The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay



The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay is a prequel to the events of Pitch Black. Riddick must escape from the infamous Butchers Bay prison, a feat no-one has ever accomplished.

The facility, constructed on a barren planet, contains three increasingly secure holding areas, and a subterranean mining operation. A captured Riddick is brought to the prison by none other than bounty hunter William J. Johns.

Whilst Johns meets with the warden Hoxie to discuss the matter of payment, Riddick quickly gets to grips with his surroundings and starts a riot. In the confusion, he escapes into the sewer system below the prison. There, after fighting his way through mutants, he meets Pope Joe and a woman named Shirah, eventually gaining his trademarked "shined" eyes. Over the course of the game, Riddick must overcome each increasing security level of the prison before making his escape.

The game is a notable aversion of The Problem with Licensed Games, being praised for its story, gameplay and visuals.

A second game based on the Riddick movies was released in 2009, Assault on Dark Athena.

""NanoMED Plus: We treat you right when the world treats you rough.""
 * The Alcatraz: Butcher Bay itself.
 * Auto Doc: Escape from Butcher Bay features NanoMED Plus stations which will inject a user with nanomachines to repair injuries nearly instantly.


 * Bag of Spilling: You often lose any NanoMED cartridges you have in your inventory when transitioning between levels.
 * Big Red Button: These are on everything that you need to interact with in the video games.
 * Daydream Surprise: of Escape from Butcher Bay.
 * Dressing as the Enemy: In the Escape from Butcher Bay game, Riddick can disguise himself as a guard, quoting the "wolf in sheep's clothing" tale.
 * Eye Scream: In the beginning of Escape from Butcher Bay, there is a locked cell in which two inmates known as the Torture Twins are... entertaining a guest. If you listen long enough, you can hear him screaming "NO, NOT THE EYES!".
 * The Future Is Noir
 * Gorn: The games are, uh, pretty graphic.
 * Guide Dang It: Finding all of the cigarette packs and bounty cards in the two games.
 * Healing Shiv: In the two games, the NanoMED stations refill your health by jabbing you in the neck with various sharp objects.
 * Nintendo Hard: Hard mode. Stealth is an absolute must. Luckily, the only thing that changes is enemy damage. Their health and intelligence remains the same.
 * Not the Fall That Kills You: In Escape from Butcher Bay, Riddick survives a massive fall by grabbing a guard with him and holding him in front of him, which resulted in the guard hitting the ground first and taking the impact, leaving our favourite anti-hero unscathed. Badass as this may be, it landed him in a dark, underground subterranean level of the prison filled with nasty aliens with a dwindling flashlight and not much ammo. Bonus points for actually mentioning this trope, word for word.
 * The Old Convict: Riddick encounters an old prisoner in the Single Max section, who among other things asks Riddick what his first kill was like ("that's between me and him" being the answer"), and offers Riddick a reward if he gets rid of a troublesome inmate. In a Shout-Out to The Shawshank Redemption, he's named "Red".
 * Second-Hour Superpower: Riddick's Eyeshine treatment.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Escape from Butcher Bay allows you to kill many of the inmates you encounter. You can systematically empty the entire Single Max prison wing one person at a time, and your only punishment will be a temporary incapacitation each time. You can even contrive circumstances to kill a fair number of inmates in Double Max (such as disabling the lights in the diner and then making your way back there to go on a killing spree in the dark), which normally makes this extraordinarily difficult due to being chock-full of wall-mounted gun turrets and almost every area being highly visible.
 * Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Just try harming the inmate in Triple Max, however, or any of the other ones in Double Max.