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Chronicles of Riddick

I’m way behind the times on this one, but I have to toss some props to Chronicles of Riddick. It had two things going against it from the get-go—a movie license and Vin Diesel—and it managed to overcome both quite nicely.

The game puts you—as Riddick, the character played by Diesel in Pitch Black—on a high-security prison planet, with no hope of escape. Pretty standard stuff really. What sets the game apart is the combination of first-person stealth and fighting action.

The main problem I have with most stealth games is that if you’re discovered, you are going to die. Not so in Riddick. The first-person fighting mode is simple to use, and very powerful. It works like this, you aim your attack with the left thumbstick, and time your attacks (or blocks with the triggers). By using the right sequence of attacks, you can perform devastating combos.

Even when attacking a heavily armed combatant with nothing more than a club or screwdriver, you stand a fighting chance at winning in Riddick. By executing counter-moves when your enemy leaves an opening, you can kill any enemy in just a few hits.

Having stealthy elements in a first-person game has been problematic in the past. After all, if you can’t see your character, how do you know whether or not he’s visible? Riddick solves this by tinting the screen blue whenever you’re well hidden. The deeper the blue, the safer you are. It’s very simple and easy to grasp.

Using advanced rendering techniques—all the models in Riddick are self-shadowed, nearly every surface is bump-mapped, and there are loads of post-processing shaders in use to make the final output look more gritty—puts a big strain on the Xbox’s hardware. Never have I seen a game in more dire need of anti-aliasing.

I also really dig the inclusion of Xbox Live connectivity so that my friends on Live can hit me up for a game of Pandora Tomorrow or Links, even while I’m playing Riddick. Prince of Persia and Full Spectrum Warrior have this as well, and it’s much appreciated.

I’m about 6 hours into the game, and am getting the sinking feeling that I’m probably nearly done. It’s definitely not the best game I’ve played so far this year (Far Cry still holds that honor) but it’s pretty damn good, and definitely worth a rental.