User Reviews (1 - 11 of 40)

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Doesn't recognize my OpenGL

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 22
Date: September 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This really chaps my hide. I make a point of only buying games where the demo works on my box (and I like it). The demo runs fine on my 2.6GHz pentium with GeFOrce Nvidia MX6200.

But the full program won't run. It says I need to have OpenGL 1.3 or better. Duh - I have drivers for OpenGL 2.0! Of course - I can't get my money back - company policy.

Grrrr.

Will not install

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: January 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have all the minimum requirements and the game refuses to install. I read the release notes, disabled my second monitor; no luck.

The support web site no longer exists.

The game web site no longer exists.

They appear to have taken the $$ and run. Thank goodness the game was not a $50 purchase!

Thoroughly nasty piece of work

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 36
Date: February 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I love adventure and shooter type games but the gratuitous realistic violence and language in this software was truly unpleasant. I regretted buying it from the first time I played it and soon threw it in the trash.

I wish I could say how great this game is, but...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 33
Date: March 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

it won't even install :( After looking at the developer's web site, it seems this game is a POS that is more problems than its worth.

Will not run after install (OpenGL Error)

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: February 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I wish I had read these reviews before buying it. It won't run. Complains about OpenGL. Luckily, I bought it on clearance for $8.

As reviewer on another site said, "this is a beta release in a box."

HYPE ALERT

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 21
Date: February 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game seems to be getting the full treatment from the shadow marketing crew. Be careful about what reviews you put any trust in.
The game is ok as a console port. It is not much of a game from PC standards. Good graphics do not make a game. It is also very short. (one day short). If you really love Vin Diesel and Riddick then you will want this, but otherwise it is not that great. I have to believe any of the over enthusiastic reviews are company plants. The reviews in the major magazines are also overly optimistic. I had minor crashes and the save game system is somewhat console-ish. Be wary of the other reviews.

PC Gamer gave this 93%!?!?!!?!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 22
Date: February 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Man, was I duped into buying this. PC Gamer made it editor's choice, and gave it a rating that put in on par with Half Life and Doom. But it not ever close. The game looks good, but the gameplay is somewhat lame, and its very difficult to get through the levels without a walkthrough. You rarely get any weapons, and run around with a stun gun for a whole level.

This game could have been so much better, but they blew it and most likely relied on a payola scam to get people to say it was good.

Very fun, but extremely violent

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 10
Date: December 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

An extremely fun game, I played it through in one sitting. The system requirements are steep, but if your system can handle it the graphics are outstanding, as well as the art work. The story is also interesting (though a little frustrating at times).

I'm a fan of first-person shooters, and so are my children. I try to keep them away from the most violent games, but in general, most aren't too bad, despite the 'M' ratings. But I was a little shocked at the violence and language in "Escape From Butcher Bay", and think that it should have a stricter rating.

In summary, a fun and entertaining game, but beware the violence.

A so-so game, when I got it to work..

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 10
Date: April 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The game is designed to run on Windows XP machines with Svc Pack 1 ONLY. I was getting a big fat GPF when I tried to run the game on a non-Svc Pack 1 machine.

Now that I can play the game, it is merely OK. The graphics are very good but the gameplay contains alot of the Doom-style "find the key" type of missions. Those get really tedious after a while.

Possibly Overrated

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: August 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The moment we've all been waiting for has arrived, or you're just curious about the game, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Either way, I hope to enlighten the uninitiated and maybe rouse a little indignation in the hearts of those dangerous religious cultists otherwise known as "Riddick fans." I've heard so much about this game, and it has received almost universal hoorahs from reviewers and players alike. Well, ALMOST universal as you shall soon see (I left my opinion of the game until last assuming that my opinion isn't all that important).

So what kind of a game is Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay? At first blush it may appear to be a first-person shooter. However, the game is by no means all shooting, at least on the player's part, and you'll spend a lot of time sneaking around hoping that some huge sentry doesn't spot you and blow you all to hell. As a result, I'd describe Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay as a "first-person stealth-action game."

Stealth makes up the bulk of the gameplay, and you'd be wise to find places to hide. Fortunately, most of the levels have ample places to hide like dark corners and behind large crates (yeah, as if we've never seen a lot of crates in action games). As a shooter fan I found such gameplay to be a bit awkward, and many times I found myself pining for a huge gun to blow away those pesky guards. But all is never lost, of course, and after perhaps a few unsuccessful attempts I finally found a way through a tough level.

This emphasis on stealth is possibly the reason that the levels seem relatively small. I found some levels to be so small that I kept running into the loading screen that takes you back and forth between these levels. Similar to Doom 3, these levels are very often dark, and you can even shoot out lights making them almost pitch dark. Fortunately, you have a "night vision" available to you so you can still find your way around all the while being able to sneak up on the guards who presumably cannot see in the dark. I found myself hesitating to take this course because I liked the looks of the levels with the lights on, and although the levels are largely bare and empty, they have some very nice textures.

The difficulty of the game oddly reached its peak at about the halfway point, and I was surprised at how easy it got toward the end. You then have available to you ranged weapons like a heavy mini gun, and you'll then delight in filling full of holes those guards that made your life miserable. You even get to don their armored suits and shoot them with some powerful weapons. Why the developers decided to ease up on the difficulty this way is anybody's guess, but I got the impression that they wanted to cater a bit to shooter fans by giving them some run and gun. In any event, I'd say that Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay is a relatively easy game overall.

How difficult is this game on your hardware? The box lists the minimum requirements as a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4, 256 MB RAM, a 64 MB graphics card, and 3.7 GB hard drive space. The only specification on that list that appears to be reasonable is the hard drive space, and I'd recommend a much more robust PC to get this game to play smoothly. I played it on my Dell Dimension 8300 configured with a 3 GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, and a 128 MB Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card. Even then, I experienced some hiccups while playing.

So what's my verdict? Frankly, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. This is a decent game, but there's a lot of better games out there. It's possible that the relatively complicated gameplay grows on some players, and as you replay the game you get better and experience more of what Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay has to offer. But hey, at $15, you don't take a big risk at paying a lot for a game you end up not liking.

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