The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

The Chronicles of Riddick:Escape from Butcher Bay must be one of my favourite games for the Xbox. I think that Riddick's great anyway, so when I saw this I just had to have it. This game explains two things:1)how Riddick got his 'eyeshine' in the first place, and 2)how he escaped from one of the toughest slams in the Universe. The game has excellent graphics due to the motion capturing performed by the developers, which makes it seem very authentic. Riddick and Johns are voiced by their counterparts from the movies, and a lot of new characters are introduced, many who are irrelevant to the story overall but a few who might make the difference between Riddick living and dying. There is a huge amount of replay value, just to collect every feature and fully complete the game. This isn't a game for young children though, as it contains a lot of swearing and violence(just what you'd expect from Riddick). Verdict:10/10!

Yep great game, great Graphics, great game play, some great new features not seen before, and boy does he look like Vin Diesel or what? I,m going to play it again in two or three months. A nice touch going from different atmospheres a couple of times in the game and I didn't find it too heavy on my system. The only time it took a bit too long to load, was at the start. Game developers, sit up and have a look ,this is the way games are headed. As usual my only complaint is that it was too short, (why are all the new games so short?) Could be that the Developers are beginning to see PC Games as a real big money spinner, keep it short and they will have to go out and buy another game, or is it just the massive amount of resources all these great new Graphics use? so I,m taking away a point for the shortness factor. 'Butcher,s Bay' be blessed. 9/10

Games based on movies have a history of being poorly designed and made within a short space of time to cash in on the buzz surrounding a popular current movie release. Escape from Butcher Bay isn't based on a specific movie but the Chronicles of Riddick franchise instead and fills in a gap in the storyline that a novel would ordinarily fill.

With Escape from Butcher Bay things look good from the beginning, as we have Vin Diesel doing all of Riddick's dialogue and a surprisingly realistic computerised representation of the character, Vin Diesel put in the time being scanned, motion captured etc. which is rare for any game featuring the actual actor out of a film or TV series. Another credit to Diesel is that he created his own game company, Tigon (a Tigon is a Tiger-Lion hybrid) which I assume made this game happen in the first place. Diesel's voice acting is of a high standard and the storyline is well thought out and keeps up interest the whole way. As far as first-person-shooters go Escape from Butcher Bay is among the best I've played and anyone who owns or has access to an Xbox should give it a go.

The game is in my opinion somewhat confusing at points but the graphics and the fighting moves are beyond comparison. If the game can be any better I would have to say that it could be simplified in the missions for the jail yard sections. The fun part of the game is being able to take down guards with guns with a screwdriver. The game is inaccurate in the means of how Riddick gets his eyes but that does not matter much because the plot accuracy is not much of a big deal in this game. It is one of the best games that I have played in a very long time. The character involvement in the progression of Riddick through the prison is also a nice ad on to the continuous blood and guts the game provides.

And I got to say, this is the best console port to PC ever made. The game played really smoothly provided I had the most high end computer parts and sound, the graphic was very beautiful and rivaled both Doom 3 and Far Cry by miles. The storyline was brutally cold as you play as Riddick, the prisoner who seems to just wanna be left alone. The voice acting and music was just perfect exactly like the movie. And for 30 bucks this game is not a sure miss at all. However, there was some strange crashes like having 3d sound and EAX can sometimes give you the blue of death, another annoying problem that hit me was I had to install the monitor driver instead of using Microsoft's default plug and play in order to get the resolution beyond 800x600 but I think Starbreeze is making a patch for it. Other then that, playing at 1600x1024(I have widescreen 16:10 monitor) the game looked just beautiful and really puts the Xbox's version to bad shame. Even for those who hate the movie should give this game a try and you shall see why everything is afraid of Riddick. 9 out of 10.