Great game but just lacks polish...
The combat is ok but it's not that great, it blends alot of ideas together but just doesn't have the polish to really carry it off as well as other games. The melee combat is a great fun idea for a FPS but it just turns out to be a click fest of the mouse and requires no skill, gets kinda boring after a few fights and repetitive. The gun play is better but i can't help feel that the guns feel cheap and badly designed, however they didn't feel great in Doom 3 too so it's probably the bad engine. I also like the stealth idea but again it just doesn't feel all that polished and doesn't work well all the time.
Another great thing about Riddick is the kinda RPG'ish elements to the game where you can go around and talk to different people and have missions, although they're linear and you don't get a choice of side missions or anything. Theres also a inventory which is good but again cause you can't carry or collect alot of items it becomes abit pointless. It's nice nice though to be able to walk round come of the prison chatting to people and feeling abit more open ended and RPG styled than most FPS games.
The graphics are fantastic, specially for their day but still great today, however they do lack polish and alot of the textures look abit dodgey. I love the intro to the game specially because it really draws you into the game and feels very Half-Life style. However i would have loved it to go on abit longer and to see abit more of the prison and some easter eggs and jokes, but i'm not gonna put the game down on that. The sounds are all great and the voice acting is great as you'd expect coming from Vin Disel. I also like the touch of the music playing constantly int he background and the atmospheric noises.
Another good point is the fact that the menus have alot of options to customise the look of your game. It includes things like AA and to switch between window and fullscreen mode which is really nice as most new games seem to be missing that. Only problem i have with the menus is again they lack polish and abit annoying to use, i woulda rathered a 2d menu than a 3d one.
Riddick doesn't have any multiplayer so the 8 hour long single player (how long it took me) will have to do you, with how cheap it is now that shouldn't really bother you like it would when the prices were high on launch.
Great game but it is lacking polish and could have been better, but so could all games. I really loved the atmosphere and style of the game and i loved playing it. Riddick will go down as one of the greats.