classics at bargain basement prices available at Good Old Games which will also entice players looking to get into older titles that they may have missed out on. Mob Ties isn’t exactly priced at a bargain considering what a quick price check on Steam or Gametap can get you at the same rate.

I understand that one of the reasons that E.V.E. went in this direction was to get their concept out into the wild, but perhaps they should have started with something  a little less ambitious. Perhaps release a free mod that does the same thing, but based off off Source or UE3? Modders have gotten their foot in the door by doing this, or at the very least, have opened the door to a much larger audience with their choice of engine/toolset.

You can download the demo for yourself and check it out, or take a look at some of the screens below.

As for me, I’ll have to give this one a pass.

In the demo, the in-game instructions are literally in the game

Some of the graphics, such as this face, are actually not bad

The guns look okay...

...the rest of the game, not so much. Even by 1990's standards. And see that guy at the end of the corridor? He completely ignores you as he's riddled with bullets.

This makes it hard to recommend to anyone. Then again, I've still seen things like this happen with other games from the big development houses.

A stroke of fate, cyberpunk Russian style, and a walking tank

I was busy checking out Akella’s site for “A Stroke of Fate”, an adventure game that takes place in WW2 but instead of parachuting back into Germany or assaulting the beaches of Normandy for the thousandth time, it puts the players into the shoes of a German officer in charge of investigating a possible assassination attempt against the Fuhrer. The thing is, he’s also thinking of the best way to decapitate the Nazi war machine by doing the same thing. It has a pretty interesting premise and I’ve been waiting for it for some time just to see how they pull this one off. The last adventure title that took place during WW2, Operation Wintersun, left me hoping that later efforts would do better.

But while poking around Akella for any new news, I’ve also found out about one or two games that sound interesting enough to check out.

Scorpion takes place in 2028 and is an FPS that makes the player out to be a special operative sent to infiltrate a corporation suspected of supplying terrorists with equipment in a cyberpunkish world. Seeing the one gameplay video they have at the site made me think that it could be like No Remorse, only in first person.

Scorpion is the name of the secret agent that is going to blow this unsuspecting guy away

What is with the future and bizarre medical gear? If it isn't trodes sticking out of someone's head, it has to be something like this.

You can check out the official site here which also has a short, and bloody, gameplay video.

The other game is called 2025: Battle for the Fatherland. The badly translated premise makes it sound as if world order has broken down, an oppressive government has taken control, and it’s up to you and your walking tank to take back the Fatherland…which I’m guessing has to be Germany. There’s not much else about this game aside from the screenshots which show a four legged tank blowing up lots of stuff which could be fun, but the developer seems to have disappeared along with their website. If this is still in production, I have no idea, but I wouldn’t mind playing a demo of this.

Little did Robocop know that ED-209's big brother was off saving the Fatherland

Playing as Vin Diesel, shooting things up in Wanted, and Hulking out in Wrestlemania

There were quite a few demos on the 360 that I had just recently gotten caught up with, some of which were good, one or two that were…um…well, their prospects don’t seem to be as good at all.

The Wheelman Demo for the 360 – (game to be released for the Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows PC on March 24th)
First up was the demo for The Wheelman, the Vin Diesel vehicle in which he tries to make a play for Jason Statham’s role as the ultimate driver-for-hire sans mixed martial arts craziness with oil and bead curtains. The Wheelman was put together by Midway…yes, THAT Midway, the one sold to an investor for $100K and a load of debt…and looks to be published by Ubisoft which has picked up the tab for the title.

It doesn’t make any bones about being an arcade racer because that’s exactly how it plays. If a game has ever wanted to take Hollywood’s take on crashes, smash ups, and street fighting with two ton vehicles to the limit, this is probably where it is at. The demo introduces you to one mission from the 12-15 hour story along with two side jobs that you can play with. The story mission has you driving like a maniac through Barcelona while avoiding police and enemy gangs as you follow the directions of your passenger. Controls were easy to get used to and it looks like they’re following the same standard pattern as FPS’ do in creating some kind of common scheme.

After his stint in the Fast and the Furious, Vin Diesel decided to try and maintain a low profile in Barcelona. That didn't last very long.

The race through Barcelona was pretty fun stuff and it wins points for turning your car into a Hollywood-flavored wrecking machine. For one thing, you can do what are called “sideswipe attacks” where the car literally moves horizontally in quick, punching, jab-like motions to slam vehicles off to the side to do some damage. As corny as that sounds, it’s this kind of over-the-top craziness that the game is very good at portraying and makes no allusions as to whether it is trying to be the next Burnout. Another move is called “the cyclone” where Vin Diesel spins the car around to face what is behind him and everything goes slow-mo allowing the player to do targeted shots that literally blow up the pursuing baddies in true WTF action movie style.  The player can also do this in certain moments while facing forward, to blow up the one car that destroys a roadblock that is in his way. Unfortunately, the shooting parts where he’s leaning out of a window while driving don’t work out so well. I just rammed them off the road instead, although motorcycle people must have their asses glued to their seats in some instances.

Sean tried to "ghost the ride the whip" in front of his mom before Vin Diesel jumped into the empty driver's seat

Cars blow up with all sorts of exaggerated physics going on as they spin in the air, throwing off shattered pieces like a flaming pinata. People go flying out from their vehicles, too, thanks to ragdoll physics. The weird thing is that most people in the street tend to be able to jump out of your way “in the nick of time” while anyone in a vehicle or a motorcycle can be expected to get some air time. It’s as if it doesn’t want to be like GTA, but in other ways, it tops it in terms of chaotic bursts of stunt fueled craziness. There’s an on-foot thing, too, but in the demo, it’s only to run over and find another car or ‘cycle.

There are two side missions that you only have limited tries on in the demo…limited, as in you can only try them three times before you are done which is just all kinds of stupid…which consist of a scenario where you steal three vehicles in a certain time limit and a race. Stealing vehicles was pretty interesting, but why do they run away from me when they don’t even know I’m trying to steal them yet? The fun part takes a page from the game, Just Cause, because here, if you’re timing is right, you can launch Vin Diesel from his chase vehicle to the target in an “air jack”. It’s actually cool to watch, if not completely unreal, but it works once you swallow the fact that the game plays as a collection of everything that Hollywood has taught us about car chases.

Vin Diesel's truck cab has apparently bullied this poor BMW wannabe into submission. So much for taking it back to the chop shop.

The race also lets you use whatever you had learned in the previous events of the game, meaning that you can take out the opposition if you so choose or put them to the wall. All in all, I loved the demo’s purely escapist attitude, but some of the mechanics can be a little too silly for players looking for a little realism while they gun their way through Spain’s capital which might be the deciding factor as to whether you might want to open up your wallet to this.

The graphics are also another story…quite frankly, aside from the cars and some of the special effects, there’s not much else for your eyes to be excited about. Don’t let the screenshots fool you…this is a case of where the game looks better when everything is standing still. At the end of the story mission during the in-game cutscene, for example, as nice as they’ve modeled Diesel’s face, everyone seems to be laminated in plastic. Most of the city’s visuals also suffer from bland textures, some of the crash effects are underwhelming, and coming to a near stop from head-on collisions is a little weird. But the music keeps things hopping and Vin Diesel, a self-professed geek gamer himself, provides his own voice on the audio front.

Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena Demo – (game to be released for the Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows PC on April 7th)
Diesel appears in another demo, this time the FPS follow up to the fantastically successful Escape from Butcher Bay which I thoroughly enjoyed. Starbreeze is back in top form along with Vin Diesel providing his likeness and his voice as the anti-hero, Riddick, who finds himself in a ship where he isn’t so much trapped as everyone else is trapped onboard with him (sorry, I couldn’t resist…I saw the Watchmen this weekend). This was a lot of fun and brings in even more of the detailed, dirty tech that Riddick is known for along with his ability to shoot out lights, using the darkness to hunt his prey whether it’s with an assault rifle, curved knives, or his bare hands. It’s got plenty of F-bombs thrown around as much as there are bullets and the enemies will mock you if they get the drop on Riddick. The game will also include Escape from Butcher Bay which eventually leads into the Dark Athena scenario, making it a double bonus for Riddick fans like myself. It looks like it’s going to provide even more of the darkly atmospheric bloodletting and bone breaking that players have come to expect from Riddick…and there’s nothing wrong with that.

One new twist to the game is the multiplayer component. A short movie plays after the demo showing it off with capture the flag and a mode that looks like it takes place in the prison of Butcher Bay that seems similar to “conquest-styled” gameplay with what appears to be an objective-based mode. I’m sure Deathmatch fanatics will latch onto this one as they play to send as many of their opponents into the Underverse.

Riddick prefers the hands-on approach to dealing with his enemies

Legends of Wrestlemania – (game to be released for the Xbox 360, PS3 on March 24th)
I’m normally not into wrestling games, but in my younger years, I did watch quite a bit of WWF/WWE along with my brother. When I heard that this was coming out, and took a look at the roster, I couldn’t help but feel some sense of nostalgia for the time when Hulkamania ran wild alongside Soviet-caricature, Nikolai Vokoff, and the Million Dollar Man as they swaggered into the squared circle. When I fired the demo up, the first track to play was Hulk Hogan’s old theme, “Real American”, giving me the impression that this was going to be one of the finest pieces of fanservice that may be made for WWF/WWE fans.

One interesting note that IGN's preview had pointed out was that the developers had to resize the wrestlers. Andre isn't this, um, short.

The demo comes with a Singles Match mode and a mode where you can relive the classic match-up between Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock at Wrestlemania XV. You can only pick Hogan and Andre the Giant in the singles matchup and it looks like it defaults you to play as Stone Cold in the Relive mode. The controls…take a little getting used to, but the characters look fantastic onscreen. They’ve got their signature moves down along with their in-ring personas. Michael Buffer lends his voice to announcing hte start of each bout and commentators Jim Ross and Jerry “The King” Lawler call out the shots which makes for some great audio candy.

I had more fun with this than I thought I would, but I couldn't pull off the Big Leg Drop.

Production values are impressive…it sounds like for each of the 40+ wrestlers in the game, they’ll have their signature themes play as they walk into the ring. When I started up the Relive match between Stone Cold and the Rock, a video montage showing what led to the clash and then how the match actually went down started things off. There also seem to be in-match objectives that you can do in order to earn bonuses in the game. I just wish there was a referee in the ring that could also be hit for even more classic moments, but that’s just me.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate demo – (game to be released for the Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows PC on March 24th)
I didn’t watch the movie, although everyone I’ve talked to says I should, but I thought I’d try out the demo. Unfortunately, this was the least fun of the demos that I had tried. The game takes place after the events of the film and comes with a tutorial and a taste of the main story. It feels like it’s part Max Paine, part Gears of War with its cover system, but has none of the excitement that normally should be part of either title which was surprising.

It takes place in third person and a tutorial narrated by someone trying to sound cynical but instead sounded like someone who wants to put you to sleep guides you through the basic actions of the title. Once that’s done, you take part in a fight aboard a plane, using cover and blind fire to suppress enemies and hopefully take them out before they do the same to you. Now, this does sound like it could be the start of something awesomely cool, but several things have me worried.

Cover, shoot Generic Bad Guy #12, cover, shoot Generic Bad Guy #13, rinse and repeat ad-nauseum… I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be excited about. It certainly wasn’t the premise after what I had seen in the tutorial, but then again, I didn’t see the movie so fans of the film and the comic might get more mileage out of this than I did.

The cover thing also seems a bit sticky and the camera can blind you in certain instances when you slide into cover, hiding Mr. Generic Bad Guy #14 who runs up to you and begins blasting away with a shotgun. The enemies tried to make things interesting with some F-bomb laden banter, but they felt more like cardboard targets that were simply in the way. The shooting mechanics didn’t seem as tight as they could have been in a game like Max Paine where I could shoot the kneecaps of bad guys peeking just around the corner of a wall, and there was no explanation why I couldn’t pick the up the sub-machine guns that everyone seems to drop. In short, I didn’t feel as if I were this unstoppable assassin that was any better than Max Paine on his worst day.

The graphics and sound aren’t much to write home about, either, although some of the detail work on the character models looks good. It might find some fans out there, but I don’t see myself playing this one unless it was as a rental.

This might look like it's an exciting scene as long as you can overlook your inability to leap over rows or in accidentally depressurizing the plane with bullets

fear 2 burns with heavy firepower and a very angry little girl

As you may have already heard, F.E.A.R. 2 has come out with a huge 1.8GB demo this week on the PS3, 360, and the PC. I pulled the PC version down since that’s the one I want to play after having gone through the first one in sheer terror on the same platform when it was first released. The graphics look nice and gory, just as they did in the first game, and the action is just as brutal as I remembered it to be.

Fans will quake in their boots at this sight. She's back, and she's really angry.

It plays off on the creepy factor just like the first one did with a few twisted bits of reality to mess with your perceptions. If you haven’t heard anything about the story, it doesn’t put you in the same boots as the character that finished the first game. At the end of that, you witnessed the destruction of a large chunk of the city thanks to a nuclear failsafe that was designed to destroy the top secret facility where horror girl Alma was imprisoned.  In this one, you’re playing Michael Becket, a soldier tasked to arrest Genevieve Aristide, the head of Armacham…the ultracorp responsible for exploiting Alma’s psychic powers…only to run right into the aftermath of Alma’s vengeance against her captors.

The demo packs in a good amount of action amidst blasted set pieces including the suit of powered armor that you can rampage through the streets in for some Robocop-styled excitement. The suit feels more like a guilty-pleasure feature than anything, but it’ll be interesting to see what they do with it. F.E.A.R. 2 feels like it will deliver more of the action and cold terror that the first game did, so I can’t wait to get it into my hands.

Great, I didn't miss the bus!

Alma wants to share her pain with everyone.

The lighting effects are pretty nice. You can even see your own feet and shadow in this game so you're not just a floating camera with two pretend arms.

I guess Alma didn't like the popcorn prices, either.

And the latest in home defense can be yours from your friends at Armacham! Vaporize your enemies with hundreds of depleted uranium rounds per second, or heavy explosives for the kind of finality that corporate firepower can deliver.

So much legendary potential

I played through Spark Unlimited’s other offering, Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, which cast you as an everyman trying to survive an alternate history where the Nazis won WW2 and are now invading the isolationist United States. Lots of awesome ideas packed into it and the CE even had a few choice pieces of fiction to peruse. Unfortunately, the gameplay was less than great and the story came far short to leave any lasting impression.

Now that I’m trying to catch up on my backlog, Legendary was next and I had been keeping an eye on this one when it had been known as “Legendary: The Box” before they dropped the “box” part of the title. Again, it promises the world with plenty of neat ideas squeezed into its adrenaline fed opening only to again come up short in the areas that matter most to gamers. The material is a lot more interesting than the gameplay which fails to deliver anything more basic than the usual FPS elements.

Before the museum burned to the ground, I managed to save my report on this adventure here.

Unfortunately, Mr. Stay Puft didn't cause this.

Clear Sky ahead

Finished playing through Clear Sky and in the end, once I got used to the difficulty, it’s more of what made Shadow of Chernobyl a lot of fun, and some of what made it a mixed bag. The action was great, but the faction system seemed to be a little lacking. Still, it’s completely up to you whether or you want to scavenge for artifacts, kill renegade Stalkers for their gear, or follow the story to its mind melting end. Fans are likely going to get a lot more mileage out of this trip back to Chernobyl if not a heaping dose of deja vu, but newcomers should be warned that it’s every bit as unforgiving as you might have heard.

As always, here’s the lab analysis.

Welcome back to the Zone.

First post of the new year celebrates with rough diamonds

A belated Happy New Years to everyone out there! Hopefully everyone had a safe holiday season.

Just finished up Ubisoft’s Far Cry 2. There’s a lot of potential in the design of the game to bring out something truly engrossing, but it never rises above being a regular run ‘n gun shooter with a few shallow elements to play with. And then there are the checkpoints, the respawns that killed most of my excitement for the game. The tedium had gotten so bad at certain stretches that I kept wishing I were playing something else. Too bad I was already halfway through when that feeling crept up on me. I like it for its technical and artistic awesomeness, but as a game, it left a lot to be desired by this would-be mercenary.

My after action report contains all of the nasty details.

Everything burns, or gets burned, in Far Cry 2

In space, there’s always prey

Back in March, Steam marked Prey down for five bucks over a specials weekend and having wanted to play the game for awhile now but never having the time, I decided…why not. I’ve heard good and bad things about the game, that it was really fun and that it wasn’t anything special. I also heard about the portal tech that was used, and that you may never really have to load another game again if you die thanks to its unique take on the whole death mechanic.

I actually had a lot of fun with the game and thought it was great, but it could really get repetitive later on especially in fighting the same alien grunts over…and over…and over…again. The last boss wasn’t all that tough to beat, either, but I’m happy to hear that there’s a sequel in the works. After playing this, I’m actually looking forward to getting back into more portal invasion, strange alien vacation spots, and general galactic weirdness.

Prey – (review for the PC version)