The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena Catch-All

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DSGamer's picture
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Starting the catch-all as I'm playing this game right now.

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DSGamer's picture
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Well, I'm playing the Escape from Butcher Bay part. I wanted to ask a question before I bailed on the game. I spent 2 hours last night on one particular checkpoint. Between limited health and punishing stealth (I peak my head out too far and get blown away by turrets) I'm starting to wonder if it's just me or if this game is really difficult. It has me wondering if I want to proceed, honestly. Anyone play through the original XBox game want to give me an assessment of how hardcore, how difficult I can expect this game to be, overall. Because so far it's punishing me big time.

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Podunk's picture
Location: The People's Republic of Goodge

If the game is really pounding you, it's probably time to reevaluate your tactics. It's extremely difficult when you treat it mainly as a shooter. To be really successful you need to use stealth as much as possible.

Also, there are a lot of concealed shortcuts--air ducts, maintenance tunnels, and so on--which can make your life much easier.

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Aaron D.'s picture
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I don't remember Butcher Bay on Xbox being particularly brutal. Challenging? Yes. Halo on Heroic difficulty? No.

I do remember that Riddick was a lot more about stealth gameplay than many might have expected going in. The game does a great job of giving you feedback on your stealth status. My memory is fuzzy, but I do recall the whole screen becoming fish-eyed and tinted blue when you were in stealth mode and undetected. You should strive to move around the levels like this and perform as many stealth kills as possible.

Also, don't be afraid to hold back if you find yourself overwhelmed. Your health regenerates much like in Halo, though you can lose health "squares" pretty quickly if you try and Rambo your way through the levels.

If the game is driving you nuts, you might consider switching to Easy difficulty. That might help you too.

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subaltern's picture
Location: California

I do remember certain portions of the game being very difficult. I can't wait to pick this up tomorrow!

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I guess when I replay the same 10 minute stretch for 2 hours I start to wonder if this is the kind of game for me. Part of me wants to go back to Saints Row 2 and just blow stuff up. I can see why this is a classic and everything, but it may be that it's too stealthy for me to truly enjoy it. The blue tinted, etc. that's all correct. And it's really implemented well. But I have found that what that means in practice is that in order to get from A to B I need to be basically doing all of my shooting using headshots from across the room in the dark. So I'm looking at one big black screen, a little blue, a sillouette of a person and a small dot to use for aiming.

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Podunk's picture
Location: The People's Republic of Goodge

DSGamer wrote:
I guess when I replay the same 10 minute stretch for 2 hours I start to wonder if this is the kind of game for me. Part of me wants to go back to Saints Row 2 and just blow stuff up. I can see why this is a classic and everything, but it may be that it's too stealthy for me to truly enjoy it. The blue tinted, etc. that's all correct. And it's really implemented well. But I have found that what that means in practice is that in order to get from A to B I need to be basically doing all of my shooting using headshots from across the room in the dark. So I'm looking at one big black screen, a little blue, a sillouette of a person and a small dot to use for aiming.

You're focusing too much on the shooting! The shanking, neck snapping, and forcing guards to shoot themselves in the face with their own shotgun is where it's at.

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As Podunk said, it's not a shooter, it's a first-person action game that includes guns. I played the Xbox version long ago, but I don't remember its being that hard, so long as you focus on trying to come up from behind dudes, melee, etc.

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Podunk wrote:

You're focusing too much on the shooting! The shanking, neck snapping, and forcing guards to shoot themselves in the face with their own shotgun is where it's at.

Amen to that, brother! It's how I like to treat the students where I work!

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Sneaky Bastard
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This is flying from Amazon sometime in the near future (it was $6 off with free shipping, and i'm lazy.) I'm super excited for it, it's the only game i've bought in the last 4 months and i'm breaking my rule of not creating an even larger backlog of games by purchasing new ones.

Living in a nightmare hellride.

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GameTrailers has a review up. I like what I saw.

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Nice, apparently I've been living under a rock and didn't know it included an updated Escape from Butcher Bay campaign as well as the new one.

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Location: Sunny Vancouver

Under a rock? I didn't even know it was released! Gonna snap this up soon as I can clear some time.

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subaltern's picture
Location: California

I went into work (where I have it pre-ordered) today to check and see if I could pick it up early. Turns out we're not getting it until Friday the earliest. Blockbuster sucks...

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Podunk wrote:
DSGamer wrote:
I guess when I replay the same 10 minute stretch for 2 hours I start to wonder if this is the kind of game for me. Part of me wants to go back to Saints Row 2 and just blow stuff up. I can see why this is a classic and everything, but it may be that it's too stealthy for me to truly enjoy it. The blue tinted, etc. that's all correct. And it's really implemented well. But I have found that what that means in practice is that in order to get from A to B I need to be basically doing all of my shooting using headshots from across the room in the dark. So I'm looking at one big black screen, a little blue, a sillouette of a person and a small dot to use for aiming.

You're focusing too much on the shooting! The shanking, neck snapping, and forcing guards to shoot themselves in the face with their own shotgun is where it's at.

Definitely this.

I never finished, but I did get about 3-4 hours in and I never struggled. There must be alternate routes or a strategy you're missing.

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No way. The ass of War trumps all others.

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MrDeVil909 wrote:
Podunk wrote:
DSGamer wrote:
I guess when I replay the same 10 minute stretch for 2 hours I start to wonder if this is the kind of game for me. Part of me wants to go back to Saints Row 2 and just blow stuff up. I can see why this is a classic and everything, but it may be that it's too stealthy for me to truly enjoy it. The blue tinted, etc. that's all correct. And it's really implemented well. But I have found that what that means in practice is that in order to get from A to B I need to be basically doing all of my shooting using headshots from across the room in the dark. So I'm looking at one big black screen, a little blue, a sillouette of a person and a small dot to use for aiming.

You're focusing too much on the shooting! The shanking, neck snapping, and forcing guards to shoot themselves in the face with their own shotgun is where it's at.

Definitely this.

I never finished, but I did get about 3-4 hours in and I never struggled. There must be alternate routes or a strategy you're missing.

Riddick wasn't much of a struggle, but I distinctly remember a couple of sections that I slogged through at least half a dozen times because I ran low on health in a previous section, and wasn't able to make it to one of the health needles without progressing forward.

Living in a nightmare hellride.

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Not to derail the thread too much, but does anyone know when the 3rd Riddick movie is coming out?

Gwidge sounds like something you would call a grandmother's vagina. - caustic77

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Mike Honcho wrote:
Not to derail the thread too much, but does anyone know when the 3rd Riddick movie is coming out?

Is it even in production? Chronicles was an enormous bomb.

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Podunk wrote:
Mike Honcho wrote:
Not to derail the thread too much, but does anyone know when the 3rd Riddick movie is coming out?

Is it even in production? Chronicles was an enormous bomb.

You know, I still really liked Chronicles. Sure, there were cheesy lines but I enjoyed the universe all the same. The ending amused me greatly.

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Podunk wrote:
Is it even in production? Chronicles was an enormous bomb.

Chronicles 2 will be a venture into the Underverse, C3 will involve a return to Furia, according to imdb.com's Biography page on Vin Diesel.

Here's a video in which Vin confirms that the script for 2 is being worked on - the important part is at 1:45.

A massive pile

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It's been a long time since I smelled beautiful....

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Atomicvideohead wrote:
It's been a long time since I smelled beautiful....

THAT would be the line. I cracked up in the theatre.

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I liked Chronicles too. It helped that I went in with very low expectations.

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I read the book before I saw the movie so I'm not sure if I can say the same.

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I liked Chronicles, true there were plenty of cheesy lines but I thought it went well with the previous Pitch Black back story.

Gwidge sounds like something you would call a grandmother's vagina. - caustic77

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Location: Canada

I've heard the newer part isn't nearly as good, from the reviews I've read.

Any agreement?

And I'm glad I'm not the only one who liked the second movie.

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I don't want to start another DRM debate but just for the sake of diligence, PC Gamer apparently is reporting that the PC version has SecuROM activation with a 3 machine limit and there's currently no way to revoke activations. I'm trying to get confirmation of this since I haven't seen the issue and no one else seems to know for sure. But if this is a concern for you, you might want to hold off on your purchase for a bit.

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The game really does seem to be much harder than I recall. I'm thinking there's an intentional increase in difficulty on Starbreeze's part, or I'm simply out of practice since I've really only played WoW between the original release and now.

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Just got my copy today after being hooked by the demo, and loving it so far. (I'm only a bit past the infirmary, so still early on.) The way the "tutorial" is done is a very nice touch. I missed out on EFBB last generation, so it's all new to me.

I'm also somewhat amazed by the voice cast, both the semi-big names and the old-time voice actors like Nick Jameson (who was in almost every game LucasArts did in the '90s). Can't believe I didn't recognize either Michelle Forbes or Lance Henriksen from the demo.

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The Dark Athena part isn't really all that much worse, it's just more open in how you approach it and since gamers are lazy asses they take the path of least resistance. AKA shooting everything.

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How far into it are you, Sinatar? I've heard the second half of the Dark Athena content is really, really bad. Like, cheap, insta-death, terrible frustrating FPS design kind of bad.