After watching all the trailers of The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena from Gametrailers.com I was really impressed by the game and without hesitation, I downloaded the demo on PlayStation Network tonight. And after playing the rather short demo, I was left with a huge disappointment. Maybe its just me but this game for sure isn’t for me.
The weapons, specifically the guns, look basic to me, although the clip-popping-reload is pretty awesome to watch every time you reload.
While this game supports 1080p full HD and I do have to say the ship’s interior, lighting as well as character’s facial details are all impressive, I give them that. But during the demo I noticed Riddick had jagged shoulders as oppose to smooth round ones. As I said the lighting is great but Riddick’s shadow was way too sharp in my opinion, I would think shadows would be a little blurry.
You get 4 blocks of health but I don’t like the fact that once you completely deplete one or more blocks, even if you rest, you won’t gain back the lost blocks. So say you lost two and a half blocks of health, even if you rested you would only regain the half block’s health and you would have 2 blocks all together. I also don’t understand why when you die, which is rather easy because of the way you heal, I once died and when I restarted from the checkpoint, I was left with 1 block of health. After dying for a couple more times, I got 2 blocks of health instead. Why is that? Isn’t it common sense that you restart with full health?
The stealth feature is “ok” but no where near Metal Gear Solid level. Finally I also don’t like the iPod-styled weapon select screen where you select weapons by rotating the right analog stick which I found a bit too unresponsive.
All and all, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena might not live up to the hype it has generated thus far. I guess download the demo and see for yourselves. I know this game isn’t for me, I’m pretty sure.
