Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena – hands-on

4) Guns, who needs guns?

Riddick may be handy with a gun, but he's also no slouch in melee combat, especially when armed with the Ulaks blades. This handy dandy weapon slices and dices better than any Ginsu knife you ever bought off late night TV. Range is incredibly limited, but once you get close enough for melee it's party time.

At one point in our play through, we dropped from a ceiling vent into a corner shadow right behind a drone guard. With the screen shrouded in darkness, it only took a few quick button presses and the drone was a lifeless husk. The intuitive nature of the control system pretty much makes it a pick-up-and-play title for anyone who's ever played an FPS.

5) Lynn, the little girl

Given that the game happens before the events in Pitch Black, it's a great place for players to learn how a hardened criminal starts to learn how to care for others (d’aww). The idea of a little girl running loose on a mercenary ship after her parents have been turned into mindless drone warriors may be a little cliched, but it promises to add some depth to the otherwise stone cold main character.

6) Michelle Forbes

It's a given that Vin Diesel would be reprising the role of Riddick for the game, but we were pleasantly surprised to hear Michelle Forbes voicing the role of Captain Revas, the ruthless captain of the Dark Athena. She plays the captain as cool and calculating; in many ways Captain Revas reminds us of an evil version of Admiral Cain from Battlestar Galactica.

7) Exploration and puzzle aolving

Amidst all the shooting and killing, you're still trapped on a mercenary ship and that means solving more than one puzzle. We were only exposed to a limited number of events, but what we saw bodes well. The puzzles flow organically from the environment, rather than feeling like bog standard "find the blue key to open the next level" fare.

One of the puzzles we experienced required Riddick to get past a spinning fan. The solution? Stuff a drone into the blades to jam up the works and stop the fan from spinning. Bloody effective, in more ways than one. Of course that leads to our final reason...