Dark Athena & Time Travel

So the new Chronicles of Riddick game just got released and I've been playing it through for the last couple of days.

Fuck me, it's a masterpiece.

I started with Escape from Butcher Bay, which is as good as I remember it... the acting & plot are superb, the atmosphere is stunning and the action is wonderfully brutal. It's also a fantastic counterpoint to games like Crysis and Left 4 Dead - the action in Crysis and Left 4 Dead is ultra smooth, ultra kinetic. You're rarely in the same place for long. In Butcher Bay, everything feels much slower, much more ponderous - in a good way.

I've said this before, and I stick by it- the Riddick games are the only ones ever created where I feel like I have a real body in the game world. It's a remarkable feet that adds some serious realism to what is otherwise quite a silly Sci Fi game.

So- Dark Athena. Well, the plot and voice acting is as fantastic as ever. Admiral Cain from BSG voices the main antagonist, which is fantastic :D

If anything, from what I've played, the action is even more ponderous, even more brutal and even more stealthy than it was in Butcher Bay. One bit in particular had you hunting around 10 drones on an otherwise deserted cargo deck. The deck was pitch black, the only light coming from the drones' flashlights. I was sneaking round crates, executing them one by one... It was so good I actually got goose pimples from the excitement of pulling off flawless silent kills one after the other.

Stealth gameplay is very hard to get right but they've done it here, and don't they know it.

Dark Athena isn't quite as focused as Butcher Bay, though. There is a lot more game convenient faffing around this time. Nipping to get components for a Vent Tool, a PDA and so on. This would be an issue were they not giving you a constant feed of awe inspiring set pieces. I won't talk too much about them here as experiencing them yourself is half the fun. So yeah. Two good games, definitely worth getting in my opinion.



In other news, I saw a British film at the cinema today. No, I haven't gone mad. It was Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel.

If you haven't seen the trailer, watch it now and get back to me.

Done? Good. If you liked the look of that trailer, the film is basically that but 83 minutes long instead of two. It's stunningly un ambitious. There are no scenes where any characters have to sacrifice their soul to save humanity, no car chases, no epic love stories across two centuries... Three people in a pub and a time agent are all you get.

I really, really liked it. It was very focused, which helps. It's also one of those odd films where nothing really happens but you're hooked anyway. It's like a shorter version of Gosford Park but with fewer posh people.

I know it's not really saying much, given how crap this year has been for films so far, but it was one of the best things I've seen so far. I think Push was at about the same level of quality but there were fewer things wrong with FAQ...

Put it this way: FAQ is one of those films which is flawless because it doesn't try to do too much. It doesn't over stretch its plot in the way most time travel films do, it doesn't have twelve endings... This can be seen as a bad thing but I say it's always better for a film to be too short rather than too long.

It's definitely worth seeing, if you're a cinema junkie or if you've got 83 minutes to spare and feel like a bit of silly British comedy.

And it's got Roy from the IT crowd in it, which is always a good thing.