The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

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The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is a remake/sequel to the 2004 game The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. It features the entire Butcher Bay campaign, featuring updated graphics as well as the new story aboard the vessel Dark Athena.

Dark Athena‍'‍s story begins where Butcher Bay left off after Riddick and Johns escaped together. While in stasis sleep, they are taken forcibly aboard the Dark Athena, a massive mercenary vessel. The ship is run by Gale Revas and her second in command, Spinner. Whilst Johns is captured, Riddick manages to escape and must now fight his way off the ship to safety.

Whilst the game's AI showed its age a bit and the multiplayer disappointed, it was received very well and proved to be enjoyable to fans of the first game and newcomers alike. It was also praised for its great voice acting.

Tropes used in The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena include:
  • Anticlimax Boss: Spinner in Dark Athena
  • Bag of Spilling: In the first boss fight against Revas, she kicks you and your assault rifle flies under the table. Yet, when the game starts up again, all you weapons are gone besides your club, blades, and fists. Additionally, you often lose any NanoMED cartridges you have in your inventory when transitioning between levels.
  • Bond One-Liner:
    • (Riddick knocks Revas into an elevator shaft, then drops her after a short conversation. Lynn asks him if she's gone.): "When I say goodbye, it's forever."
  • Bounty Hunter: The ship in Dark Athena is half this, half private military force/slave ship.
  • Break the Cutie: Lynn Silverman of Dark Athena gets hit hard with this trope. To start, she and her parents end up on a shitty transport shuttle trying to find a new life somewhere, only for the Athena to raid it and capture everyone aboard. Then she manages to escape, while her parents are imprisoned. While evading the mercs by living in the ventilation system, she ends up witnessing her father get turned into a drone. She later meets up with her mother again after Riddick deactivates the prison cells in order to start a riot. Then she gets to watch her mother get shot in the back by a psychotic ex Athena merc turned prisoner named Jaylor while trying to let Riddick out of a ventilation hatch (in previous conversations with Riddick, Jaylor constantly talked about how he wanted to kill and rape Ellen. Yes, in that order). Later, after Riddick stabs Revas in the neck and gets off the ship in an escape pod, Lynn will run up to the window and beg him not to leave her behind, while the Made of Iron Revas will call you out on that and tell you she's going to make the kid suffer (and promptly shoots Riddick's pod down onto Aguerra Prime). After Riddick makes his way back onto the Athena to use it to get off the planet (who were raiding it), Lynn shows up again and helps you by causing the drones to attack the mercs. Riddick finally seems to have her safe after finishing Revas for good shortly after. By the way, Lynn is six.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Jaylor means it when he says he's going to kill Ellen Silverman.
  • Dark Action Girl: Revas in Dark Athena.
  • Elite Mooks: The red-armored Mercs with red googles encountered towards the end of Dark Athena have insane amounts of armor and can take more than a full magazine of assault rifle fire to kill. Most players never notice this, though, since by that point in the game you're given a One-Hit Kill rifle with unlimited ammo.
  • Fate Worse Than Death: Getting turned into a Drone in Dark Athena. At one point Riddick encounters two prisoners in the middle of the conversion process, and both beg him to mercy kill them. It's up to the player to oblige them.
  • The Future Is Noir
  • Human Resources: The Ghost Drones. Human prisoners gutted, lobotomized, and given rudimentary AIs that can be overridden by a human operator.
  • I Love the Dead: In Dark Athena Jaylor states in no uncertain terms that he intends to do this to Ellen Silverman after first killing her as soon as the prisoner riot starts. He makes good on the "killing her" part, but doesn't survive for long afterwards.
  • 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.
  • No Pronunciation Guide: Revas. Riddick/Vin Diesel pronounces it as "Reh-vis," while every other character in the game says it as "Ree-vis."
  • Strong Flesh, Weak Steel: In Assault on Dark Athena, you stab Revas through the neck and she's still alive once you leave.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: In Assault on Dark Athena a helpless prisoner on the Athena is being converted into a Drone. He asks you to kill him to spare him this fate, but you can just leave him lying there, in which case you may well imagine him as one of the Drones you kill later in the game.
  • Wasted Song: Assault on Dark Athena contains a very brief sequence in which the player can control Drones, during which the ordinarily ambient soundtrack is dropped for an awesome techno beat... which is used nowhere else in the game and appears to be impossible to find in MP3 format. Is this it?