Review (PC)

I'm not feeling particularly motivated today, so let's just pretend that I wax eloquent for several paragraphs about how good this game is.

[envision doting prose here]

Seriously, it's that good. Now on to more serious issues, like whether I should use 'CoR', 'CoREFBB', or 'CoREFBB(DC)' as the acronym for the game during the remainder of this review. I've summarily rejected the most obnoxious variants, such as 'CoR:EfBB', and 'CoR:EfBB(DC)'. Let's go with 'COREFBB'. It seems more appropriate than just 'CoR', since I don't want to get caught with my britches down when the next chronicle in the Chronicles of Riddick manifests. Furthermore, I see no point in including the '(DC)', as I don't even think there is a none-DC version for PC, and frankly I don't care and would pretend that there wasn't, even if there were. Have my journalistic principles sunk so low? Yes. On a simultaneously related and unrelated note, I was being presumptuous just then when I said: "when the next chronicle manifests..." Even though a game as shitty as Army Men gets like 7 sequels, something as high calibre as COREFBB likely won't even get an expansion pack, let alone a single follow-up game. The reason: collectively we are all stupid sheep. COREFBB had the misfortune of not being named COMCEFBB or COGFEFBB, where 'MC' and 'GF' stand for 'Master Chief' and 'Gordon Freeman', respectively. Due to this marketing faux pas, the game was of course doomed to retail failure.

Granted, it was also the game's misfortune that we live in times where games based on movie licenses are considered sucky until proven otherwise. The paradox, however, is that COREFBB *was* proven not sucky, and nobody bought it anyway, leaving me to wonder what the hell is the point of all this reviewing, when on the rare occasion that people actually get it right, noone even pays attention. Further evidence that the industry is getting exactly what it wants: to be just like Hollywood, where retail success can simply be bartered through sufficient marketing.

At any rate, having thusly established that the game rocks, settled the acronym issue, implied that both the Halo and Half-Life series are overrated, and reiterated that the industry is on the fast track to intellectual incompetence, what's left to do? Let me check my reviewing guidelines... Ah, the only thing left to do is bitch about stuff that marginally affects the overall experience of playing the game, but nevertheless fuels our never-ending, ritualistic head-scratching over how a large group of really smart and dedicated individuals becomes seemingly incapable of noticing that something in their game is totally f***ing annoying. I'll also point out a few super cool things as well, to avoid looking like a complete prick.

Good

• Stealth that doesn't suck. Given that we're at least three or four generations into this FPS sub-genre, you'd think that having a game actually do a good job with stealth wouldn't elicit such surprise. Wrong! It's still rare for games to do stealth right. Don't ask me why. If you ask me, I'll just find some way to blame EA (reviewing guidelines: 'say something mean about EA' - check!). Riddick, oops - I mean COREFBB, does a good job with stealth. As I've stated before, I think that the most critical aspect of good stealth design is that the player have the opportunity to recover from screwing up without having to resort to the quickload. That's certainly the case here, as the AI encounters are spread apart sufficiently to allow you to deal with a mistake without derailing the entire mission, while still applying enough of a penalty to prevent players from just John-Wayne'ing through the game. (Though I think I played much less stealthily than was expected.)

• Hand-to-Hand combat without abandoning the first-person perspective. This is apparently so hard to do right that basically nobody even tries it. Granted, the combat isn't exactly martial arts, but it's got enough variety to not ever truly compromise just how much of a badass Riddick is really supposed to be. I'm sure that one of the dominant opinions in the design meetings for this game was the notion that all hand-to-hand encounters should switch to a 3rd person view or (god help us) a "cinematic" view. I, for one, am glad that opinion didn't prevail. Call me a purist (instead of the other things you're thinking of calling me), but I actually disliked all of the in-game perspective shifts (see below). I don't doubt for a second that having the unarmed (or shiv-armed) combat occur in 3rd person would have made for some wicked cool fight visuals, but the 1st person perspective made for a unique fighting experience and I liked it. Furthermore, had they adopted 3rd person perspective for the fights, I'd be here complaining about how shallow and uncomplicated the hand-to-hand combat is, since having yanked my view out of the avatar's head anyway, they might as well have let me fully exploit the situation and had honest-to-god fights with grappling and throws and broken limbs, etc.. As it is, I'm sitting here congratulating the game for letting me do some simple boxing and neck-breaking from within the 1st person view, and for the fact that it doesn't suck. The point is that COREFBB isn't strictly a hand-to-hand fighting game, but it provides a decent enough implementation to spice things up favorably. That which is sufficiently complex and entertaining in 1st person would likely become frustratingly inadequate in 3rd person.

Bad

• Efforts to make a game more "cinematic" are generally wasted on me. Seriously, if you start screwing around with the camera, you're just going to piss me off. Do I appreciate the fact that Riddick pulls off an acrobatic move in order to get into some vent shaft? Sure, but over the course of the game I'm just going to end up annoyed that you keep messing with my view. I'm more impressed when Riddick gives one of his neck-break victims a little shove in the back after the kill (from 1st person perspective) than I am in seeing his cleanly shorn skull while he climbs a ladder.

  Look, I understand that they did a great job modelling and texturing the Riddick character, and he looks amazingly like Vin, but you don't need to remind me of that fact every few minutes by changing the view so I can see him hop over a rail, or climb into a hole, etc.. I get it, it's Riddick. It's not like I'm going to forget that fact if you just let me play the game for 20 minutes without showing me his dark brooding visage. Like I said, that's wasted on me. Maybe others enjoy the patronizing reminders and are impressed by the sliding-down-a-ladder animation. I'm not. What I am is annoyed when I'm in some pitch black area using my eye-shine, only to have the camera jump out of character so I can see Riddick mantle over a ledge for the 80th time, during which the environment has to magically stop being pitch black because without the benefit of eye-shine I can't see what the heck Riddick is doing.

• Along the same lines (namely - beating us over the head with how cool Riddick is supposed to be): Vin's voice-overs are a little too over (the top). Don't get me wrong, I love his Barry-White-esque rumblings as much as the next person, but I refuse to believe that he actually talks anything like the way he sounds in the game. Frankly, it seemed like he was just trying too hard for that ultra low-frequency to go with those ultra badass one-liners. It's ironic that in what is an otherwise exquisitely voice-acted game, it's Vin's patented vox principalis that leaves the bad impression.

• The physics effects in the game are great, don't get me wrong. Unfortunately, one of the things that doesn't come off so well is also one of the things that you'll be doing plenty of: dragging bodies. When you're dragging around the bodies of your victims, they behave a bit too... springy. Bouncey? I recognized it immediately as the expected behavior of a spring system, which isn't exactly the thing you want jumping into the player's mind when they're dragging a lifeless body around an otherwise extremely immersive environment. Ahh... realism, she is a harsh mistress.

Ugly

• Repeatedly taking away all of my weapons. I'm putting this in the 'ugly' category not so much because it has such a deleterious effect on the game, but rather simply because I'm feeling churlish about it. Yes, the sneaking and stealthing is well done. Yes, the hand-to-hand combat is well done. Yes, the voice acting is so excellent that listening to all of the characters cuss at you is, quite frankly, delightful. But shooting stuff is better than all of that. The guns are great! The ragdoll physics (body-dragging notwithstanding) are delicious! The flashlight is, I'll be honest, orgasmic. So I'm not taking issue with the nature of the multiple plausible scenarios concocted by the designers to disencumber me of my weapons. I'm taking issue with the fact that I was having the most fun in the game when I was shooting things, and the game kept interrupting me! I felt like I was a volunteer in some clinical psychology experiment. The doctors would provide me with weapons. I'd get to shoot things for a few minutes, and then the doctors would take away the weapons, asking "and how do you feel now that we've taken away the weapons? Hmmm... interesting...", as they scribbled on their little clipboards.

• Richard B. Riddick. Yes, that's right. Riddick's first name is Richard. Dick Riddick. I can't remember if this ever gets revealed in the movies. At least they didn't name him Archibald, or Garfunkel.

Beautiful

• Yes, yes, the graphics. Kudos to Starbreeze for making a nicer looking game than Half-Life 2, at seemingly a fraction of the time and budget. Granted, though, they weren't also busy (poorly) implementing a trojan system for screwing gamers out of our consumer rights. At any rate, look at those screenshots! I'd forgotten just how good-looking these new-fangled engines are. Nevermind the man behind the curtain that forces you to endure a resource-loading pause every 60 seconds.

• Adult content! And no, I don't mean boobies. I'm talking about the fact that I got to play a legitmately R-rated, I mean M-rated, game that wasn't insultingly sophomoric. Obviously Starbreeze had a green light with regards to the language and while they may have gotten a little giddy with the privilege, I enjoyed the resultingly salty prison ambience. And while we've certainly had bloody, gory games for years, after a few EA-sponsored, sugar-coated, bloodless, pillow fights, I welcomed an honest bullet-in-body simulation.

Summary

Is COREFBB fun? If you've had fun playing shooters, then it'll likely be a real treat for you. Who knows, though. Maybe you won't like the dialogue, or the hand-to-hand, or the rudimentary sneaking. Maybe, like me, you'll love the actual gunplay, but even moreso than me hate the fact that it only gets rationed out in tiny morsels. For the dozen or so hours at stake, the risk is certainly low. If it floats your boat, it's the kind of ride that would be easy to take again, but it likely won't bring you back repeatedly as there just doesn't seem to be enough variation. And without any multiplayer, you may feel like your gaming dollar could be put to better use. I wouldn't fault you for that, though I stand by the statement that this game is extremely well done. For that alone, if you're at all a patron of the hobby, it's worth the advocacy.