Playing Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay reminds me of DOOM3

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay is for the original X-Box. I bought it after reading stellar reviews on the game. It fills in certain gaps of the movie and while I've owned it for 6+ years now after buying it for $5. I tried playing it maybe 3x and never got too far until last week.

The game feels like it has an advanced engine to DOOM3 with the same or similar textures as DOOM3. The objects and character models have the same feeling and look to them as DOOM3. Rag doll physics. Its a corridoor shooter with some real depth.

There are advancements like a map, stealth, melee variety, different interactions like climbing boxes and monkey bars instead of just jumping.

Maybe its just my opinion and I'll hear how wrong I am, but I think the two games are very similar. Sure there's no monsters like DOOM3, but they do have "the dwellers" beneath the prison.

I could never get into Riddick. Elaborate melee combat kind of sucks in first-person, and I'm not terribly fond of stealth games either. It looks like DOOM³, sure, but the similarities mostly end there.

Yeah I never liked it either up until a week ago. The first time I played it I died several times before turning it off. The second time, I didn't even make it past the "tutorial" level. The third time I beat that level but got bored exploring.

Now I get it.

I got this game in a box of free stuff from a relative a few years ago, and I was pleasantly surprised at the great atmosphere and the (albeit minor) exploration aspects. I first played Doom 3 soon after (also on the Xbox), and I too thought that they were similar in the general visual style.

I've still never actually finished the whole thing, though. I'll have to remember to dig it out again sometime.

Yeah, I've got the HD remake on the PS3. The level design was very similiar to Doom 3 in the prison. I usually hate stealth games but I thought it was very cool, inspired me to start work on a Strife mod where you play as an assassin hiding in the darkness.

Captain Toenail said:

Yeah, I've got the HD remake on the PS3. The level design was very similiar to Doom 3 in the prison. I usually hate stealth games but I thought it was very cool, inspired me to start work on a Strife mod where you play as an assassin hiding in the darkness.

That you say it, it would be even more cool if that Strife mod were on the Doom 3 or Riddick engine, if that's moddable.

The Butcher Bay version of the Starbreeze engine did look a lot like iD Tech IV, I'll agree with that. However, I honestly have to say Doom 3 had better character animations (and a much, much better real-time cutscene mechanic. Playstation 1-style static camera angle focusing on one character at a time is awful, and so is hopping out to third person for any sort of action beyond moving and attacking. Damnit, you've got a full-body first person view, USE IT. Hell, Call of Duty does a better job of first person action sequences, and it only has part-time full-body first person.) though.

Speaking of PS1 static cameras, that makes me think of how a few months ago I tried playing FF8 again... Static cameras, no close ups and there were a lot of cut scenes... LONG cut scenes with 1 camera angle. It was difficult to sit through.

I got more a Red Faction 1 vibe from it. The guards are so similar in both games, even have the same kind of voices and sayings.

I played it again last night and got to the prison below the prison. Loading screens galore uggg with no action, but now I'm getting back to the action.

After playing it yet again, there were some intense moments. Fighting through sentries with a screwdriver and killing 4 or 5 of them and having 0 health only to have a giant mech guarding the door where you need to go. So you need to take a LONG way above it and drop down behind it and hope that it doesn't hear you, swat you down and kill you. Its some intense stuff, but its long where as with Doom3, you can just run in guns blazin'.