The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is a new, action stealth FPS that picks up where the movies left off. Following up the original game, Escape from Butcher Bay, Riddick must now free himself from the Dark Athena, a merc ship he used to escape from the notorious Butcher Bay prison. Capitan Revas and his band of mercs force Riddick to use every stealth and action move he knows to escape from the nefarious crew.

Dark Athena  employs a style of gameplay that seamlessly combines stealth and the traditional FPS first introduced in Butcher Bay. With Riddick delivering his usual string of clever one-liners, unfortunately that’s where the similarities end. Butcher Bay gave us some awesome graphics and was able to awe even seasoned gamers with the textures and lighting. But that was 5 years ago and now these graphics, used in Dark Athena, are much less impressive. With Dark Athena looking like any other FPS its easier to notice the unflattering landscape textures.

The gameplay is a totally different story though. Combining stealth and action moves gives the player a unique opportunity to use Riddick as a silent, deadly assassin or just charge right in like a bull in a china shop. Most missions will require you use stealth in order to make it through. But the few missions where you can just go berserk lend just enough variety so Dark Athena doesn’t get stale too quickly. The one main drawback is that game is absolutely terrible at leading you to the next mission. Be prepared to run around in circles trying to find your way, which can be very frustrating.

Most gamers, myself included, could easily forgive the shortcomings of Butcher Bay due to the outstanding graphics that set this game apart from the genre of the times.  The same can’t be said for Assault on Dark Athena, which simply try’s to imitate the success of Butcher Bay. With that being said, hardcore gamers should enjoy this one for the nostalgia and I still feel this is a fun game to play especially for casual FPS players.

Available on: Xbox360, PS3, PC