Is it dark in here...

[trinityvixen]

...or is it just me? And by "me" I mean "Richard B. Riddick."

feiran and darkling1 awesomely got me The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena for my birthday. It, equally awesomely, comes with The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, which was originally for the XBOX (as opposed to the 360). This is all so amazingly awesome because A) well, duh, two games for the price of one!; B) I get achievements for the old game now!; and C) I've wanted to play Escape from Butcher Bay for like, ever. Also, shut up, everything having to do with Richard B. Riddick, escaped convict, murderer is awesome. I even don't mind the movie of The Chronicles of Riddick, for all that it is infinitely inferior to Pitch Black.

Anyway, needless to say, I've been playing the first game (don't want to be spoiled for the new one!) for hours now, and I've discovered two things: 1) Vin Diesel should do more voice work because his voice is amazing; and 2) This game was designed to be played by someone who doesn't suck at video games, i.e. not me.

There was a tutorial sort of level that began before the actual Butcher Bay part, and that took me 40 minutes to get through. I just kept dying a million times and I hadn't even got to the weapons-having part. (Not even a shiv!) I spent at least that much time tonight trying to beat one area. Yeesh, I'm bad at this. It also doesn't have many permanent save spots. It auto-saves only, and it saves in stages between major checkpoints. If you turn off the game, you don't seem to resume from the saved stage but from the checkpoint. I kept going for the better part of hours just to get to a checkpoint. Because I was not doing that one part again. No sir.

Okay, all that aside? I GET TO BE RIDDICK AND I'M ZOMG-ING ALL OVER THE PLACE. I'm half ready to throw the controller through the TV screen through the parts that I keep having to redo and redo and redo. But they almost always make it worth the while. I had to juggle throwing flares and shooting mutants in the dark and died every five minutes only to have to do it all over again. But when I beat it? EYE SHINE. I CAN SEE IN THE DARK. ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG.

Bring on the third Riddick movie already!

Comments

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

The best thing about the game is that on my Gamestop order confirmation, the title was truncated to Chronicles of Riddick: Ass!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Did I mention how there was that one guy watching another shirtless guy do push-ups and sit-ups while he lounged in bed? Yeah...

[jlc.livejournal.com]

Chronicles of Riddick: Ass
If that were the third Riddick movie, I'd totally be there.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I'm there regardless!

[saturn-shumba.livejournal.com]

Pitch Black love! ♥

I also don't mind the Chronicles of Riddick movie. But like you said, it's no Pitch Black.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The problem with The Chronicles of Riddick was that it made Riddick a hero. The most interesting part of his character in Pitch Black was that he had a different point of view on life and death and he saw heroism as something amusing--a fable that people tell themselves to make shit situations seem better. To a murderer, the idea that there are acceptable ways to die must seem very funny. Yet he can't escape the sense of injustice into which he was born (and only barely survived).

Basically, I think Riddick worked better as a demon on someone's shoulder than a star. (The interplay with him and Johns fighting over the soul of the group of survivors was great.) This is no slam on Vin Diesel--he was captivating in Pitch Black and definitely fun in Chronicles--just that his character is hard to make a star out of. (If they had done it better, he'd have been sort of like Dexter Morgan. In space.)

[saturn-shumba.livejournal.com]

What bothers me about certain Sci-Fi/fantasy movies/shows (ahem Heroes) is that the female characters always have to be this virtuous entity, always Doing The Right Thing™

Which is why I really loved the female lead in Pitch Black (her name escapes me and I'm too lazy to google it)--her Doing The Right Thing moment at the end of the film was based on a moral lapse she had at the beginning of the film.

Good stuff! I'm adding that lady to my future Girl in Spaaace picspam I'm gonna do. Eventually.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see a Girl in Space picspam! I'll be looking for it.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Radha Mitchell.

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

I've never actually seen the movie but it's been on my short list of things I want to catch one of these days. The game was surprisingly awesome though. I was trying to replay it a month or so ago but I couldn't find my disc, figured I'd just wait for the remake. Huzzah!

I remember doing all sorts of silly things for cig packs. Unlockable concept art, that sort of thing.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I heartily recommend Pitch Black to you. It's very decent in its thrills--monsters in the dark and all that--but the characters are great. The three leads fall out around some murky morality, and none of them are good people through and through, Riddick least or most of all, depending on how you squint at it. Which is a fascinating thing to realize, that people who aren't mass murdering psychos can be worse than them. Not worse in the same way, of course, but complicated. Nobody's a hero, not really. I loved it.

And for all the Vin Diesel's character is bad-ass, he's very complex in the movie and he's not its star by a long shot. It's one of those cases of someone on the periphery being more impressive than the people at the center.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

http://www.amazon.com/Riddick-Trilogy-Pitch-Black-Chronicles/dp/B000EQHXN2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1239390058&sr=1-1 is all cheap and stuff.

[jlc.livejournal.com]

Yum, Pitch Black!

Also, Escape from Butcher Bay was one of the most singularly amazing games for the xbox. Incredibly, incredibly slick production.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

feiran pegged my interest immediately: the stealth aspect and skulking in the dark is very like one of my all time favorite games ever, Aliens vs Predator. I always played the alien. Sticking to dark corners and surprising people with death out of nowhere is kind of a thing I like to do. In video games! Only in video games!

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

I'm sure a new Riddick movie will be announced any day now, especially if Fast & Furious does acceptably well in its 2nd weekend.

I have always thought Vin Diesel was worth more credit than he is given. I even liked Babylon A.D.. It's no masterpiece (and the longer version makes way more sense), but it's definitely worth more than a 5% on Rotten Tomatoes.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Vin's already been making rumblings about the third movie since he's been talking up Dark Athena. I'm ready! Willing! Able! Hell, I'll happily rent Fast & Furious. The first one wasn't terrible.

My friend told me that Vin Diesel is more surprised than anybody else that he's famous for what he's famous for. (Action stuff, mostly.) He broke through with a documentary film that caught Spielberg's eye and led to his being in Saving Private Ryan. But hey, fame's fame.