Backlog Trackback #4 - Both Creeping and Crawling.

Taking a mostly understood concept and adding a spin to it is commonplace - working on making something that is already good could be called the industry standard. However, there's a good lot to be said of making that spin really unique. In the case of both of these games, that unique twist accounts for a lot of its charm.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault On Dark Athena: There were too many factors against the original game (Escape From Butcher Bay, which also happens to be included here) for anyone to be not be surprised by how good it was. What made that game so great was that it changed up the emphasis of the game constantly (segments where you were fetch-questing for prisoners and closterphobic stealth-action segments segeued into each other quite well), and all of it was fun to play. It was a good game while also adding back story to the movie on which it was based (and let's face it, that wasn't too good.)

But now that there's a good game in the franchise, expectations are bound to arise for the sequel. The smart thing that developers Starbreeze/Tigon Studios did was bank on the success of the first one to the extent that that this new release had a remake of Butcher Bay in it, which of course ended up being the most interesting part of the product.

Beyond the graphical makeover, though, Dark Athena presents something of an expansion pack. It's much shorter than Butcher Bay, yes, but that might be because it feels like a more streamlined version of it; the story moves along much more quickly, there's very little fetch-questing, and while there's still a huge element of stealth, in Dark Athena, gunning your way through a given room instead of using trial-and-error tactics may actually give you a win.

When both games are put together in one package, though, it's really a win for both. Butcher Bay gets to be played by more people with new hi-res textures, and Dark Athena gets to be played by more people who want to see the upgraded Butcher Bay. There's a multiplayer component as well, and you'll find some people playing it, but it ulitmately isn't something we haven't seen before, and it doesn't dampen the value of the product whatsoever. For those who've played the original, the upgraded graphics and Dark Athena will probably be enough to warrant another playthrough, and for those who haven't, it's a fantastic place to dive in.

Deadly Creatures: The boxart may be the worst thing about Deadly Creatures. The lifeless picture that looks to be straight out of a National Geographic story masks a pretty decent game. Although the game itself is pretty straightforward (level, objective, boss, repeat), it has a number of hooks that wind up being novel until the end of the game (even if it is around 6 hours long). For one, developer Rainbow Studios does some pretty cool things with the "you're playing as insects" concept. The spider, for example, has some pretty nice platforming sections that involve hopping around areas using its webbing.

The other interesting thing is the story. The content itself isn't too interesting, but the it's told from the perspective of both a spider and scorpion, and most of the good parts have nothing to do with what you're doing, as you're spectating the story of two men (voiced by Dennis Hopper and Billy Bob Thorton, no less!) who're looking for a buried treasure in the middle of desert. It's pretty slow at the outset, but I was pretty motivated to keep playing about an hour in.

All the interesting story concepts in the world couldn't save its repititive design, however. There isn't much exploration to be had other than to find your way to the next objective (indicated by an arrow, but helps only when there's no pathfinding to be done), the boss fights aren't too unique, and while delivered in an new way, the story doesn't really amount to anything interesting. There's some pretty graphic finishers as the scorpion, but most of the fighting is button-mashing. Playing as insects was a pretty unique spin on an established forumla, but the game never really goes anywhere with it that seems to be worth the deviation.