On Thursday, PS3 users got the chance to give a try to the new Chronicles of Riddick game, around a week after 360 users. So I, of course, checked it out, since the previews make it seem mildly interesting.

Sadly, it wasn’t exactly as good as it seemed. Read on! (yes, this will be a short post).

I am completely unfamiliar about Chronicles of Riddick as a whole, so I went completely blindfolded at this one.

Graphics
They’re… okay… The environments are boring, the characters look okay, the animations are fine… except when Riddick is talking with that guy when you activate a terminal of some sort(in the fisrt room), the graphics just… randomly stutter and jerk around… The rest is fine. Nothing spectacular though.

Gameplay
Well, it’s an FPS. It doesn’t really try to do anything different with the genre. It does encourage stealth though.

So the basics are what you’d expect. Shooting, melee attacks, crouching(called “Stealth”, here), jumping… all normal FPS stuff. Using stealth makes you crouch and somehow harder to find as well. Here, instead of a cover system, you have a “Leaning” system, which makes you, of course, lean to whichever side you want. You can use that to actually use whatever you want as cover by crouching, and using the Lean button to get out from whichever side you want of the cover. Kinda. It actually works pretty well.

Stealth… well, its a bit weird. Run and gunning is fine(but it’s more likely that you’ll get damaged). But if you want to be less likely to get damaged, stealth is the way to go. To do so, it first requires crouching, but most of the time that’ll be useless. Proper stealth requires to shoot out lights to make it harder for enemies to see you. I think it’s kinda under-productive… I mean, if I don’t want to be seen, I’d also try not being heard either, and shooting out lights with an assault rifle isn’t exactly the best idea (at least not in a real life situation). But, considering the AI, at least in the demo, is kinda moronic, it always works, and if you don’t screw up they’ll all die and you won’t have taken any damage. It’s a bit stupid, but it’s okay. I found that enemies don’t climb ladders either… weird. If they see you using their flashlight, they’ll start shooting, but untl then you’re safe.

Speaking of damage, I kinda like what they did here. Instead of just… completely healing by waiting a few seconds(REALISM!!!!… not), you actually have a life bar. But it works differently. Kinda Metroid style, you have “boxes” of health.  But you ALSO have regenerating health. How that works is that when you lose one of those “boxes”, it disappears for good, until you find something to regain it, and when you regenerate health you don’t get more than the number of “boxes” you have available. Kind of a middle point for both people who don’t like regenerating health and those who like it.

The enemy AI is all over the place. If you’re stealthing “properly” they suck, they sometimes just randomly suck, and sometimes they randomly pwn you. Twice I took out a group of drones by just standing there, shooting in their general direction and they all killed themselves by getting in the way of my bullets (when they had a ton of other angles they could’ve shot me from). It’s random really.

And melee combat… I don’t like it really. It doesn’t work very well. Unless you get the enemy by surprise(getting an instant-kill from behind), it’s kinda tough to kill your enemy. If you’re not blocking they are, and it just gets hard to hit anyone. When you get a gun it’s just a much better choice.

Verdict
After playing through the demo a few times, I can say it’s a rental for me. It’s nothing special, nor does it TRY to be, but it’s fairly fun. I think it might be worth buying after a price drop or two. If you’re a big Riddick fan it might be a good buy, moreso because of the inclusion of a revamped version of Escape from Butcher Bay. Otherwise rent it or something before buying.

jobocan Games, impressions