The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay can easily be considered the best movie-based video game to date.
The events of the game seem to take place before any of the Riddick movies. In the game you obviously play as Riddick who has been incarcerated in a huge prison called Butcher Bay and escaping this huge prison will be no easy task. Guards with DNA coded rifles will keep an eye on you and the security turrets will shoot you without a second thought if they see you do anything suspicious. The story in the game is more of a memory flashback Riddick goes through during the games opening cutscene and many things about Riddick will be explained as you play, such as how he got his bright eyes that allow him to see in the dark.
The gameplay in "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay" has lots of variation and tries new ideas to make its gameplay interesting. The game is played in first-person and the game is composed of stealth, shooting, and first-person fighting. "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay" has the best first-person fighting seen in any game. The controls are really responsive and the first-person fighting in this game is really satisfying. Every time you hit an enemy in the face you'll feel like your unleashing a world of pain on your enemy and since you play as Riddick you can land some pretty painful punches. The first-person fighting doesn't take long to get used to thanks the smooth controls and the fights really feel like two or three guys trying to kick each others butts. You can also fight with a good supply of melee weapons such as brass knuckles, knives, and even clubs and you'll still get that same satisfying feel no matter what weapon you choose. The only small flaw is that there aren't that many punching combos. You'll have your left and right punch and your upper cut as well as your forward punch, but that’s about it (the same goes for melee weapons).However, since the fighting in this game is so satisfying, you'll hardly view this as a flaw and this actually helps in keeping the fighting in this game simple but fun at the same time.
Though the game has a good amount of first person fighting, most of the game is based around stealth and like the first-person fighting this is done extremely well. Since you're in a prison you'll have to sneak up on many prison guards so you won't get caught while trying to escape. When you enter stealth mode instead of having some sort of meter (like in Splinter Cell) to tell you how well your hidden your whole vision turns into a vivid blue to indicate that your hidden. If you’re spotted or caught the blue vision will disappear and everything will return to its normal color. You can use your bare hands as well as many melee weapons to take down your enemies in the stealth portions of the game. When you come behind an enemies back you can choose to break his neck using your hands, slit his throat using a knife, or you can break his neck using a club. What makes the stealth in this game so good is the ambiance it creates in the game and because it serves as an explanation of how Riddick got his shinny eyes that allows him to see in the dark. When you get your shinny eyes it helps in a big way because it adds lots of stealth strategies to the game, such as how you can shoot out all the lights in a room to make it completely dark and using your shinny eyes to be able to see in the darkness while an enemy can only depend on his weapons flashlight to be able to see in the dark. However, your shinny eyes do have a weakness and it is that you’re extremely sensitive to light to the point that looking directly at any light source can easily throw your vision off balance due to how bright your vision can get. This balances out the use of your bright eyes so you don't just use them in every stealth portion of the game just to pass them quickly and there will be many situations where you'll need your bright eyes to help you get past the stealth portions of the game, but there will be other situations where the use of your bright eyes won't be so useful. So make sure you know when to use them because these bright eyes will really come in handy if used in the right situations.
The shooting portions of the game are fairly basic but there still very fun to play. When you shoot a prison guard you'll see him do some smart things such as rolling around on the floor to avoid bullets and taking cover as you try to flush him out. The only thing that can be pointed as a flaw for the shooting in this game is that it’s basically a point-and-shoot type of experience and there's more first-person fighting and stealth than shooting in the game. While the shooting isn't bad by any means it still gives you the feeling that it could have been just as good as the first-person fighting and stealth if the developers would have put a little more thought into the shooting. The shooting in the game will give you an experience sort of like the one found in “Doom 3” but much more enjoyable and intense and the shooting never becomes repetitive, and without spoiling anything lets just say that you won't just be shooting prison guards in this game.
The graphics in this game are some of the most impressive graphics you'll see on the XBOX. The prison environments is highly detailed with lots of textures in them and the lighting and shadow effects are also done very realistically, which makes sense considering that most of the game of based around stealth. The characters models are highly detailed as well and these character models do some unique things that make them look very realistic. When you engage in a first-person fight and successfully land a punch on your opponent you'll see bruises on your opponent’s face and you can even make some places of his face bleed. The blood in this game also looks and behaves pretty realistically. If you’re fighting an opponent and he's standing close to a wall you'll see his blood splatter on the wall and even if your enemy is not standing near a wall you'll still see your enemies blood drop on the floor and all of this helps make the first-person fighting in the game very fun and enjoyable. When you shoot a prison guard you'll see the bullet wounds in the guard’s body filled with blood and the bullet wounds appear depending on where you shoot them. While the graphics are some of the best graphics you’ll see on the XBOX they still have a few rough edges in some areas. You can sometimes see the graphical lines in some of the cutscenes and some character animations do look a little blocky in some areas. The shadow effects also seem to be a little over done in some parts of the game. But this still doesn’t take away the fact that this game looks amazing and that it can easily be considered as one of the best looking games for the XBOX.
The sound effects and voice acting help a lot in giving this game its movie-like feel. The voice acting in the cutscenes are what make this game feel like your watching a Riddick movie and its the voice acting that really makes the cutscenes stand out, which doesn't come as a surprise considering that some of the voice-overs are done by famous actors (such as Vin Diesel). The sound effects that range from shooting a gun to punching a guy in the face also help in giving the game its movie-like feel. The guns in the game give you that futuristic sound when you fire them and one of the main reasons the first-person fighting in this game is so satisfying is the sound your punch makes when you land it on a guys face. Enemies will also taunt you if they know your hiding from them and spit out lots of profanity at you when they have you cornered, which can be funny at first, but you'll soon get tired of all the F words.
The only real flaw that "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay" has is that the game is fairly linear. There are a few alternate paths you can take but it doesn't really matter which one you take because it'll still take you to the same place with the only difference that one path might be harder to take than the other. There are also a good number of side missions you can take to make the game more interesting and you'll get rewards if you choose to complete them. The side missions are a fun distraction from the games linearity and thanks to these side missions you probably won't even notice about the games linearity until you finish it.
"The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay" is without a doubt one of the most surprisingly good games to have come out in quite a while. This game is a definite must buy for anyone who is a fan of the Riddick movies and you don't have to be familiar with any of the Riddick movies to get into this type of game. Those who aren't fans of the Riddick movies should play this as an action-adventure game rather than a game based on a movie. Those who are looking for a great action-adventure game should pick this one up without a second thought and those who decide to pass on this game simply because it's based on a movie will be missing on one of the best games the XBOX has to offer.