So if my understanding is correct.. the head engine guy or a lot of the people really are just really big Carmack fans and a lot of the building that they did to their engine was not based specifically off of the Doom 3 idtechengine cuz it wasn't you know out at the time but a lot of it was just trying to fanboy like best practices etc.. at least that's what I've been able to find out so far.. which makes sense cuz they now worked under zenimax or I guess Microsoft alongside id on the Wolfenstein games under the label machine games.. which is the ultimate endgame modern day evolution of what these games were technologically anyways..
Fun Fact: Did you know in the Apartment section of the game, you can actually steal a guard uniform, and walk through the whole level like it was hitman? You can talk to the other guards and civs, and do most of it nonlethally. It's pretty cool.
@@michaelwesten4624 you don't have to, you can wipe out the entire section. Or at least the showers, because stealing the uniform stealthily is stupid hard
@@motherfucker42069 I wouldn't say it's too difficult, personally. If you turn out the lights from the restrooms and move on to dispatch of everyone in the locker room, there will be a set of clothing in the right-hand lockers. Most guards from that point on until Abbot won't initiate combat with you as long as you don't have a gun out or... jump... -but someplace along the way, you can actually collect some alcohol from one of the guards and resell it for 50 UD. If you collect the vent tool from the room directly to the right out of the locker room, you'll find that there's a space behind the retinal scanner room where you can use it to enter the armory. There, you'll find a free set of armour and assault rifles. Just remember that after the retinal scan, you'll have to kill the guards looking for you, but you can still; afterwards, put away your weapon and fool the guards in the following rooms.
Remember buying this at my local game store thinking it will be 5mins of fun for what I thought was a bargain bin game. Still dust off my Xbox 360 from time to time to play this absolutely incredible game.
@@Minnevan damn just imagine how different your life would’ve been if you’d gotten to play it 🤔😲 you could’ve been a life saving doctor or enjoyed it so much you had to fulfill your new founded dream of becoming a game developer and made your own award-winning gem of a game but those GameStop wage slaves ruined that
As many problems I have with the combat of this game, Escape from Butcher Bay is a absolute masterpiece. This and the Darkness are two of the most incredible first person games of all time. Starbreeze Studios really went all out with them.
Wolfenstein The New Order and The Old Blood were great too. Many devs from Starbreeze went on to MachineGames and made them. Unfortunately, New Colossus and especially Youngblood were not good...
@@urk5204 It suffers from a bad PS3 port though. I finally played it a few years ago and the framerate was absolutely horrible. Still a pretty cool and unique game
I took a chance on this back in the day cos it was £10 in a bargin bin AND I loved the Riddick movies. Turned out to be one of the biggest surprises. Even stopped my obsession with Quake III OSP for a few days, I didn't stop playing Riddick till it was done! Played great on my Athlon 64 and Geforce 6800XT, but I did have to knock the resolution down from the native 1440x900 to 1280x720, if I remember, it was quite demanding and the graphics were so good in max settings, I'd rather sacrifice the resolution than the details.
I love how this game goes with the idea of Riddick being the chosen one that ended up being cut from the movie because even Diesel thought it was too much
If I'm not mistaken, they actually kind of drop that in the version included with Dark Athena. Originally, Butcher Bay ends with Riddick and Johns taking the ship into the beginning of Pitch Black. For Dark Athena, the sequel picks up immediately where Butcher Bay ended, so it shifts the timeline a bit. It's not like this is really all that important, but I think there were some edits done to the story in the "remake."
@@jarg8 yeah there's that prophecy of a Furian taking down the Necros, sure. But in the game and the director's cut of Chronicles he has superpowers and has visions of this chick that tells him how important he is.
@@jarg8 The eyeshine isn't a 'chosen one' thing. I haven't played the game, but according to the movie Pitch Black, Riddick paid to get eye enhancement while in prison, in order to survive in the darkness.
I feel like them including the previous title's remaster in Assault on Dark Athena was so unheard of at the time, it felt like "oh they're actually giving a legit freebie with this purely in good faith"
Yet the remastered version sucked, in comparison to the original. Garish graphics, even clunkier engine, stupidly overuse of bloom and terrible performance. At least on PC. The original, while clunky, was far more crisp and responsive.
@@TheVanillatech As someone with who has only played a pirated copy of Dark Athena and never the original I always thought the game looked amazing and held up really well.
@@Trickafi Well the code is precisely the same on the pirated copy as the original! XD I bought the Dark Athena in a rush as soon as I saw it because I'd played the shit out of Butcher Bay and loved it. VERY dissapointed when I installed it. It was basically a quick remaster to look impressive on the new consoles, but performance was terrible. Sure it was targetting 30fps on the consoles, but they didn't bother to tidy things up on the PC version. Everything had a horrible "glow" to it, the gunplay hadn't improved a bit (my one gripe of the original). If it was your first experience of the game, Im sure you had a good time. But the original was far more crisp, far more snappy. I'd pick that over the remaster every day and twice on sunday.
Somebody finally covers this gem, albeit the sequel, which also includes a remaster of the first one is far more incredible to me. They are also vastly different games both in tone and playstyle, even though they are built on the same principles.
@@djwhitepeople I don't prefer dark Athena to the original. Dark Athena simply includes the original, so I think it's redundant to play the first game as it was originally released because you can play a slightly improved version that's a bit more recent instead, along with the dark Athena release. As far as quality I think butcher bay is better, but dark Athena is also a compelling, albeit vastly different experience.
I love this game so much, we had the DVD for The chronicles of Riddick when I was a kid and it had the demo for butcher bay on it for the xbox. I played it so much and begged my parents to get me it for christmas and I can still quote like 80% of the dialogue in it
No joke. One of the major aspects of this that kept me going was Riddick and Vin Diesel's voice and portrayal of the character! In more ways than one, this is probably the most ICONIC depiction of the titular Riddick than any of the films combined.
One of my all time favorites, no doubt about it. I replay it once a year and I'm still staggered when I find something new nearly 2 decades later, like on my 3rd playthrough discovering you can wear armor once you hit the guard quarters and get through the whole section without killing anyone, or finding out the flashlight on your shotgun in the sewers is on a real timer and you can keep the light the entire way if you're quick enough, never needing the flares. And, like you state in the video, it's super rare that a licensed video game is canon to the rest of the franchise it's tied to, and having the full backing of the man himself still makes me wonder why we haven't gotten another game to this day. Awesome content as always, mini! Now that you've talked about this, I'd love to see you cover The Darkness 1 & 2 in the future as well!
I remember owning a ps2 and seeing this game on xbox. It was just on another level visually. Felt like I was watching a generational leap within the same generation
Considering the power differences, you kind of were. Or at least, kind of a 1.5 gen leap. One of the biggest issues were that most multiplat games were made with the PS2 first and then gussied up for the Xbox. But take a look at Splinter Cell for Xbox vs. PS2, especially pandora tomorrow. Heck, they got HL2 and Doom 3 running on Xbox. Heck, there were some OG Xbox games that looked better than some Xbox 360 games for a while. Check out video of Panzer Dragoon: Orta, it looks so amazing still.
@@KimStennabbCaesar The fur on Conker's Live and Reloaded had me shook back in the day man. And the PGR's car models, as well as Forza, although GT4 on the PS2 was wizardry tbh. Some games on that system look amazing too. I dont think we will ever have a console generation as sublime as the 6th gen.
I remember at the time butcher bay was considered to be the best looking game on the xbox. The game had the same fidelity that many early 360 games had.
Such an amazing game. I remember the shadows dynamic blowing me away. I remember loving these "play dough"-like 3D models and introduction to more realistic shaders like Doom 3, FEAR and Prey 1. All models felt like were made of clay, but for some reason that felt so fresh and new for me.
That leaked Doom 3 Alpha really screwed iD Software over. No wonder they dropped ATI like a rock and focussed on Nvidia hardware support for the final release. But that leaked alpha allowed so many companies (like Starbreeze) to get to grips with specular, diffuse and normal maps, and hence the plethora of games that had that Doom 3 look, in and around the same time. Butcher Bay was a very well designed game though. Sick graphics or not, I think they did an excellent job on it. No wonder they went on to become MachineGames and made the superb Wolfentein : New Order.
Absolutely adored this game on the Xbox. One of my favourite games on the whole platform. Up there with Psi-Ops in terms ahead of their time 6th gen action games that don't get their due.
@@minimme real ones unite, as far as I’m concerned both psi ops and second sight are top tier games. With there own respective positives and negatives (admittedly at the time I was a MAJOR fan of timesplitters art direction so I always had a soft spot for second sight)
Escape From Butcher Bay is a freaking gem of a game I remember me and my buddy Ruben (RIP) ran through this game in 8th grade it was hard as hell but we loved it
I've been obsessed with this game ever since the first time I played it, went in expecting absolutely nothing special and holy shit was I wrong. Feels heartwarming to see a lot of other people with similar experiences, this game is absolutely special. I'll keep replaying it every few years still.
I remember Starbreeze Studios worked incredibly hard on this game. Back then, it was mindblowing open a video game magazine and see the convincingly realistic head of Vin Diesel and then see the 200-something-polygon wire mesh right next to it. We knew Doom was doing something like it but to model an actor with that much shadow detail on such a low detail mesh was ground-breaking.
Dude, that leaked Doom 3 Alpha that ATI put out is the very reason for games like Prey and EFBB to have those sick models, graphics, lighting, specular and normal maps! XD
The original Darkness game by the same devs is one of my favourite games ever made and is another licensed game. I hope you try that out one day if you haven't already!
This is gonna be a kinda long comment so I apologize ahead of time, but I have a funny story about The Darkness. So my friend was playing it, and he was slithering around as the tentacle/snake thing. And when you hit RT you could make the "snake" do like a biting type motion, and you could keep pressing RT to get it to bite over and over. So I got the idea to play that "Nom Nom Nom" song by Parry Gripp while my friend kept doing the repeated biting, and it looked like the "snake" was biting along to the song lol. But that's not even the best part. He was slithering towards an enemy while "nom nom-ing" and as soon as he was able to actually bite the enemy in the face, the song skipped because it had to buffer. So the song skips right as he eats this dudes face, and then as soon as the enemy dropped the song started playing again. So basically it was all like: *happy nom nom music as the snake slithers forward* *Music stops, VIOLENT FACE EATING* *Happy nom nom music starts back up again*
@@bagelbytes69420 it's dated in a lot of ways, with the sequel improving on the actual gameplay brilliantly but the first Darkness still holds up in the atmosphere department. Well worth a look 👌
@@bagelbytes69420 I would recommend watching a recap of the first game and then playing the sequel. The second game play much better than the first IMO
Literally just finished playing the game and its remaster thinking "minimme would really dig this". Glad to see that was the case XD Long live Vin Diesel power fantasies!
One more thing - the music in this game kicks ass. Whether it's a sneaky section or all out shootout it elevates the atmosphere so much. Another thing EfBB did before everyone else was developer commentary, with icons floating in the world for you to interact with and listen to the devs. It was really cool, however there were no subtitles and the devs are Swedish, so it was a bit hard to understand at times.
This game was way ahead of its time. The voice acting talent had Michael Rooker, Ron Perlman, and Xzibit. The graphics still hold up today. When it was first released, you'd never seen anything like it before. Play it as a stealth game. How it was meant to be played. It's a goddamn masterpiece.
This game takes me back. Looking at the Riddick games just brings back so many memories of my past childhood. This is a huge hybrid btw FPS and Stealth gameplay. I gotta give credit to Vin Diesel who’ve worked hard to make Riddick into a franchise. No other celebrity did as much hard work than he did. Butcher Bay is indeed one of the most memorable games I’ve played. The graphics still looks good after 18 yrs.
One of the games that changed my perception of what games can be. I grew up with the Super Nintendo but my Xbox days in college will always be what I was nostalgic for. What an incredible revolutionary generation.
Honestly, those cigarettes are on point. First of all, you get a nod to the movies and cigarettes work as a currency in prisons. And all those brand names and clever warnings (like kanji for death) show that somebody put thought into that.
@@euj0 You're right. I played it on PS3 a while ago for the first time and the framerate was so bad. Still finished it because of its unique and edgy style. I'd love a PC port. I also really like the 2nd game, even though it's way different
@@euj0 I think there is a way to download it or play it on PC. I have been meaning to get it, but I am going to wait till I get the Steam Deck. Then back to Butcher Bay and Dark Athena
@@serioussamson like Butcher Bay, a really immersive FPS adventure w/ lots of generous environmental detail. Darkness 2 was good, too, tho felt a little more on-rails, more action focused.
This game was really fantastic. I remember at the time that I had never experienced melee combat that good in a game, let alone first from a first person perspective. It's been forever since I played but I can't recall anything about this game that I didn't like. It was really great all around.
I absolutely loved this game growing up. It was so intense and gritty, and the voice acting was pretty good, from what I remember. Vin Diesel is definitely a dork and I understand why people poke fun at him, but his deep and rough voice was great in this. You also gotta love that Xzibit voiced a guard.
I'm grateful to have played so many hidden gems back in the day that a lot of people don't know/talk about, its cool when I find videos about them and it validates how great I thought they were at the time. This game was definitely one of those games, you were spot on about the immersion you feel when you start off and the satisfying slow progression the more you roam the prison grounds.
one of my biggest frustrations was actually with the counter move lmao. i learned after a few hours of experimentation that you can't counter a weapon of the same type as your holding (knife cant counter knife, baton cant counter baton, etc) and i died a lot to the fight with Rust because i was fighting him with same weapon he was using.
'On the rare occasion it does grow a bit tired A big underground mine section towards the end definitely leaves something to be desired' wow pure poetry :D
This was also a very technically impressive game at the time of release on original Xbox, one of the first stencil shadows implementation, even a bit earlier than Doom 3. PC version that came a year later, again, used then new shader model 3.0 for soft shadows. So not only Starbreeze managed to develop one of the best games of the year, but it's also turned out to be a worthy competitor to Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and Far Cry in pure technology. That competition could also have been its problem - with HL2 and Doom 3 coming out, and stylistically fresh and visually amazing Far Cry, how could an obscure FPS companion to a mediocre movie ever succeed
Pitch Black was a good B-movie, which by default meant quite a limited audience. The game though is a companion piece to its sequel, Chronicles Of Riddick, and that movie was shit. No judgement if you consider that anything else but mediocre, but your tastes probably aren't very common, and people have been judging the game by that shit movie's reputation. It's a pity
the more i see of this game the more it feels like a weird blueprint for The Darkness. that shits cool as hell, imagine a world where starbreeze games are what arkane are now
This game was so ahead of its time and felt very special back in the day. One thing you didn't mention (at least according to my memory from 18 years ago): if you reload before a magazine is empty in this game, you lose whatever bullets were left in the used mag. A point of realism I've never seen another game use.
1:20 OK, for the record: the Speed Racer Wii game was SO MUCH BETTER than it had any right to be. It's hard to get into, since you have to race *and* do melee combat simultaneously, but it's a ton of fun with friends once you get over the learning curve. Not to mention being downright beautiful for the time and really feeling like an accurate translation of the movie's action. (Also at 13:55, the mech's computer passive-aggressive complaining throughout the fight is one of my favorite in-game gags ever.)
I absoutely loved this game back int he day, one of the few titles I've beaten more than once, and I can remember the scenes you used in this video vividly. Dark Athena also had a multiplayer mode added, which had asymetrical gaming long before games like Elvolve or Dead by Daylight existed.
@@Larry Really? Ok how about Counter-Strike or Aliens vs Predator, just to name a couple of the top of my head. Both came out waaaaayyyy before Dark Athena.
@@Larry Alien vs Predator works, just like Natural Selection and others - The Hidden is another Half-Life mod that did it quite well a few years before. Nobody's saying that Dark Athena isn't a good take on asymmetrical versus, but it's absolutely not the first!
Your dieclaimer about your unwarranted love for license games made me think of my unwarranted love for the madagascar and shrek games, especially madagascar 2 and shrek the third for the nintendo ds, id kinda love a video about one of these in the future to see how they held up
Never been this early to one of your vids! I remember renting this game from Blockbuster back in the day. My lil bro and myself were AMAZED at how real this game felt and looked. It was incredible, through and through. The gameplay was so tight and realized. This was a passion project that had so much love put into it, and I’ll never forget my time with it.
After seeing your take on this games immersion it reminds me of a Namco game on the original Xbox called Breakdown , which was similarly rare game that I've rarely ever found anyone who's heard of it and it also puts high priority on immersion especially in the second half of the game.
Worth noting that the development studio is owned by Vin Diesel with the first game partially funded by him. The man loves video games and his pet project, so he's been trying to franchise it.
As a HUGE fan of this game hearing that it took you 7 hours to complete the entire thing came as a complete shock to me, I recall spending 7 hours alone exploring the prison as a lowly, recently indicted inmate collecting cigarettes and trading cards to barter my way into the role you inevitably take on... I guess that further speaks to the games strong suits.
Dude right, I think I beat the game missing only a couple cigarettes, it bothered me so much that I couldn't find the rest even though I spent several hours on each level. This game is too beautiful to be rushing haha
Honestly, for me a game is when all the checkboxes are checked. Sound design, music, voice acting, story, graphics, pacing, action. This game had it all in one neat package. Im glad i was born in the 80's and im able to see true masterpieces in the evolving world of gaming. A lot of big games these days fall short because they ignore that important checklist. They are more cash grabs now. But i'll always have a sweet spot for those rare games that made me "FEEL." Those are the games you remember years from now
Idk if I'm seeing things but these two Riddick games feel like immersive sims to me... Are they? Like, come on. Stealth, cool ass protagonist with a fantastic voice, a focus on immersive first person details like minimal hud and minimal videogamey elements...
Played this back in the day and loved it. Never played the sequel because these games are almost unplayable on modern pcs due to drm. If they fixed these for modern operating systems and put them on steam I'd buy them in a heartbeat.
Man that sucks because I still have the PC version laying around here but never actually played it. The video made me wanting to play it. I'll still give it a try :D
@@serioussamson it has drm on the disc that used to cause problems with older versions of Windows. I don't know what would happen if you install it on Windows 10 or 11.
I loved this game, I never felt so good playing it and the ending . The way you go from the top side to the absolute bottom then to the wardens office is amazing. Forgive me if I’m forgetting things but I haven’t played it in over 15 years lol
You should've done this video like 15 years ago bro, Escape from Butcher Bay is *literally* one of the absolutely best stealth/action-games ever made. One of my & my brother's favorite game of all time lmao
I played this in 2005 on a 6800GT, the graphics still hold up. This game was a real sneak hit at the time, damn I still cant get over the graphics! The Xbox port is mighty impressive too, a real hardware pusher.
Man, I remember my dad picked this up for 360 when I was younger, we both thought it would be just kinda "meh", but we ended up enjoying the hell out of it.
I remember being told to put back my weak copy of whatever I was holding and pick up this new game, just as it was released on the OG Xbox. Definitely one of my favorite recommendations of all time.
This game was so ahead of its time that I seriously considered getting an Xbox to play it at the time of its original release. When I first got my PS3, I was stoked to play the sequel and the original remastered both packaged together. They are cult classic games for a reason.
To this day I'm still utterly amazed that not only was this game so damn good but that it maybe one of the one of the few peaks of Vin Diesel's entire career
THE peak, artistically. This game was better than Pitch Black *and* the sequels. Better than XXX. Don't get me started on the dumb F&F franchise. This game was legit good and could not have existed without Diesel (although I did like Xzibit, lol).
loved this game. i remember being blown away by the lighting. it always threw new surprises at you, like waking up in that almost time loop section and having to figure out an escape. the dialogue options and interactions with NPC's were also new to me in an fps on console. very fond memories
The definition of “well this is way better than I thought it’d be”. I played when it released and it blew my mind. The whole package was way ahead of its time, almost too much and it went over peoples heads.
I'll always remember this game as that game that took DOOM 3's lightning and went to BOMBASS HEIGHTS with it. Seriously though, this game has the lighting that some games today fail to even pull off. I'm looking at you Callisto Protocol...
I think the one thing the chronicles of Riddick universe deserves praise for is it's art direction. It embraces the dirty industrial grit in a way that's actually visually appealing.
Glad to see someone finally cover this game. Escape from Butcher Bay was mind-blowing to me at the time. It's especially impressive what they were able to pull off for 2004.
Hi Minimme, I come back from time to time to rewatch some of your Video, this one and Driver series Especially. Each time to apreciate your writting. You manage to convey all the emotions that i felt when I was a kid playing those Video games.
I really like semi rambling outros like in this one, it feels like a personal look behind the scenes. Cozy stuff! Oh and thanks for making me want to check out Riddick?
I never owned this game, but I remember buying the Chronicles of Riddick back in the day, and it had a trial for Escape from Butcher Bay on it if you put the DVD into your XBOX. I'd say it's one of the best trial/demos I've ever played cause the replay value easily broke my scale! Thanks for the nostalgia!
Loved this game. I played it when the sequel came out with the first game included. I was born in 91. The perfect time to grow up with all these great games in the early 00s.
I remember a quote from the game pro article. Doom 3 uses its shadows to have monsters pop out and scare you, in Chronicles of Riddick escape from butcher bay. You are the monster
I used to work grave shift security at the office building that Vin's studio HQ was in and met Vin one night. I was actually playing the game on my xbox i hid under my security desk. He was surprised i was playing his game and was super chill.
The existence of this game is such an anomaly: a licensed game that was treated as a full-on ambitious AAA title (which was far from the norm at the time). It's so technically profound too. IIRC it was the first Xbox game to do normal mapping and one of the earliest example of dynamic resolution scaling being implemented. It was so ambitious and the combining of all the different gameplay styles could've easily blown up in their face like it has to other games, but it didn't.
I absolutely love the Riddick series and Butcher Bay is absolutely awesome addition. Unfortunately I never got to get my hands on Assault on Dark Athena. I will agree that these 2 and the Ghostbusters game are the absolute best licensed games that actually add to the lore and worlds of the their series.
I know most people wouldn't call this a long game, but I'm a slooooow and cautious player (the kind that like to constantly admire the scenery and explore every nook and cranny) and this is the only game I have finished in one go. I did sleep a few hours on the couch but the Xbox was still running with the game paused. I can still remember being almost in shock over the fact that I had started and finished a whole game over the weekend. Obviously not a big thing for most players, but a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me. 😅 I often think about playing it again, but my backlog is just overwhelming so... yeah...
fun fact alot of the staff from starbreeze left to form machine games. And when you play Wolfenstein the Riddick DNA is all there. BJ whispering to him self, vent crawling, ultra hard bosses that yell at you lol.
I played the demo of this game on a demo disc from Official Xbox Magazine. Then rented it from blockbuster. Had a great time. One random tidbit about this game is that when you reload clips, it’s not like most shooters where what’s leftover in the clip carries over into the next. When you reload and there are rounds left in the clip, you lose the rounds leftover, like in real life.
This game and The Darkness by the same developers are such masterpieces that they are among my best games of all time list. It's the kind of work that proves treating a licensed video game with the respect it deserves produces both a worthwhile franchise entry and a great game.
This was one of the games I grew up watching my uncle play. This was one of the only games I wouldn't play on his xbox because I'd much rather watch him play it. I understood that this game was too advanced for me at the time & man I loved watching my uncle play this game. It felt like a fucking movie at times. He truly brought the best out of this game & It was no different in Splinter Cell. After having forgotten about this masterpiece & getting another chance to see it after this video randomly popped up in my feed, I'd say that this timeless classic held up pretty well. Amazing
hi everyone here's a playlist of all my vin diesel related content: th-cam.com/play/PL643B5filmfG2IFpmUYxQt7Pa0wZFeIgG.html
Review the weird Despicable Me tie-in game for the Wii and PlayStation 2.
Thank you minimme, very cool
So if my understanding is correct.. the head engine guy or a lot of the people really are just really big Carmack fans and a lot of the building that they did to their engine was not based specifically off of the Doom 3 idtechengine cuz it wasn't you know out at the time but a lot of it was just trying to fanboy like best practices etc.. at least that's what I've been able to find out so far.. which makes sense cuz they now worked under zenimax or I guess Microsoft alongside id on the Wolfenstein games under the label machine games.. which is the ultimate endgame modern day evolution of what these games were technologically anyways..
How many TH-camrs can say they have a vin diesal related content playlist?
Guys I'm doing a live, I'm doing a live right now
Fun Fact: Did you know in the Apartment section of the game, you can actually steal a guard uniform, and walk through the whole level like it was hitman? You can talk to the other guards and civs, and do most of it nonlethally. It's pretty cool.
you can even collect enough money throughout the level to buy a guard armor, which comes in handy when you fight Abbott
you can or you have to because of the story. it's been so long, I can't even remember. all I know that my poor pc barely ran this thing
@@michaelwesten4624 you don't have to, you can wipe out the entire section. Or at least the showers, because stealing the uniform stealthily is stupid hard
@@motherfucker42069
I wouldn't say it's too difficult, personally. If you turn out the lights from the restrooms and move on to dispatch of everyone in the locker room, there will be a set of clothing in the right-hand lockers. Most guards from that point on until Abbot won't initiate combat with you as long as you don't have a gun out or... jump...
-but someplace along the way, you can actually collect some alcohol from one of the guards and resell it for 50 UD.
If you collect the vent tool from the room directly to the right out of the locker room, you'll find that there's a space behind the retinal scanner room where you can use it to enter the armory. There, you'll find a free set of armour and assault rifles. Just remember that after the retinal scan, you'll have to kill the guards looking for you, but you can still; afterwards, put away your weapon and fool the guards in the following rooms.
Doable, but hard af @@motherfucker42069
Remember buying this at my local game store thinking it will be 5mins of fun for what I thought was a bargain bin game. Still dust off my Xbox 360 from time to time to play this absolutely incredible game.
You did exactly the same as me mate!
Bruh I saw Riddick at a game store, but they said it wouldn’t run on a 360. Wish I hadn’t listened..
@@Minnevan damn just imagine how different your life would’ve been if you’d gotten to play it 🤔😲 you could’ve been a life saving doctor or enjoyed it so much you had to fulfill your new founded dream of becoming a game developer and made your own award-winning gem of a game but those GameStop wage slaves ruined that
@@revalution1965 ikr, I could’ve even NOT been getting replies to my comment from you. In a perfect world…
@@revalution1965 duuuuuude…mind BLOWN
As many problems I have with the combat of this game, Escape from Butcher Bay is a absolute masterpiece. This and the Darkness are two of the most incredible first person games of all time. Starbreeze Studios really went all out with them.
Starbreeze*
This and The darkness are certainly two of the most unique, powerful FPS games to ever be released
The Darkness is still the best "vengeance simulator" around even a decade+ later
Wolfenstein The New Order and The Old Blood were great too. Many devs from Starbreeze went on to MachineGames and made them. Unfortunately, New Colossus and especially Youngblood were not good...
@@urk5204 It suffers from a bad PS3 port though. I finally played it a few years ago and the framerate was absolutely horrible. Still a pretty cool and unique game
Escape from Butcher Bay is one of the best stealth shooters from that era, an absolute masterpiece.
@@stevebean1234pandora tomorrow is a full-on stealth not a hybrid
@@stevebean1234 Only in stealth. But as shooter/stealth, Escape from butcher bay is lot better.
This is one of those games that I'm really grateful exists. And I'm grateful that I got to experience it in its contemporary time.
its*
@@BodywiseMustard good lookin out! 👍🏻
I took a chance on this back in the day cos it was £10 in a bargin bin AND I loved the Riddick movies. Turned out to be one of the biggest surprises. Even stopped my obsession with Quake III OSP for a few days, I didn't stop playing Riddick till it was done! Played great on my Athlon 64 and Geforce 6800XT, but I did have to knock the resolution down from the native 1440x900 to 1280x720, if I remember, it was quite demanding and the graphics were so good in max settings, I'd rather sacrifice the resolution than the details.
@@BodywiseMustard nerd
I love how this game goes with the idea of Riddick being the chosen one that ended up being cut from the movie because even Diesel thought it was too much
If I'm not mistaken, they actually kind of drop that in the version included with Dark Athena. Originally, Butcher Bay ends with Riddick and Johns taking the ship into the beginning of Pitch Black. For Dark Athena, the sequel picks up immediately where Butcher Bay ended, so it shifts the timeline a bit. It's not like this is really all that important, but I think there were some edits done to the story in the "remake."
But he literally is the "chosen one" in the Chronicles of Riddick movie though
@@jarg8 yeah there's that prophecy of a Furian taking down the Necros, sure. But in the game and the director's cut of Chronicles he has superpowers and has visions of this chick that tells him how important he is.
@@pixlman he has the Eyeshine superpower in all the films and yes that is in the directors cut. He's literally the chosen one in the movies, too
@@jarg8 The eyeshine isn't a 'chosen one' thing. I haven't played the game, but according to the movie Pitch Black, Riddick paid to get eye enhancement while in prison, in order to survive in the darkness.
I feel like them including the previous title's remaster in Assault on Dark Athena was so unheard of at the time, it felt like "oh they're actually giving a legit freebie with this purely in good faith"
Conker: Live & Reloaded had this for the original Xbox, with Conker's bad fur day. Both are gems with pretty good graphics for the time.
Yet the remastered version sucked, in comparison to the original. Garish graphics, even clunkier engine, stupidly overuse of bloom and terrible performance. At least on PC. The original, while clunky, was far more crisp and responsive.
@@TheVanillatech As someone with who has only played a pirated copy of Dark Athena and never the original I always thought the game looked amazing and held up really well.
@@Trickafi Well the code is precisely the same on the pirated copy as the original! XD
I bought the Dark Athena in a rush as soon as I saw it because I'd played the shit out of Butcher Bay and loved it. VERY dissapointed when I installed it. It was basically a quick remaster to look impressive on the new consoles, but performance was terrible. Sure it was targetting 30fps on the consoles, but they didn't bother to tidy things up on the PC version. Everything had a horrible "glow" to it, the gunplay hadn't improved a bit (my one gripe of the original).
If it was your first experience of the game, Im sure you had a good time. But the original was far more crisp, far more snappy. I'd pick that over the remaster every day and twice on sunday.
Somebody finally covers this gem, albeit the sequel, which also includes a remaster of the first one is far more incredible to me. They are also vastly different games both in tone and playstyle, even though they are built on the same principles.
I liked a sequel less
The original is a much more solid and varied experience imo
I didn't like dark athena at all. Where butcher bay was stealth and steep difficulty, athena was a run and gun shooter that was super duper easy.
"finaly"?
It's far from the first review or analyse of this game on TH-cam.
I suggest you this one :
th-cam.com/video/yVZ8_sxnhhM/w-d-xo.html
You're the first person I've ever come across who prefers Dark Athena to the original
@@djwhitepeople I don't prefer dark Athena to the original. Dark Athena simply includes the original, so I think it's redundant to play the first game as it was originally released because you can play a slightly improved version that's a bit more recent instead, along with the dark Athena release. As far as quality I think butcher bay is better, but dark Athena is also a compelling, albeit vastly different experience.
I love this game so much, we had the DVD for The chronicles of Riddick when I was a kid and it had the demo for butcher bay on it for the xbox. I played it so much and begged my parents to get me it for christmas and I can still quote like 80% of the dialogue in it
No joke. One of the major aspects of this that kept me going was Riddick and Vin Diesel's voice and portrayal of the character! In more ways than one, this is probably the most ICONIC depiction of the titular Riddick than any of the films combined.
what's hell? -without a little fire
One of my all time favorites, no doubt about it. I replay it once a year and I'm still staggered when I find something new nearly 2 decades later, like on my 3rd playthrough discovering you can wear armor once you hit the guard quarters and get through the whole section without killing anyone, or finding out the flashlight on your shotgun in the sewers is on a real timer and you can keep the light the entire way if you're quick enough, never needing the flares.
And, like you state in the video, it's super rare that a licensed video game is canon to the rest of the franchise it's tied to, and having the full backing of the man himself still makes me wonder why we haven't gotten another game to this day.
Awesome content as always, mini! Now that you've talked about this, I'd love to see you cover The Darkness 1 & 2 in the future as well!
What did you think of Dark Athena?
I remember owning a ps2 and seeing this game on xbox. It was just on another level visually. Felt like I was watching a generational leap within the same generation
Considering the power differences, you kind of were. Or at least, kind of a 1.5 gen leap.
One of the biggest issues were that most multiplat games were made with the PS2 first and then gussied up for the Xbox. But take a look at Splinter Cell for Xbox vs. PS2, especially pandora tomorrow. Heck, they got HL2 and Doom 3 running on Xbox.
Heck, there were some OG Xbox games that looked better than some Xbox 360 games for a while. Check out video of Panzer Dragoon: Orta, it looks so amazing still.
@@caodesignworks2407 The 1st Ninja Gaiden to Xbox looked absolutely great too.
@@KimStennabbCaesar The fur on Conker's Live and Reloaded had me shook back in the day man. And the PGR's car models, as well as Forza, although GT4 on the PS2 was wizardry tbh. Some games on that system look amazing too. I dont think we will ever have a console generation as sublime as the 6th gen.
@@bagelbytes69420 golden era, absolutely.
I remember at the time butcher bay was considered to be the best looking game on the xbox. The game had the same fidelity that many early 360 games had.
Such an amazing game. I remember the shadows dynamic blowing me away.
I remember loving these "play dough"-like 3D models and introduction to more realistic shaders like Doom 3, FEAR and Prey 1. All models felt like were made of clay, but for some reason that felt so fresh and new for me.
DUDE, FEAR is/was so damn good too. It still holds up today, and I played through it last year finally
That leaked Doom 3 Alpha really screwed iD Software over. No wonder they dropped ATI like a rock and focussed on Nvidia hardware support for the final release. But that leaked alpha allowed so many companies (like Starbreeze) to get to grips with specular, diffuse and normal maps, and hence the plethora of games that had that Doom 3 look, in and around the same time.
Butcher Bay was a very well designed game though. Sick graphics or not, I think they did an excellent job on it. No wonder they went on to become MachineGames and made the superb Wolfentein : New Order.
Absolutely adored this game on the Xbox. One of my favourite games on the whole platform. Up there with Psi-Ops in terms ahead of their time 6th gen action games that don't get their due.
only real ones remember the great Second Sight v Psi Ops debate of 2004
@@minimme dude I was just so happy to get two whole games with fine-control telekinesis at the same time
@@minimme second sight wins out in the end, imo
@@minimme Second Sight all the way!
@@minimme real ones unite, as far as I’m concerned both psi ops and second sight are top tier games. With there own respective positives and negatives (admittedly at the time I was a MAJOR fan of timesplitters art direction so I always had a soft spot for second sight)
Escape From Butcher Bay is a freaking gem of a game I remember me and my buddy Ruben (RIP) ran through this game in 8th grade it was hard as hell but we loved it
RIP. I played it when I was 16 maybe? Would have loved running through it with a friend - very memorable
God rest his soul
Rip Ruben! You had an awesome friend. How did his life end? Cancer?
@@stevebean1234 Same, I was about to turn 17 when this came out.
I've been obsessed with this game ever since the first time I played it, went in expecting absolutely nothing special and holy shit was I wrong.
Feels heartwarming to see a lot of other people with similar experiences, this game is absolutely special. I'll keep replaying it every few years still.
I remember Starbreeze Studios worked incredibly hard on this game. Back then, it was mindblowing open a video game magazine and see the convincingly realistic head of Vin Diesel and then see the 200-something-polygon wire mesh right next to it. We knew Doom was doing something like it but to model an actor with that much shadow detail on such a low detail mesh was ground-breaking.
Dude, that leaked Doom 3 Alpha that ATI put out is the very reason for games like Prey and EFBB to have those sick models, graphics, lighting, specular and normal maps! XD
The original Darkness game by the same devs is one of my favourite games ever made and is another licensed game. I hope you try that out one day if you haven't already!
This is gonna be a kinda long comment so I apologize ahead of time, but I have a funny story about The Darkness.
So my friend was playing it, and he was slithering around as the tentacle/snake thing. And when you hit RT you could make the "snake" do like a biting type motion, and you could keep pressing RT to get it to bite over and over.
So I got the idea to play that "Nom Nom Nom" song by Parry Gripp while my friend kept doing the repeated biting, and it looked like the "snake" was biting along to the song lol.
But that's not even the best part. He was slithering towards an enemy while "nom nom-ing" and as soon as he was able to actually bite the enemy in the face, the song skipped because it had to buffer. So the song skips right as he eats this dudes face, and then as soon as the enemy dropped the song started playing again. So basically it was all like:
*happy nom nom music as the snake slithers forward*
*Music stops, VIOLENT FACE EATING*
*Happy nom nom music starts back up again*
Shit, I was watching this and The Darkness came to mind. I guess now I know why!
Shit, now I have to try The Darkness since I liked this one so much
@@bagelbytes69420 it's dated in a lot of ways, with the sequel improving on the actual gameplay brilliantly but the first Darkness still holds up in the atmosphere department. Well worth a look 👌
@@bagelbytes69420 I would recommend watching a recap of the first game and then playing the sequel. The second game play much better than the first IMO
Literally just finished playing the game and its remaster thinking "minimme would really dig this". Glad to see that was the case XD Long live Vin Diesel power fantasies!
One more thing - the music in this game kicks ass. Whether it's a sneaky section or all out shootout it elevates the atmosphere so much.
Another thing EfBB did before everyone else was developer commentary, with icons floating in the world for you to interact with and listen to the devs. It was really cool, however there were no subtitles and the devs are Swedish, so it was a bit hard to understand at times.
This game was way ahead of its time. The voice acting talent had Michael Rooker, Ron Perlman, and Xzibit. The graphics still hold up today. When it was first released, you'd never seen anything like it before. Play it as a stealth game. How it was meant to be played. It's a goddamn masterpiece.
This game takes me back. Looking at the Riddick games just brings back so many memories of my past childhood. This is a huge hybrid btw FPS and Stealth gameplay. I gotta give credit to Vin Diesel who’ve worked hard to make Riddick into a franchise. No other celebrity did as much hard work than he did. Butcher Bay is indeed one of the most memorable games I’ve played. The graphics still looks good after 18 yrs.
One of the games that changed my perception of what games can be. I grew up with the Super Nintendo but my Xbox days in college will always be what I was nostalgic for. What an incredible revolutionary generation.
Honestly, those cigarettes are on point. First of all, you get a nod to the movies and cigarettes work as a currency in prisons. And all those brand names and clever warnings (like kanji for death) show that somebody put thought into that.
Own both on PC, fantastic games honestly.
i wanna buy a physical copy for my pc but many people say the game won't install for some reason. some error. how did you get it to work?
The Developers' edition is amazing. So much behind the scenes content and the dev commentary is stellar.
classic. Starbreeze's work is fantastic. The Darkness was outstanding, too- still waiting for a port of that one!
The PS3 port was dogshit. The 360 is the best version. Too bad no PC though
@@euj0 the PS3 port is perfectly emulated nowadays on RPCS3 at least
@@euj0 You're right. I played it on PS3 a while ago for the first time and the framerate was so bad.
Still finished it because of its unique and edgy style. I'd love a PC port.
I also really like the 2nd game, even though it's way different
@@euj0 I think there is a way to download it or play it on PC. I have been meaning to get it, but I am going to wait till I get the Steam Deck. Then back to Butcher Bay and Dark Athena
@@serioussamson like Butcher Bay, a really immersive FPS adventure w/ lots of generous environmental detail. Darkness 2 was good, too, tho felt a little more on-rails, more action focused.
This game was really fantastic. I remember at the time that I had never experienced melee combat that good in a game, let alone first from a first person perspective. It's been forever since I played but I can't recall anything about this game that I didn't like. It was really great all around.
I absolutely loved this game growing up. It was so intense and gritty, and the voice acting was pretty good, from what I remember. Vin Diesel is definitely a dork and I understand why people poke fun at him, but his deep and rough voice was great in this. You also gotta love that Xzibit voiced a guard.
I'm grateful to have played so many hidden gems back in the day that a lot of people don't know/talk about, its cool when I find videos about them and it validates how great I thought they were at the time. This game was definitely one of those games, you were spot on about the immersion you feel when you start off and the satisfying slow progression the more you roam the prison grounds.
The "counter" mechanics in melee combat was so satisfying to pull off and for me, it was something i haven't seen before in FPS games.
one of my biggest frustrations was actually with the counter move lmao. i learned after a few hours of experimentation that you can't counter a weapon of the same type as your holding (knife cant counter knife, baton cant counter baton, etc) and i died a lot to the fight with Rust because i was fighting him with same weapon he was using.
'On the rare occasion it does grow a bit tired
A big underground mine section towards the end definitely leaves something to be desired'
wow pure poetry :D
I've heard the rumors on how great of a game it was but hadn't attempted to check the game out until your video popped out. Another banger, cheers!
This was also a very technically impressive game at the time of release on original Xbox, one of the first stencil shadows implementation, even a bit earlier than Doom 3.
PC version that came a year later, again, used then new shader model 3.0 for soft shadows.
So not only Starbreeze managed to develop one of the best games of the year, but it's also turned out to be a worthy competitor to Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and Far Cry in pure technology.
That competition could also have been its problem - with HL2 and Doom 3 coming out, and stylistically fresh and visually amazing Far Cry, how could an obscure FPS companion to a mediocre movie ever succeed
Nothing mediocre about the Riddick franchise. Flawed maybe, but very ambitious, very bad ass and with complex characters.
Obscure and Mediocre? Did you only play Nintendo and watch the Disney channel? wtf…
Pitch Black was a good B-movie, which by default meant quite a limited audience. The game though is a companion piece to its sequel, Chronicles Of Riddick, and that movie was shit. No judgement if you consider that anything else but mediocre, but your tastes probably aren't very common, and people have been judging the game by that shit movie's reputation. It's a pity
the more i see of this game the more it feels like a weird blueprint for The Darkness. that shits cool as hell, imagine a world where starbreeze games are what arkane are now
This game was for real one of those games. Felt the atmosphere. Like splinter cell chaos theory.
They are both amazing games. Replay it once every 2 years.
Also walking makes you regenerate health faster than standing still.
This game was so ahead of its time and felt very special back in the day. One thing you didn't mention (at least according to my memory from 18 years ago): if you reload before a magazine is empty in this game, you lose whatever bullets were left in the used mag. A point of realism I've never seen another game use.
this and dark athena are two of my favorite games I've ever played. I wish more people knew of them
I have so much love for this game. I spent countless hours playing it growing up and still go back to it occasionally
IMO this is the best licenced game ever, loved every second of it.
Goldeneye
@@SWOTHDRAunfortunately it was N64 exclusive so just because of that I can't say that it was better than this game.
1:20 OK, for the record: the Speed Racer Wii game was SO MUCH BETTER than it had any right to be. It's hard to get into, since you have to race *and* do melee combat simultaneously, but it's a ton of fun with friends once you get over the learning curve. Not to mention being downright beautiful for the time and really feeling like an accurate translation of the movie's action.
(Also at 13:55, the mech's computer passive-aggressive complaining throughout the fight is one of my favorite in-game gags ever.)
I absoutely loved this game back int he day, one of the few titles I've beaten more than once, and I can remember the scenes you used in this video vividly.
Dark Athena also had a multiplayer mode added, which had asymetrical gaming long before games like Elvolve or Dead by Daylight existed.
Dark Athena didn't "invent" asymetrical multiplayer!
@@Ki115witch Elaborate.
@@Larry Really? Ok how about Counter-Strike or Aliens vs Predator, just to name a couple of the top of my head. Both came out waaaaayyyy before Dark Athena.
@@Ki115witch Counter-Strike is barely asymeterical. I'm talking about a single person vs. a team.
@@Larry Alien vs Predator works, just like Natural Selection and others - The Hidden is another Half-Life mod that did it quite well a few years before. Nobody's saying that Dark Athena isn't a good take on asymmetrical versus, but it's absolutely not the first!
Your dieclaimer about your unwarranted love for license games made me think of my unwarranted love for the madagascar and shrek games, especially madagascar 2 and shrek the third for the nintendo ds, id kinda love a video about one of these in the future to see how they held up
Honestly I'd love this game to be remade/modded to be a vr game. The immersion would be amazing
Never been this early to one of your vids!
I remember renting this game from Blockbuster back in the day. My lil bro and myself were AMAZED at how real this game felt and looked. It was incredible, through and through. The gameplay was so tight and realized. This was a passion project that had so much love put into it, and I’ll never forget my time with it.
After seeing your take on this games immersion it reminds me of a Namco game on the original Xbox called Breakdown , which was similarly rare game that I've rarely ever found anyone who's heard of it and it also puts high priority on immersion especially in the second half of the game.
That's the one! I got both of these games around the same time and they were both so damn good. Breakdown was such a sleeper.
Worth noting that the development studio is owned by Vin Diesel with the first game partially funded by him.
The man loves video games and his pet project, so he's been trying to franchise it.
great youtube post brother this post has been approved by true vinheads keep on racin' mate
It's about time this game gets some love. A genuine hidden gem. I'll never forget how mind blowing it looked back in the day.
As a HUGE fan of this game hearing that it took you 7 hours to complete the entire thing came as a complete shock to me, I recall spending 7 hours alone exploring the prison as a lowly, recently indicted inmate collecting cigarettes and trading cards to barter my way into the role you inevitably take on... I guess that further speaks to the games strong suits.
Dude right, I think I beat the game missing only a couple cigarettes, it bothered me so much that I couldn't find the rest even though I spent several hours on each level. This game is too beautiful to be rushing haha
He rushed through the game without using stealth....
Honestly, for me a game is when all the checkboxes are checked. Sound design, music, voice acting, story, graphics, pacing, action. This game had it all in one neat package. Im glad i was born in the 80's and im able to see true masterpieces in the evolving world of gaming. A lot of big games these days fall short because they ignore that important checklist. They are more cash grabs now. But i'll always have a sweet spot for those rare games that made me "FEEL." Those are the games you remember years from now
Idk if I'm seeing things but these two Riddick games feel like immersive sims to me... Are they?
Like, come on. Stealth, cool ass protagonist with a fantastic voice, a focus on immersive first person details like minimal hud and minimal videogamey elements...
Lmao nvm Minimme mentioned it shortly after posting this comment, at the 7:38 mark... Guess I have to play this now
They are but not quite on the scale of a typical game you'd think of when you hear immersive sim - they borrow the basic principles to great effect
I played this game 10 times when i was a child. Still remember most of the levels. It was actually quite good game for its time.
I got this game on XBOX first. I could not believe how good it looked on a console.
This game is def ahead of its time, what a fantastic experience I remember I had with it
Played this back in the day and loved it. Never played the sequel because these games are almost unplayable on modern pcs due to drm. If they fixed these for modern operating systems and put them on steam I'd buy them in a heartbeat.
Man that sucks because I still have the PC version laying around here but never actually played it. The video made me wanting to play it.
I'll still give it a try :D
@@serioussamson it has drm on the disc that used to cause problems with older versions of Windows. I don't know what would happen if you install it on Windows 10 or 11.
I loved this game, I never felt so good playing it and the ending . The way you go from the top side to the absolute bottom then to the wardens office is amazing. Forgive me if I’m forgetting things but I haven’t played it in over 15 years lol
You should've done this video like 15 years ago bro, Escape from Butcher Bay is *literally* one of the absolutely best stealth/action-games ever made. One of my & my brother's favorite game of all time lmao
I played this in 2005 on a 6800GT, the graphics still hold up. This game was a real sneak hit at the time, damn I still cant get over the graphics! The Xbox port is mighty impressive too, a real hardware pusher.
y o u a r e i n v i o l a t i o n .
Man, I remember my dad picked this up for 360 when I was younger, we both thought it would be just kinda "meh", but we ended up enjoying the hell out of it.
I actually just bought a copy of the sequel game, can't wait to play this after such a well done review!
It's so nice to see how much your channel has grown since I saw the GBA-FPS video. Congratulations from the bottom of my heart.
Skip to 1:06 to avoid the dumb fuckin sponsor.
I remember being told to put back my weak copy of whatever I was holding and pick up this new game, just as it was released on the OG Xbox. Definitely one of my favorite recommendations of all time.
That thumbnail is a work of the absolute highest art.
BRAVO!
I remember this game back in 2004, amazing game! I can't believe it's been almost 20 years.
This game was so ahead of its time that I seriously considered getting an Xbox to play it at the time of its original release. When I first got my PS3, I was stoked to play the sequel and the original remastered both packaged together. They are cult classic games for a reason.
To this day I'm still utterly amazed that not only was this game so damn good but that it maybe one of the one of the few peaks of Vin Diesel's entire career
THE peak, artistically. This game was better than Pitch Black *and* the sequels. Better than XXX. Don't get me started on the dumb F&F franchise.
This game was legit good and could not have existed without Diesel (although I did like Xzibit, lol).
loved this game. i remember being blown away by the lighting. it always threw new surprises at you, like waking up in that almost time loop section and having to figure out an escape. the dialogue options and interactions with NPC's were also new to me in an fps on console. very fond memories
The definition of “well this is way better than I thought it’d be”. I played when it released and it blew my mind. The whole package was way ahead of its time, almost too much and it went over peoples heads.
I'll always remember this game as that game that took DOOM 3's lightning and went to BOMBASS HEIGHTS with it.
Seriously though, this game has the lighting that some games today fail to even pull off. I'm looking at you Callisto Protocol...
Starbreeze makes banger games, that and Riddick is easily Vin diesels best Franchise that and a super underrated Scifi imo
I think the one thing the chronicles of Riddick universe deserves praise for is it's art direction. It embraces the dirty industrial grit in a way that's actually visually appealing.
Glad to see someone finally cover this game. Escape from Butcher Bay was mind-blowing to me at the time. It's especially impressive what they were able to pull off for 2004.
The Riddick movies are by far Diesel’s best work.
The animated Riddick film, Dark Fury is amazing.
I utterly loved playing this game back in the day. It actually surprised the heck out of me.
Hi Minimme, I come back from time to time to rewatch some of your Video, this one and Driver series Especially. Each time to apreciate your writting. You manage to convey all the emotions that i felt when I was a kid playing those Video games.
I really like semi rambling outros like in this one, it feels like a personal look behind the scenes. Cozy stuff!
Oh and thanks for making me want to check out Riddick?
I never owned this game, but I remember buying the Chronicles of Riddick back in the day, and it had a trial for Escape from Butcher Bay on it if you put the DVD into your XBOX. I'd say it's one of the best trial/demos I've ever played cause the replay value easily broke my scale! Thanks for the nostalgia!
The Xbox 360 version is right up there with Half Life 2 in terms of nostalgic memories of what a fun game it was
Loved this game. I played it when the sequel came out with the first game included. I was born in 91. The perfect time to grow up with all these great games in the early 00s.
I remember a quote from the game pro article. Doom 3 uses its shadows to have monsters pop out and scare you, in Chronicles of Riddick escape from butcher bay. You are the monster
As big of a Riddick fan as I am, I’m ashamed I’ve never played Butcher Bay or Dark Athena. I really owe it to myself one of these days…
Such a great game. I love the Riddick franchise.
What blows me away is how this is an OG Xbox game and yet it looks like a 360 title. Really great work there.
I used to work grave shift security at the office building that Vin's studio HQ was in and met Vin one night. I was actually playing the game on my xbox i hid under my security desk. He was surprised i was playing his game and was super chill.
Escape from butcher bay was amazing . It was in the midst of the “jailbreak” series of Xbox games but loved it cuz it was first person .
You did NOT just call my boy zibbit
The existence of this game is such an anomaly: a licensed game that was treated as a full-on ambitious AAA title (which was far from the norm at the time). It's so technically profound too.
IIRC it was the first Xbox game to do normal mapping and one of the earliest example of dynamic resolution scaling being implemented. It was so ambitious and the combining of all the different gameplay styles could've easily blown up in their face like it has to other games, but it didn't.
I absolutely love the Riddick series and Butcher Bay is absolutely awesome addition. Unfortunately I never got to get my hands on Assault on Dark Athena. I will agree that these 2 and the Ghostbusters game are the absolute best licensed games that actually add to the lore and worlds of the their series.
I know most people wouldn't call this a long game, but I'm a slooooow and cautious player (the kind that like to constantly admire the scenery and explore every nook and cranny) and this is the only game I have finished in one go. I did sleep a few hours on the couch but the Xbox was still running with the game paused. I can still remember being almost in shock over the fact that I had started and finished a whole game over the weekend. Obviously not a big thing for most players, but a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me. 😅
I often think about playing it again, but my backlog is just overwhelming so... yeah...
fun fact alot of the staff from starbreeze left to form machine games. And when you play Wolfenstein the Riddick DNA is all there. BJ whispering to him self, vent crawling, ultra hard bosses that yell at you lol.
I played the demo of this game on a demo disc from Official Xbox Magazine. Then rented it from blockbuster. Had a great time.
One random tidbit about this game is that when you reload clips, it’s not like most shooters where what’s leftover in the clip carries over into the next. When you reload and there are rounds left in the clip, you lose the rounds leftover, like in real life.
Vin Diesel's voiceovers really added to the game. I love the movie and the universe it's in.
This is a forgotten hit of a game. One of the best I’ve played and I’ve played them all from 1999 to 2017
This game and The Darkness by the same developers are such masterpieces that they are among my best games of all time list. It's the kind of work that proves treating a licensed video game with the respect it deserves produces both a worthwhile franchise entry and a great game.
This was one of the games I grew up watching my uncle play. This was one of the only games I wouldn't play on his xbox because I'd much rather watch him play it. I understood that this game was too advanced for me at the time & man I loved watching my uncle play this game. It felt like a fucking movie at times. He truly brought the best out of this game & It was no different in Splinter Cell. After having forgotten about this masterpiece & getting another chance to see it after this video randomly popped up in my feed, I'd say that this timeless classic held up pretty well. Amazing