Chronicles of Riddick PC

[Dakaras]

Told you its sexy Zak

[Zak33]

yeah..I know....but that's more real than any tiling in the world.

[Zak33]

ooh..its a big game.

I'm a tad lost at the mo...so many missions to finish, loads of areas to explore.

But I have to say...the control system still sucks. Trying to drop on people is a bugger...

[Zak33]

right....one week on and many hours in and its got good "come back again and again" potential, BUT its still got a lousy control system.

The AI is bloody excellent a lot of the time. The little sods roll sideways, and duck out of the way, and even when I am all stealthed up, IF one of their torch beams catches ,e in the shadows, all hell breaks loose.

But the hand to hand is sh1te. You just can't be sure if its pure luck or a fraction of skill creeping into my fighting. Sometimes a single mouse click and I've disarmed someone and shot them through with their own gun stil in their hands,and other times I die in a split second.

The oldest of hand to hand combat techniquesworks best with opponents without guns....run in...hit once...back off...

but thats CRAP. I mean, in Severance Blade of Darkness, the timing and combos were critical. After a few hours I was dodging, side stepping and reverese thrusting like a pro. But in this game.....rush in...tride to circle strafe, whack or stab...back off, and hide. It's pants

So...game play, excitment and atmosphere are all HIGH. Control in fights, is LOW. I tried not hitting, just avoiding and just dying, over and over to see if it was me randomly clicking badly...I tried to time it, knowing I'd reload in 3seconds, and let the bad guys do their worst, and its not consistent. Which means you just get lucky sometimes.

I guess thats real life, but it doesn't make a good game. I wanna use MY skills to live or die.

Lastly...frame rate. My X800 Pro was struggling on high settings at 1024x768 in some scenes and not at all on others. The coding on certain textures seems to have been done badly, and superbly on others. Which is a shame, because I am going from 60fps down to 12!!!! and back to 60.

Might try a few different drivers For rames per second I useTeam Speak Overlay....(but without teamspeak itself).

[noah]

just started playing this myself, what a wicked game. cheers for the review ferrel nice work.

i just cant believe more people i know havent got it or even heard of it?!

i get similar frame rate drops wioth my 6800 zak, i guess you're right, must be some of those pretty textures. and as for the lighting and detail, WOW, wish i bought a GT now

[Zak33]

i get similar frame rate drops wioth my 6800 zak, i guess you're right, must be some of those pretty textures. and as for the lighting and detail, WOW, wish i bought a GT now

nooo.....a vanilla 6800 IS THE BEST VALUE ...period. I've used one and it was fast. Yeah..GT is a tad faster but not in this game. My X800 Pro is a fast beast..but if its the game slowing it, whch is must be, don't knock the card

If you were dropping 5-10 fps from a max of 100 it would be the card...but you and I are dropping from 60 to 10!!! No GT will osrt that...not even and Ultra.

[noah]

ohh good [smiles at his apparent good choice of hardware]

well...great game anyway, speaking of which better get back to it

[Ferral]

It runs lovely on mine with the Cat 5.3 drivers and my 9600 Pro on 4x AGP all at stock. No major framerate drops or anything in 1024x768.

Pleased everyone likes the review and that it has opened a few peoples eyes on a title that could have possibly just passed them by without any thouht at all and end up missing out on a great piece of software. I have to agree to an extent on some of the bare knuckle fights thinking back on it. Also the grabbing the gun bit, I just kept hammering the mouse button like crazy to do that bit. Bare knuckle fighting kinda feels like you are floating and that you dont make much contact, once again trying to do the left / right straffe thing and ducking back like on FPS, with a little practice you can win most encounters first try. I did find that just hammering the button on that gets you through it whilst moving as its pretty easy to get behind opponents, especially the continuous fighting when you get moved into another area.

Other than that though I stick with everything I put in the review of it, its a great, fun game. Not to be missed.

[Zak33]

one very important thing to think about though.....

sort of thing that only ever happens to me:

I like flight sims.....right? yup
I havea joystick pluged in all the time, right? yup.

By sheer fluke normally leavethe throttle on the joystick about midway....but not last week on my last go at this game.

I loaded the save point and Riddick just RAN forward....

I reloaded....he just RAN forward.....even holding my finger on the back key slowed hm to a crawl..let go....of he went again....no contrl

My JOYSTICK throttle was wide open and it turns out you can play Riddick with a joystick

sadly it does it while trying to play normaly

Strafe was twistt he sticks rudder....forwardsand backward was amazing though...totally controlable much better than keys..so many different speeds.

But aiming with a stick is a nightmare....which probably is why I cant shoot in IL-2

[davidstone28]

Couple of questions if I may:-

1. Where can I download an Nvidia driver profile for Riddick? 71.XX has them in there already, but the offish 66.93 doesn't have them. ANy ideas?

2. At the start of the game, after I strangle the guard what am I supposed to do? I get mown down by the machine guns or blown up by the mines???

[tom deloford]

go down the porthole behind yuo i think

[noah]

right zak33 and ferral, the time has come that i ask for some help... (if you dont mind )

i'm stuck. i need to find a locked vent in the workspass area, the only one i can get through leads me back down to the lift i think i came up from the mine in? dunno how tho

can you shed any light?

ta

[Ferral]

So you have left the 2nd prison area for the mine now I'm guessing.

Once you go through the doors to the left is one of the big robot like guards, head right avoinding that completely. You go into a room with 2 or 3 blokes in it and the lights go on and off, take out the guys and look around the room collecting health and anything else you can find. Now to find the required vent its on the left side of the room (from starting position in the room). Follow it through and you will reach the top of an elavator with 2 guards talking in it, this takes you down to the mine level and the toughest part of the game.

I have finished it already and the hardest bit in the whole game is the security station in the mines, then it eases up again to an enjoyable pace. I have been playing through it again and cant get past that bit for some reason, think I'm doing what I done first time round, must be doing something wrong though !

Or is it the bit where you are going through the quarters of all the guards etc ? I remember that bit myself, went round in circles a good few times, you come out in the showers that Zak kindly posted pics of. Off the top of my head I cant remember directions unfortunately, just remember it being a pain finding the way through into the next section. Only thing I remember was it was something daft that virtually stares you in the face, I remember a vent on the back left of one of the areas but its navigating through it.

[Zak33]

I got monster lost too....but thats PC gaming for you

I have loads of unfinished "tasks" or "quests" and I cant get back up to thew prison to finish them...
just following my nose to see wh next to kill

[yamangman]

Got a small bug with this game, dialouge options move through every other one, so I can't select the option I want. Bit of a pain to say the least.

[davidstone28]

This is a GREAT game, with some of the most beautiful graphics I have ever seen (better than FarCry SM3.0 version, HL2, Doom3 etc). The lighting effects are incredible.

The plot, the way the story unfolds, the cutscenes, characters etc are superb.

This the most criminally underated / under publicised game I have seen in years (its better than HalfLife2 in my view). Guess it suffers from the fact that its based on a movie.

Also, the Developer's Cut edition is fascinting - listening to how the programmers designed the game etc