Can we all agree that Escape from Butcher Bay is still one of the few exceptional movie license games among the recent Spider-Man games and Batman trilogy? Plus, the environments and overall technology with its normal maps and shadows still holds up quite nicely. One of the very best FPS / stealth games to this day. Also thanks to all the Hollywood buddies Vin Diesel could hire for the game. This definitely needs a current gen remaster.
@@Baxtexx sometimes I forget how mind blowing Crysis’ visuals were on release. Today I do think Crysis 3 looks much better in some ways, but of course it came out years later and it’s not an open world game like Crysis so they’re perhaps not really comparable. Really hope we get Crysis 4 someday, but seems like Crytek might still be on somewhat rocky footing financially. Loved their work on Hunt Showdown though.
@@WTFBOOMDOOM y'all know you can turn that off right? At least for the most part.. I had to do a little cc to get the contrast to similar levels in the console, but it's an unlocked console for the most part... I think there was a pretty functional text or i n i file so you can test anything in real time and then save it later.. I remember having to do some adjustments to get it to run the way I wanted it to on my 7800 GT, but the in-game menu as far as visual settings was pretty good overall, only thing I remember in specifics was messing with the color balance, like contrast brightness etc.. but as far as post-effects go, nowhere near as bad as it's contemporaries or even modern games, just didn't have as much contrast is all... Probably cuz I turned them off first thing and don't even remember. Very very minor inconveniences for a stable 64-bit release with both games, especially if you look at the difficulties they're having just getting the pixel shader to run correctly on the original.. that and you get all the new combat mechanics and improvements to the controls and gameplay etc.. pretty much every aspect of the the game had been polished and improved and added to... The enhanced graphical Fidelity for the original was just like you know bonus I guess, and if they had changed the way that fundamentally the visual style worked then that would have been something worth complaining about, but given that you can turn it off and adjust it and have your cake and eat it.. and also play through with a fully flushed out version of the same system that for either technical or budget reasons etc... like they had it good and mostly cuz there's not a lot of contemporaries that work on its level but, it was massively improved for the remaster and sequel. Wouldn't be minor if you couldn't change it.. like most of its contemporaries, but you could... And the bonus of a significantly expanded melee suite, 8-way fluid peak, gunplay that was fun gunplay for the sake of gunplay in its own right rather than a really nifty accessory of tools that just complimented the other gameplay.. which is you know still pretty good, but the re master was actually good, not Wolfenstein New order good, but you could see where they were going to get there when you look at the assault on dark Athena package.
This game takes certain steps further than Doom 3 did in terms of its visuals: - Per-pixel specular highlighting with per-object roughness control - Threshold-based bloom - Self-shadowing on all characters - Decals that blend and interact properly with the environment and lighting And that's not to mention the optional soft shadows on Geforce 6 class cards.
Woah, I never even noticed that Doom 3 excluded self-shadowing on characters! WTF? The funny thing is that when I tried playing both Doom 3 and Butcher Bay on an old Pentium III 1Ghz computer (with Radeon 9700 Pro GPU) Butcher Bay runs about as good as on Xbox but with settings maxed out at 800x600, albeit with Shader Model 2.0 settings and not 2.0+. Doom 3, on the other hand, slows down VERY easily when just running around and any time you gib an enemy with a shotgun the frame-rate goes down to single digits for a couple of seconds. Makes me wonder what could be causing the performance disparity between the two.
@@Banzeken Doom 3 pretty much demanded Pentium 4. Riddick aims to have fewer but more prominent lights, so I think there aren't as many shadows to calculate.
@@Silikone Yeah, that makes sense in hindsight. I guess the abundance of objects (which do self-shadow if I remember correctly) decorating the environments along with frequent use of transparencies in the form of windows don’t speed things up either. I can also confirm that, yes, a Pentium 4 1.5Ghz Willamette computer will run the game a hell of a lot more smoothly than it ever did on my 1Ghz PIII board using the same GPU, RAM type (PC800 RDRAM) and RAM count (512MBs).
Doom 3 vanilla ( no mods), as it comes, supportd everything you said, except bloom. They disabled self shadows because with stencil shadows it looks blocky on some parts. If you look in the code, they had some attempts of shadow mapping and hdr , basically another renderer, not optimized.
An absolute classic. It was so good and ahead of its time that Starbreeze/Machine Games haven't managed to top it (even though I also love The Darkness and the new Wolfenstein games).
@@jack_knife-1478 i wish the darkness would get a pc remaster it's such a good game but atleast you can stil play it on all the new xbox consoles even series x
Nice dude, I have an OG Xbox I bought off of eBay I have a lot of games for it but I haven't tried Chronicles of riddick yet I heard it was one of the most graphically impressive games on the system.
This is one of my all time favorite games. I played it on the Xbox and I can remember feeling like I was getting a sneak peek at the next gen consoles.
It's still insane that this game is from 2004. It looks like most 360 games coming out in 2008-2009. Hope this video turns more people onto it because it's a wonderful experience.
One of the all time greats and severely underrated. The atmosphere, the pacing, the unique shooter gameplay and its variety. Starbreeze/Machine Games made some great games after this, but never quite reached its heights again.
Faffing around with a controller for hours and trying to work out which button did what really took me back to 2004. Thank the PC gaming gods for XInput.
It was so ahead of it's time. Seeing now and playing again you really see a lot of elements that carried over into so many different games and studios.
Fun fact: Halo 2 was built with an identical lighting system but very late in production had to be scrapped. Halo 2 announcement trailer and screenshots showcase the visuals for this.
Back when I never used to finish games, this was the first game that kept me interested throughout and kept me on my toes constantly in the gameplay and story.
One of my favorite games ever. Played it on the OG xbox and later the remastered version (s). For such a comparatively small studio the presentation was absolutely on point.
you know I keep forgetting that they had made that third one, and I really did dig it like I was going to like it no matter what because it was an r-rated riddick, and after just like I feel like I learned more from riddick from the game cuz well for when there's more there to begin with LOL who's the first movie I saw in the theater after I broke in my back and have been in bed for years, I was like getting everything up and running I could move around and sit down and things and I could kind of do everything like like I had done before possibly even better cuz I've been working out for a solid year, or going out with friends for the first time in in years and just enjoying kind of kind of enjoying the shit out of it like even if that ending was like I get that you didn't want to kill off riddick or anything like that, you could have done like a lot of different things there and and still had like a cheesy happy ending that would have been better but that was like 5 seconds of it, and it didn't really fucking make it any different to be honest like it just proved that Katie Stockholm can deliver early sci-fi channel dialogue which I think is a skill really... a lot of people give it shit a lot of people give a lot of things shit though honestly Chronicles of riddick should have been given shit cuz it wasn't ridic like riddick was there, but like riddick things weren't there... didn't hate it though had no idea what it was about no idea why they made it he looked kind of cool I wasn't expecting much cuz it was p13 I didn't get much cuz it was p13 and I had no idea that pitch black existed at the time. I had a really fun time discovering pitch Black that it existed that there was an actual r-rated like good movie with riddick this whole time... it's like finding out that the crackhead on the corner used to be like a fucking ninja or something like that could breathe fire will probably still can you know you don't lose that. perfect pulp for me it really was and as far as like the interface between him and John's and the interface between I can never remember her name or maybe it's pronounce it's like rasheeda or something, I thought that shit worked perfectly actually going back is an adult and watching it, and Keith David just kind of you know I feel like every time he shows up I get like a a bonus happy point that stays permanently and I feel like the world does too... but yeah, I'm really glad that he got to go make that third one I I'm not sure why he did some of the things that he did in it given that he got to go make that third one, and I think at that point he had some serious clout in his career, not that he didn't before actually like he's kind of been all over the place throughout the industry... but honestly it's his fucking character he can do whatever he wants with it, and one thing that him and Vin Diesel have on this character is that Richard b Reddick is always Rich would be really he never is not that, it's a simple character but it is such a fucking cool character... and every time people make a most badass people and video games list and he's not on it I get very upset, like it was Morgan Freeman a dumpster baby with an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck that was raised in a killer bee killed sci-fi universe and escaped from all the good prisons anyways,? well you know we'll find out I guess it felt wants to keep moving that character forward, and he has done some prison breaks... and I'm pretty sure riddick would fucking got him like a fish, and I say that with respect for fish because they're not easy to gut necessarily like they're actually you know they got scales and shit is actually a harder puncture than like an animal carcass sometimes actually most the times... but I have a sneaking suspicion that should they ever negatively cross paths I mean one moment you'd have Gordon Freeman and the next moment you'd have like a lot of crowbar wounds puncture wounds and he'd be getting sucked up into a barnacle or something and no one would ever find him again... I still don't know why Gordon Freeman's on these lists I have nothing against him but he's not a character, and I have a sneaking suspicion he was an intern at black Mesa... obviously former military given his gun play, but I'm pretty sure he was an intern probably using the GI Bill and gotten some robotics or something at MIT I don't know maybe he had Rich parents but, do you really think the guy that has a skills with rocket launchers who pushes a cart in a test chamber for a bunch of people that have clipboards is part of the union lol so I think he gets too much credit for everything, and riddick gets not enough credit for things... passive anger expressed violently it's like having your cake and eat it too... pure primal rage with the self-control of Sam Fisher, and possibly one of the very few if not the only although I will say very few just to you know give Credence to anybody that has actually tried to flush this out cuz I'm sure somebody has but possibly the only badass motherfucker walking around in sunglasses, indoors, that actually has a reason to and it's not just being a douche, and their goggles too... usually you got to be a super deuce to have goggles on indoors... that's a magical shit right there and that is some badass shit right there. I always loved like pure survivors and that's riddick and a nutshell I don't like nobody does for fun I don't know if he can do that anymore I feel like his lifestyle probably has led him to a lot of situations that maybe that's the fun it seems like he has fun, you know you got to make your fun where you can... I'm assuming on when he's not involved you probably sleeps or something, but they left that shit open, cuz he ain't some weird asexual fucking serial killer neither he's a regular creepy serial killer.,.. so you don't be embarrassed about liking those movies cuz honestly like them for riddick... and everybody will tell you that pitch black was not bad movie it was a good movie and it was riddick Chronicles that sucked and the third one kind of sucked it was disappointing or whatever fuck that noise, pitch black wasn't exactly children of men or the player... but it was damn fine sci-fi pulp, and it had the things that needed to have to make it work... so the third one and and and at that point really it really just needed ridic, cuz at this point just watching a riddick do riddick things is just kind of a treat, and how often do we get treated to being able to like actually do riddick things while we're experiencing riddick do riddick things... that's a multimedia experience if I've ever had one, fuck I think there's an animated episode too, so they really did the whole multimedia delivery now I think about it. not sure why that never really like works out or something, possibly because you're trying too hard or something... my point is it's not like Gordon Freeman's a pussy or nothing, I feel like he's charged through enough running gun fire to at least get some PTSD awareness for his silence, but he ain't no riddick so take him off your fucking bad ass characters list and take everybody off Mass effect off that list too seriously, feel like shepherds too emotionally fragile to be on that list, the only emotionally fragile character on that list that should ever be on that list is Mandy and Mandy doesn't have a video game... yet
I think this is, perhaps, the only time a video game based on a movie is actually better than the movies. That said, I don't think the movies are terrible. The last one was decent too. The animated one was okay too; don't remember it too well though.
I remember this was great. But The Darkness... my god. The atmosphere, the story, the powers, the MUSIC, imho that was the peak accomplishment of Starbreeze
i played the darkness 2 and really enjoyed it, especially the story which i totally did not expect to be so well and believable written and then i found out that darkness 1 is console exclusive
@@MKR3238 it's worth getting an old cheap ps3 or 360 for it. Darkness 2 was done by Digital Extremes, the folks behind warframe. The original Darkness is Starbreeze/Machine games. It's an amazing fps with an incredible story. Much better than Darkness 2.
As a bit of curiosa regarding Darkness: If you spawn the bomb Darkling (suicidal communist one) and the minigun toting female Darkling (GI helmet capitalist one) they will argue the pros and cons of capitalism vs communism on idle moments in the game.
YES! Nailed it John, modern games are "graphically noisy" and make the experience less memorable or enjoyable. I remember the slap I got when playing the demo on OG Xbox. Still looks really good.
@@andersbackman3977 I could be wrong, but wasn't Shrek the first game on the original Xbox with normal mapping? It was also the first commercial game that implemented deferred shading, and from what I can tell they also made use of stencil shadows
@@MrGreatDane2 Any game on the original Xbox that used DOT3 bump mapping technically also did normal mapping (DOT3 stores RGB values in textures), which would also include Halo: Combat Evolved. As for which game was the first with DOT3 bump mapping/normal mapping in general, I believe it's Evolva (PC, 2000) which received a "bump map patch" a couple of months after its May 2000 release to accommodate the then-new GeForce 256 and GeForce2 GPUs.
@@Banzeken that's true, but I believe that Shrek was a release title similar to Halo, so then it's still part of the first Xbox titles to use normal mapping Also, Shrek's lighting solution is fully real time similar to Riddick, which I believe was the aspect that intrigued viewers the most
Yay! So glad you're doing this game. Riddick is my favorite sctfi character and this game ive replayed the most. Watching Alex play this though is extremely painful... it's like he's never played games before...
I had this on the Xbox I don't know why but I was 100% convinced it was running on the Doom 3 engine I miss early Starbreeze. The Riddick games and The Darkness were so good Darkness remaster when
Still one of the best FPS games ever made. The sheer quality of it hasn't aged a day. I can't recommend it enough !!!!!! ( Original version is better than the shitty remaster packed in with the sequel )
As someone with only access to magazines at the time, this game came out of nowhere and blew me away on Xbox. I remember it kinda stealing Doom 3's thunder a little bit as a technical showcase.
@@Elatenl it also has compatibility issues tho, three years ago i remember trying to run it on my gtx 960 windows 7 pc and failing to even get past the main menu. I doubt its gotten any better
@@beegyoshi6525 Exactly, it's a real pain to get it working, and even if you do, the controls feel weird and even though the game runs at 60fps, it still stutters while looking around, making it less enjoyable. Too bad there aren't any mod out there to fix these problems.
Such an awesome game. Banged in many, many hours on my beloved Crystal OG Xbox back in the day. So, so interesting to hear you and John talking about the technical aspects of what made the game look so good and cutting edge at the time. I just remember being blown away by it. Keep up the fantastic work guys 😎👍
I literally ordered an xbox 360 a week ago just so I could revisit this game since it's not BC anymore. So weird that you guys chose this game of all games to revisit.
Kinda surprised you guys didn't mention "The Darkness". Starbreeze took so many points from Riddick and moved them straight into that game. The weapons, aiming, controls, art design, and so much more!
This game along with Chaos Theory had me so hyped up for the next generation of consoles graphics capabilities. Both fantastic games that are still worth playing today.
Wouldn't say no to a new Ridick game. Played on Xbox then again on PC when it was bundled with Athena. Just a really solid game from start to finish. Absolutely worth a play if you can.
I've lost count how many times i've played through this Game and the Remake, honestly wouldn't mind another Remake. Shame Dark Athena wasn't that great but loved the Side-Quests and Semi-Open Worldish etc...
I loved these games so much when they came out. I could voice over all the cutscenes just from my memory. (the awesome voice actors helped of course so that dialogue lines got stuck in my head) And that the sequel came along with the whole Escape from Butcher Bay remade was so awesome!
John, i love that you said that they come from the demo scene. I know the founders and the guy that made the menu-cube, some of them came from the demo scene, not sure about him but he was a programming genius at the age of 15 to 16 when i met him in around -97/-98, he has a long list of games behind him but more recently and notably doom eternal :)
@@jakedill1304 Well, there's no best GAME so much as best GAMES. In this particular case, a game can be the best in its genre on the consoles it was made for. And in this case, for first person shooters on the original Xbox, the award clearly goes to a three way tie between Halo CE, Halo 2, and Timesplitters 3, with Unreal Championship 2 and Far Cry Instincts Evolution probably being the runners up.
Yeah, pretty much everything can benefit from ray tracing. Unfortunately it is very difficult to inject ray tracing into older games beyond screen space ray tracing, which is often too limited in my opinion. True ray tracing, to realize the benefits of it overall, need to be able to sample off screen assets and lighting.
@@PhillipLemmon , depends on the ray tracing effect, and the effect dictates what type of optimizations can be done. For COD MW the RT shadows are a very nice touch and don't impact performance much for me. I'm able to do 4k 120Hz at max settings with RT shadows. For Metro Exodus, the GI implementation runs very performant for me as well, I played at 1440P 60Hz at max settings. Though most of my experience with Metro was with the 2080 ti, I've picked it back up recently after I got my 3090. Edit: Corrected my Metro refresh, muscle memory typed 120Hz, I believe it was 1440p 60Hz stable, which is still quite acceptable. People need to understand the performance is quite variable with ray tracing. It depends on effect, quality of the effect, resolution, instances of effect on screen at one time (if it is reflections, is there a small puddle or is the entire room reflective...etc). And even then, optimizations can be done. Part of the perception is that initial ray tracing implementations were not well optimized, since it took the devs a while to develop those optimizations. Now it is common for things like reflections to have reflectivity cutoffs. For all ray tracing effects to have the option to have ray counts be a fraction of the output resolution, mixing of ray tracing reflections and shadows with things like screen space reflections and shadows (ray tracing working where those fail)...etc.
pretty sure you can get the RT to work with reshade and on the sequil I think they even have 16 bit colors... and since the sequil has this version with better graphics and controls... just everyone go buy dark athena if you can find it.
yeah right ! i did forgot about this gem too.....it was so gory , the dismemberment was on point , the combat and difficulty was good balanced, and the lighting also was on point too ....man, this made me feel old , but as a gamer, those years were the best !
@@offlinegamer6756 You nailed it... a definite golden era of PC games, and an amazing standout game... technology and gameplay for 2001 were so far ahead of it's time.
@@jong2359 thanks....also do you remember Red Faction with the destructible environment, the Jedi Knight games, the originals Need For Speed ones , Splinter cell and many more that really made us very proud to be a PC gamer back then , so much good memories!
There is an even earlier game with the same type of lighting. Gift from late 2000 (for PC, and 2001 for PS2) is a platforming game made by French studio Cryo (not to be confused with The Gift made by 1C Company the same year) that uses light and darkness as a central gameplay mechanic and like Severance it has static and moving light sources which cast stencil shadows from both characters and the environment.
What a nice surprise! This has to be one of the best games based on a movie that I've ever played. Truly a classic, even though mechanically is a bit clunky nowadays I loved it when it came out.
I strongly agree with their comments about "reading the room" and the environments that were illustrated in that generation. Today's visual style is quite cluttered yet less functional gameplay-wise. I think Rage (2011) started this trend.
Was just thinking about this game the other day , and wow what a frickn experience this was. "Welcome to butcher bay" Blew my mind when it came out , the lighting was awesome.
Its not listed on the Xbox store, which usually means its not BC. I've often considered picking up an OG Xbox just for this game. Oh, and for PsiOps: The Mindgate Conspiracy too.
I would love to play this again, but a proper remake and with RTX. There is another game I would also love a remake of, that being FREELANCER by Microsoft. :)
I was stunned by this game when I first loaded it up on my OG Xbox. The textures and lighting were ahead of its time and the gameplay itself was very satisfying.
@@jaigray5422 you mean how your character disconnects from the guy you're choking, or the absolute jank that's your character's shadow... yeah, real top of the line stuff right there.
I remember playing the demo of this game on my OG Xbox, fighting that mech at the end. Me and my cousin gave up because it was so hard lol. Really hope that they add this game to the Xbox's backwards compatibility list eventually.
Everyone at Starbreeze left after we released Syndicate, most including me went to Machinegames while some moved to Hazelight. Starbreeze is still exist as a company but none of the staff have worked there for many many years.
@@andersbackman3977 God bless you sir by the way I'm not going to lie y'all have created some really foundling experiences for me, I know a lot of people didn't give a shit but when I got dark Athena and I could I could I could run it yeah, I think it was a 7800 GT I made it work... the combination of of the gameplay loops that the detail and just the character control and my OCD had me just sinking into that game doing things over and over again to be perfect and just feeling like a total badass the entire time I don't really care what people say I even thought the shooting was really good actually, it was what people would call clunky but it felt like you were actually holding a weapon it felt like you were shooting a weapon and and maybe it's just cuz I come from the tactical shooter world that the idea of guns that spread and have ballistics didn't really bug me... and to be honest any game back then especially back then but the first and the second that let me just riddle bullets with with fuck you little corpses with bullets LOL I needed that shit in my life... and by the way Wolfenstein kind of working for me in a similar way it's a little different because you're not ridic ul... but I'm getting the same level of therapy. not going to lie I haven't been able to really sit down and play a video game in probably 2 years now, but when I have I've been loading up Wolfenstein and just killing nazis, I don't get far I don't sit for long but it's just enough... and again that level of control that you guys put into it, I really just I wish more games would fucking have it like I get that you don't have to lean corners but it's nice to be able to I may not do it all the time I may just do it because when I go up to a box with a gun my first thought is I should kind of get behind this box and maybe lean over it it feels natural... I don't care if I have two assault rifles I don't know what carrying to assault rifles is like I've never really gotten past one, I don't even know if I could... but I can lean around boxes and I can shoot and when I come into a game and and my movement is restricted to this simple form and I can't move around the environment or or contort my body in a way that really isn't that complicated anymore, and and should be the standard for any first person game regardless of what you're doing I don't know just thank you guys like I had a feeling the moment I put it up in the water there was something familiar about it LOL and yeah I feel like just the idea that the riddick games would live on in BJ blaskowitz for one I don't know how well riddick and flaskowitz would get along oddly enough riddick seems to get along with everybody he doesn't kill and BJ's a nice guy he's not a pussy and riddick likes killing people so I don't see why he wouldn't like killing Nazis you know if there's like money or pussy in it for him, but if they had to do a body swap I think he'd be okay with it probably have to fix his eyes but you know I don't know fucking night... and you still and you still let me shank the fuck out of people, even though I didn't have to it's just nice that I can that philosophy is so underutilized in video gaming and and it bugs the living shit out of me every time I hear the term streamline I want to punch somebody in the fucking face... cuz cuz streamlined is me trying to make sure I'm in the right clip zone so I can use the auto lean around a box or you know have to fucking dip in and out like I'm trying to show my dick off or something like that at a fucking college frat party, I don't know I could go on and on I never figured I would be in the same text space as all y'all but anybody who worked on any of those games y'all really did something I don't really there's no ifs ands or buts on that one and I hope you all keep doing it hopefully the switch over with Microsoft doesn't fuck you in the fact that you've managed to make complex gameplay actually work on consoles and prove that it can be done, or which more people would do that cuz I'm kind of tired of the excuse you know it's been 20 years of that excuse and I thought I was never going to have to put up with more than 10 or so before consoles would eventually get modern control schemes I never occurred to me that it was the The gamers themselves that didn't want it so yeah I'm going to stop before I go into another rant LOL but thank you guys I really appreciate it I really do it's kind of weird cuz some of the highlights of my my youth were trying to trick animations in the second one to make sure that every time I stabbed a guy with a knife it would do that double stab where it would shank him in the gut and then shove it down his throat which is kind of complicated cuz it kept trying to rip his gun over and shoot him in the head but again thank you for letting me do that I like being able to do things that I want to do in games it's a rare treat...
@@andersbackman3977 also sorry for the lack of paragraphing and formatting on that one, I used speech to text and I'm standing out here trying to smoke a cigarette in the rain LOL hopefully some of that gets through but if you can't read it just thanks dude I really really really appreciate all y'all and thanks for not dissolving into obscurity either and and keep i
2004 was an amazing year for graphics, especially shadowing. Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, The Chronicles of Riddick, Thief Deadly Shadows and more
I feel like the original version of this game aged better than the remake, I love this crisp and dark look compared to the remake that had too many post-fx for my taste. Both games are an interesting representation of graphical trends in their time. The remake also lacks the ability to quick save/quick load. It was also quite the sleeper title, everyone was concerned about the trio of Doom 3 vs Half Life 2 vs FarCry but then you have this little game based on a movie that manages to match them in visual aspects. I recall a lot of people thinking this ran on the idtech4 engine due to the shadow and models looking similar. Weird hearing about the mouse issue, I replayed this on a XP rig two years ago and it was all very smooth. I used a MX518 I think. Not sure what would be causing this.
They REALLY need to bring this back with compatibility, I still have my original disc copy, but it won't work 😭. Anybody know why they haven't? Licensing issues maybe?
Xbox or PC version? nothing to do with licence on PC if it doesn't work, it's just broken if that's the case and you would need to install an older OS to play, if it's Xbox you can buy the 360 version of Dark Athena which has Butchers Bay included on Live for £12.
@@jeremyriddle1884 , I googled, Dark Athena xbox, and the first page had multiple places to purchase it. It is an Xbox 360 game. It may not be available for Xbox One via backwards compatibility (you'd have to research that yourself), depends if Microsoft put in the time to make it compatible (each game requires some effort).
@@JimBob1937 yea I can see it for purchase on 360, but found a thread on the support page from 2019 where they said they were putting BC on hold to bring it to Series consoles, but that also the rights are somewhere put in the Esther now and that they wouldn't be able to touch it. Hopefully that changes cause this really was a great game, it got me into stealth more than splinter cell did.
Can we all agree that Escape from Butcher Bay is still one of the few exceptional movie license games among the recent Spider-Man games and Batman trilogy? Plus, the environments and overall technology with its normal maps and shadows still holds up quite nicely. One of the very best FPS / stealth games to this day. Also thanks to all the Hollywood buddies Vin Diesel could hire for the game. This definitely needs a current gen remaster.
It was also a great example for how good Vin Diesels voice is for gaming
theres a remake already included with Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
Bro are you using Internet Explorer or what? We've been agreeing on that since forever.
Agreed
The Two Towers and Return of the King for PS2/Xbox/GC are also very solid
"The menu, it's so so riddickulus"
- John
I remember when this came out, graphics were insane at the time
Still, its crazy to think that Crysis came out just two years later. 😳
@@Baxtexx sometimes I forget how mind blowing Crysis’ visuals were on release. Today I do think Crysis 3 looks much better in some ways, but of course it came out years later and it’s not an open world game like Crysis so they’re perhaps not really comparable. Really hope we get Crysis 4 someday, but seems like Crytek might still be on somewhat rocky footing financially. Loved their work on Hunt Showdown though.
Shadows were super impressive, just like the ones in Doom 3 and Prey
@@Starfals Half Life 2 was even better, though.
@T D True, looked good but not much else there.
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (2009) includes hi-definition re-imagined version of this first game.
Yeah, it is convenient being able to play this game on Xbox 360, but I think they went overboard this graphic effects.
@@gabrieleriva651 Vaseline edition, lol.
@@WTFBOOMDOOM y'all know you can turn that off right? At least for the most part.. I had to do a little cc to get the contrast to similar levels in the console, but it's an unlocked console for the most part... I think there was a pretty functional text or i n i file so you can test anything in real time and then save it later.. I remember having to do some adjustments to get it to run the way I wanted it to on my 7800 GT, but the in-game menu as far as visual settings was pretty good overall, only thing I remember in specifics was messing with the color balance, like contrast brightness etc.. but as far as post-effects go, nowhere near as bad as it's contemporaries or even modern games, just didn't have as much contrast is all... Probably cuz I turned them off first thing and don't even remember.
Very very minor inconveniences for a stable 64-bit release with both games, especially if you look at the difficulties they're having just getting the pixel shader to run correctly on the original.. that and you get all the new combat mechanics and improvements to the controls and gameplay etc.. pretty much every aspect of the the game had been polished and improved and added to... The enhanced graphical Fidelity for the original was just like you know bonus I guess, and if they had changed the way that fundamentally the visual style worked then that would have been something worth complaining about, but given that you can turn it off and adjust it and have your cake and eat it.. and also play through with a fully flushed out version of the same system that for either technical or budget reasons etc... like they had it good and mostly cuz there's not a lot of contemporaries that work on its level but, it was massively improved for the remaster and sequel.
Wouldn't be minor if you couldn't change it.. like most of its contemporaries, but you could... And the bonus of a significantly expanded melee suite, 8-way fluid peak, gunplay that was fun gunplay for the sake of gunplay in its own right rather than a really nifty accessory of tools that just complimented the other gameplay.. which is you know still pretty good, but the re master was actually good, not Wolfenstein New order good, but you could see where they were going to get there when you look at the assault on dark Athena package.
This game takes certain steps further than Doom 3 did in terms of its visuals:
- Per-pixel specular highlighting with per-object roughness control
- Threshold-based bloom
- Self-shadowing on all characters
- Decals that blend and interact properly with the environment and lighting
And that's not to mention the optional soft shadows on Geforce 6 class cards.
Woah, I never even noticed that Doom 3 excluded self-shadowing on characters! WTF? The funny thing is that when I tried playing both Doom 3 and Butcher Bay on an old Pentium III 1Ghz computer (with Radeon 9700 Pro GPU) Butcher Bay runs about as good as on Xbox but with settings maxed out at 800x600, albeit with Shader Model 2.0 settings and not 2.0+. Doom 3, on the other hand, slows down VERY easily when just running around and any time you gib an enemy with a shotgun the frame-rate goes down to single digits for a couple of seconds. Makes me wonder what could be causing the performance disparity between the two.
@@Banzeken Doom 3 pretty much demanded Pentium 4. Riddick aims to have fewer but more prominent lights, so I think there aren't as many shadows to calculate.
@@Silikone Yeah, that makes sense in hindsight. I guess the abundance of objects (which do self-shadow if I remember correctly) decorating the environments along with frequent use of transparencies in the form of windows don’t speed things up either. I can also confirm that, yes, a Pentium 4 1.5Ghz Willamette computer will run the game a hell of a lot more smoothly than it ever did on my 1Ghz PIII board using the same GPU, RAM type (PC800 RDRAM) and RAM count (512MBs).
Doom 3 vanilla ( no mods), as it comes, supportd everything you said, except bloom. They disabled self shadows because with stencil shadows it looks blocky on some parts. If you look in the code, they had some attempts of shadow mapping and hdr , basically another renderer, not optimized.
What riddick had was a better interaction shader, looked more alive with brighter highlights
An absolute classic. It was so good and ahead of its time that Starbreeze/Machine Games haven't managed to top it (even though I also love The Darkness and the new Wolfenstein games).
The darkness doesn't get recognition it deserves such a great game.
Wolfenstein 2 is bland communist propaganda.
The first Darkness is up there imo
@@saratov99 Just.... What?
@@jack_knife-1478 i wish the darkness would get a pc remaster it's such a good game but atleast you can stil play it on all the new xbox consoles even series x
Played this on og Xbox. The normal maps were incredible and kind of a sneak peek at what the next generation consoles would make standard v
Nice dude, I have an OG Xbox I bought off of eBay I have a lot of games for it but I haven't tried Chronicles of riddick yet I heard it was one of the most graphically impressive games on the system.
@@nareshsookraj9230 You definitely need to play this one! The graphics are dated now days, but the game is solid.
@@Kingofconsoles54 grow up.
@@Kingofconsoles54 grow the f up already
@@nareshsookraj9230 graphics impressive for a console at that time, terrible framerates😬
This is one of my all time favorite games. I played it on the Xbox and I can remember feeling like I was getting a sneak peek at the next gen consoles.
It's still insane that this game is from 2004. It looks like most 360 games coming out in 2008-2009. Hope this video turns more people onto it because it's a wonderful experience.
Bought this game for the OG Xbox on a fluke and it ended up being one of my favorite games ever.
The xbox version was the one I played too. Graphics were just amazing
That happened to me with Xtreme G3 Racing on the PS2.
yeah that xbox game was above the other console by miles. There's was nothing that looked like that on Gamecube or PS2
The mighty OG Xbox
@@frankjoz2803 , "it's not the fall that kills you, [SPLAT!] it's the sudden stop and the bottom"; bro, that's such a fantastic moment.
One of the all time greats and severely underrated. The atmosphere, the pacing, the unique shooter gameplay and its variety. Starbreeze/Machine Games made some great games after this, but never quite reached its heights again.
Faffing around with a controller for hours and trying to work out which button did what really took me back to 2004.
Thank the PC gaming gods for XInput.
Probably still one of the best implementation of first person melee combat ever made.
It was so ahead of it's time. Seeing now and playing again you really see a lot of elements that carried over into so many different games and studios.
You needed to play this to get the entire story line of the first movie. He mentions his escape from butcher bay.
Fun fact:
Halo 2 was built with an identical lighting system but very late in production had to be scrapped.
Halo 2 announcement trailer and screenshots showcase the visuals for this.
Back when I never used to finish games, this was the first game that kept me interested throughout and kept me on my toes constantly in the gameplay and story.
This game is in Legendary status... Among the best of all time
and it was removed from history sad
@Ioannis Stefanakis not for sure the details but it was renoved
@@NaterBalls You can still play it I think.
One of my favorite games ever. Played it on the OG xbox and later the remastered version (s). For such a comparatively small studio the presentation was absolutely on point.
I loved this game. I also have a shameful love for all the Riddick movies. :)
It's not shameful mate
Not shameful at all, they were awesome.
you know I keep forgetting that they had made that third one, and I really did dig it like I was going to like it no matter what because it was an r-rated riddick, and after just like I feel like I learned more from riddick from the game cuz well for when there's more there to begin with LOL who's the first movie I saw in the theater after I broke in my back and have been in bed for years, I was like getting everything up and running I could move around and sit down and things and I could kind of do everything like like I had done before possibly even better cuz I've been working out for a solid year, or going out with friends for the first time in in years and just enjoying kind of kind of enjoying the shit out of it like even if that ending was like I get that you didn't want to kill off riddick or anything like that, you could have done like a lot of different things there and and still had like a cheesy happy ending that would have been better but that was like 5 seconds of it, and it didn't really fucking make it any different to be honest like it just proved that Katie Stockholm can deliver early sci-fi channel dialogue which I think is a skill really...
a lot of people give it shit a lot of people give a lot of things shit though honestly Chronicles of riddick should have been given shit cuz it wasn't ridic like riddick was there, but like riddick things weren't there... didn't hate it though had no idea what it was about no idea why they made it he looked kind of cool I wasn't expecting much cuz it was p13 I didn't get much cuz it was p13 and I had no idea that pitch black existed at the time.
I had a really fun time discovering pitch Black that it existed that there was an actual r-rated like good movie with riddick this whole time... it's like finding out that the crackhead on the corner used to be like a fucking ninja or something like that could breathe fire will probably still can you know you don't lose that.
perfect pulp for me it really was and as far as like the interface between him and John's and the interface between I can never remember her name or maybe it's pronounce it's like rasheeda or something, I thought that shit worked perfectly actually going back is an adult and watching it, and Keith David just kind of you know I feel like every time he shows up I get like a a bonus happy point that stays permanently and I feel like the world does too...
but yeah, I'm really glad that he got to go make that third one I I'm not sure why he did some of the things that he did in it given that he got to go make that third one, and I think at that point he had some serious clout in his career, not that he didn't before actually like he's kind of been all over the place throughout the industry... but honestly it's his fucking character he can do whatever he wants with it, and one thing that him and Vin Diesel have on this character is that Richard b Reddick is always Rich would be really he never is not that, it's a simple character but it is such a fucking cool character... and every time people make a most badass people and video games list and he's not on it I get very upset, like it was Morgan Freeman a dumpster baby with an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck that was raised in a killer bee killed sci-fi universe and escaped from all the good prisons anyways,? well you know we'll find out I guess it felt wants to keep moving that character forward, and he has done some prison breaks... and I'm pretty sure riddick would fucking got him like a fish, and I say that with respect for fish because they're not easy to gut necessarily like they're actually you know they got scales and shit is actually a harder puncture than like an animal carcass sometimes actually most the times... but I have a sneaking suspicion that should they ever negatively cross paths I mean one moment you'd have Gordon Freeman and the next moment you'd have like a lot of crowbar wounds puncture wounds and he'd be getting sucked up into a barnacle or something and no one would ever find him again... I still don't know why Gordon Freeman's on these lists I have nothing against him but he's not a character, and I have a sneaking suspicion he was an intern at black Mesa... obviously former military given his gun play, but I'm pretty sure he was an intern probably using the GI Bill and gotten some robotics or something at MIT I don't know maybe he had Rich parents but, do you really think the guy that has a skills with rocket launchers who pushes a cart in a test chamber for a bunch of people that have clipboards is part of the union lol so I think he gets too much credit for everything, and riddick gets not enough credit for things...
passive anger expressed violently it's like having your cake and eat it too... pure primal rage with the self-control of Sam Fisher, and possibly one of the very few if not the only although I will say very few just to you know give Credence to anybody that has actually tried to flush this out cuz I'm sure somebody has but possibly the only badass motherfucker walking around in sunglasses, indoors, that actually has a reason to and it's not just being a douche, and their goggles too... usually you got to be a super deuce to have goggles on indoors... that's a magical shit right there and that is some badass shit right there.
I always loved like pure survivors and that's riddick and a nutshell I don't like nobody does for fun I don't know if he can do that anymore I feel like his lifestyle probably has led him to a lot of situations that maybe that's the fun it seems like he has fun, you know you got to make your fun where you can... I'm assuming on when he's not involved you probably sleeps or something, but they left that shit open, cuz he ain't some weird asexual fucking serial killer neither he's a regular creepy serial killer.,..
so you don't be embarrassed about liking those movies cuz honestly like them for riddick... and everybody will tell you that pitch black was not bad movie it was a good movie and it was riddick Chronicles that sucked and the third one kind of sucked it was disappointing or whatever fuck that noise, pitch black wasn't exactly children of men or the player... but it was damn fine sci-fi pulp, and it had the things that needed to have to make it work... so the third one and and and at that point really it really just needed ridic, cuz at this point just watching a riddick do riddick things is just kind of a treat, and how often do we get treated to being able to like actually do riddick things while we're experiencing riddick do riddick things... that's a multimedia experience if I've ever had one, fuck I think there's an animated episode too, so they really did the whole multimedia delivery now I think about it. not sure why that never really like works out or something, possibly because you're trying too hard or something... my point is it's not like Gordon Freeman's a pussy or nothing, I feel like he's charged through enough running gun fire to at least get some PTSD awareness for his silence, but he ain't no riddick so take him off your fucking bad ass characters list and take everybody off Mass effect off that list too seriously, feel like shepherds too emotionally fragile to be on that list, the only emotionally fragile character on that list that should ever be on that list is Mandy and Mandy doesn't have a video game... yet
Jake Dill bro what the absolute fuck
I think this is, perhaps, the only time a video game based on a movie is actually better than the movies. That said, I don't think the movies are terrible. The last one was decent too. The animated one was okay too; don't remember it too well though.
I remember this was great. But The Darkness... my god. The atmosphere, the story, the powers, the MUSIC, imho that was the peak accomplishment of Starbreeze
i played the darkness 2 and really enjoyed it, especially the story which i totally did not expect to be so well and believable written and then i found out that darkness 1 is console exclusive
@@MKR3238 it's worth getting an old cheap ps3 or 360 for it. Darkness 2 was done by Digital Extremes, the folks behind warframe. The original Darkness is Starbreeze/Machine games. It's an amazing fps with an incredible story. Much better than Darkness 2.
As a bit of curiosa regarding Darkness: If you spawn the bomb Darkling (suicidal communist one) and the minigun toting female Darkling (GI helmet capitalist one) they will argue the pros and cons of capitalism vs communism on idle moments in the game.
YES! Nailed it John, modern games are "graphically noisy" and make the experience less memorable or enjoyable. I remember the slap I got when playing the demo on OG Xbox. Still looks really good.
This game was one of the first to have normal mapping on OG Xbox. I remember the GI magazine articles about the techniques.
I believe it was THE first one. Doom 3 came out later, we even got a nice letter from Carmack congratulating us for beating them to it.
@@andersbackman3977 I could be wrong, but wasn't Shrek the first game on the original Xbox with normal mapping? It was also the first commercial game that implemented deferred shading, and from what I can tell they also made use of stencil shadows
@@MrGreatDane2 Any game on the original Xbox that used DOT3 bump mapping technically also did normal mapping (DOT3 stores RGB values in textures), which would also include Halo: Combat Evolved. As for which game was the first with DOT3 bump mapping/normal mapping in general, I believe it's Evolva (PC, 2000) which received a "bump map patch" a couple of months after its May 2000 release to accommodate the then-new GeForce 256 and GeForce2 GPUs.
@@Banzeken that's true, but I believe that Shrek was a release title similar to Halo, so then it's still part of the first Xbox titles to use normal mapping
Also, Shrek's lighting solution is fully real time similar to Riddick, which I believe was the aspect that intrigued viewers the most
@@MrGreatDane2 I agree on both points.
Im born 89 and I played this 2005 on my dads office PC with a crappy X300 from ATi. It was still a stunning experience even on 800x600 @ Low.
Yay! So glad you're doing this game. Riddick is my favorite sctfi character and this game ive replayed the most. Watching Alex play this though is extremely painful... it's like he's never played games before...
I had this on the Xbox
I don't know why but I was 100% convinced it was running on the Doom 3 engine
I miss early Starbreeze. The Riddick games and The Darkness were so good
Darkness remaster when
Still one of the best FPS games ever made. The sheer quality of it hasn't aged a day. I can't recommend it enough !!!!!! ( Original version is better than the shitty remaster packed in with the sequel )
It's good. I wouldn't say it's one of the best ever lol.
Loved this game when it came out on OG Xbox as a tween, the fact that you could see your shadow blew my mind lol.
I remember I had a Chronicles of Riddick DVD that had a demo for this game if the disc was inserted into an Xbox console.
As someone with only access to magazines at the time, this game came out of nowhere and blew me away on Xbox. I remember it kinda stealing Doom 3's thunder a little bit as a technical showcase.
Only thought the whole time: damn, I am getting old.
Pitch Black reference there.. a man of culture eh Alex?
I loved this game and still play it today. Excellent single player experience.
I love this game so much ! Would love a Next Gen Remaster.
theres a remake included with Assault on Dark Athena
@@Elatenl GOG has Dark Athena, so you can get it there. EDIT: Never mind, not anymore :/
Yeah i have this Remaster but i mean a Next Gen Remaster ^^ or a sequel that would be dope
@@Elatenl it also has compatibility issues tho, three years ago i remember trying to run it on my gtx 960 windows 7 pc and failing to even get past the main menu. I doubt its gotten any better
@@beegyoshi6525 Exactly, it's a real pain to get it working, and even if you do, the controls feel weird and even though the game runs at 60fps, it still stutters while looking around, making it less enjoyable. Too bad there aren't any mod out there to fix these problems.
I remember starting this game on the OG Xbox and being blown away by the visuals. Then I kept playing and it was actually a great game.
This games deserves an full episode of DF Retro.
Agreed, I'm missing the old format. I know it's more work but the videos 2/3 years ago like Shenmue were brilliant.
@@Garrad3 The love and care that went into this videos was awesome. Always getting a bit nostaltic re watching some of them.
Such an awesome game. Banged in many, many hours on my beloved Crystal OG Xbox back in the day. So, so interesting to hear you and John talking about the technical aspects of what made the game look so good and cutting edge at the time. I just remember being blown away by it. Keep up the fantastic work guys 😎👍
Amazing game, I`ve finished it twice back in the day.
I literally ordered an xbox 360 a week ago just so I could revisit this game since it's not BC anymore. So weird that you guys chose this game of all games to revisit.
One of the best games! This is what they need to remaster or even just make available to play!
Kinda surprised you guys didn't mention "The Darkness". Starbreeze took so many points from Riddick and moved them straight into that game. The weapons, aiming, controls, art design, and so much more!
This was underrated. I tried getting so many people to play this! Much like I tried to get people to give Tokyo Drift (film) a chance.
I think people just dismissed it as a movie tie in game which generally don't have a great reputation
You are right about one of those things...
Wasn't FF: TD a 2006 movie?
Td is fun for a few watches,then it's kinda cheese
@@oneandonlyjark I believe so. That’s why I said “film”
This game along with Chaos Theory had me so hyped up for the next generation of consoles graphics capabilities. Both fantastic games that are still worth playing today.
This game was such a nice surprise, wonderful game.
I loved playing this on my 6800GT back in 2008!
10:59 "are you a woman?"
"No, I'm Waman! I'm sick of people mistaking me for a woman"
Exactly lmao
😂😂😂
That's ma'am!
Wouldn't say no to a new Ridick game. Played on Xbox then again on PC when it was bundled with Athena. Just a really solid game from start to finish. Absolutely worth a play if you can.
I've lost count how many times i've played through this Game and the Remake, honestly wouldn't mind another Remake. Shame Dark Athena wasn't that great but loved the Side-Quests and Semi-Open Worldish etc...
this looks so much better then on consoles
One of the best games ever.
and it was removed from history sad
Yeah Riddick was amazing. They create also new series of Wolfenstein, really awesome games too
God Damn Bro the memories I got from that time !! Never expected to see this in 2021 on the channel !
My second favorite Xbox game of all time, such an excellent game!
I loved these games so much when they came out. I could voice over all the cutscenes just from my memory. (the awesome voice actors helped of course so that dialogue lines got stuck in my head) And that the sequel came along with the whole Escape from Butcher Bay remade was so awesome!
Also, the simple environments perfectly fit. This is a prison after all. Minimalism is par for the course.
John, i love that you said that they come from the demo scene. I know the founders and the guy that made the menu-cube, some of them came from the demo scene, not sure about him but he was a programming genius at the age of 15 to 16 when i met him in around -97/-98, he has a long list of games behind him but more recently and notably doom eternal :)
This was literally the best game on the Xbox.
No it wasn't. It was pretty good, but it was far from the best.
@@arnox4554 I'm not saying best of and I'm certainly not the person to ask never having owned an Xbox or a console.. but what was the best game?
@@jakedill1304 Well, there's no best GAME so much as best GAMES. In this particular case, a game can be the best in its genre on the consoles it was made for. And in this case, for first person shooters on the original Xbox, the award clearly goes to a three way tie between Halo CE, Halo 2, and Timesplitters 3, with Unreal Championship 2 and Far Cry Instincts Evolution probably being the runners up.
Everything about this game blew my mind when it came out.
Imagine this with Ray Tracing...
Yeah good old Ray. Such a great actor was Mr Tracing.
Yeah, pretty much everything can benefit from ray tracing. Unfortunately it is very difficult to inject ray tracing into older games beyond screen space ray tracing, which is often too limited in my opinion. True ray tracing, to realize the benefits of it overall, need to be able to sample off screen assets and lighting.
Yup, ......
2fps!
Lmfao
@@PhillipLemmon , depends on the ray tracing effect, and the effect dictates what type of optimizations can be done. For COD MW the RT shadows are a very nice touch and don't impact performance much for me. I'm able to do 4k 120Hz at max settings with RT shadows. For Metro Exodus, the GI implementation runs very performant for me as well, I played at 1440P 60Hz at max settings. Though most of my experience with Metro was with the 2080 ti, I've picked it back up recently after I got my 3090.
Edit: Corrected my Metro refresh, muscle memory typed 120Hz, I believe it was 1440p 60Hz stable, which is still quite acceptable. People need to understand the performance is quite variable with ray tracing. It depends on effect, quality of the effect, resolution, instances of effect on screen at one time (if it is reflections, is there a small puddle or is the entire room reflective...etc). And even then, optimizations can be done. Part of the perception is that initial ray tracing implementations were not well optimized, since it took the devs a while to develop those optimizations. Now it is common for things like reflections to have reflectivity cutoffs. For all ray tracing effects to have the option to have ray counts be a fraction of the output resolution, mixing of ray tracing reflections and shadows with things like screen space reflections and shadows (ray tracing working where those fail)...etc.
pretty sure you can get the RT to work with reshade and on the sequil I think they even have 16 bit colors...
and since the sequil has this version with better graphics and controls... just everyone go buy dark athena if you can find it.
Escape from butcher bay was AMAZING
4:39 - Severance: Blade of Darkness (Feb 2001) would like to speak with you about your perception of real time lighting in a 2005 game.
yeah right ! i did forgot about this gem too.....it was so gory , the dismemberment was on point , the combat and difficulty was good balanced, and the lighting also was on point too ....man, this made me feel old , but as a gamer, those years were the best !
@@offlinegamer6756 You nailed it... a definite golden era of PC games, and an amazing standout game... technology and gameplay for 2001 were so far ahead of it's time.
@@jong2359 thanks....also do you remember Red Faction with the destructible environment, the Jedi Knight games, the originals Need For Speed ones , Splinter cell and many more that really made us very proud to be a PC gamer back then , so much good memories!
And reflections, physics... it was one of the most impressive games for it's time.
There is an even earlier game with the same type of lighting. Gift from late 2000 (for PC, and 2001 for PS2) is a platforming game made by French studio Cryo (not to be confused with The Gift made by 1C Company the same year) that uses light and darkness as a central gameplay mechanic and like Severance it has static and moving light sources which cast stencil shadows from both characters and the environment.
This is in my top 3 fav games of all time
I'm sure Resident Evil: Dead Aim had DRS, and this game came out before The Chronicles of Riddick
Speaking of Resident Evil, RE2 on N64 actually has DRS depending on what scene you were in iirc.
Awesome, that’s exactly my rig from back in the day!
"Wanna live? Get a shiv"
In the Riddick game, I thought you can drag the dead body and hide it in the shadow.
let's not forget about Xzibit's big role in this
Ah yes, Abbott! He was actually pretty convincing. Him and Hoxie are iconic characters, they really truly feel like part of the riddick universe
What a nice surprise! This has to be one of the best games based on a movie that I've ever played.
Truly a classic, even though mechanically is a bit clunky nowadays I loved it when it came out.
*looks better than cyberpunk*
Both games were amazing for their time.
I strongly agree with their comments about "reading the room" and the environments that were illustrated in that generation. Today's visual style is quite cluttered yet less functional gameplay-wise. I think Rage (2011) started this trend.
When this first came out, I was stunned with the graphics. They still hold up
If you've never played either of the Riddick games, fix that.
Woefully underrated gems
Not underrated by anyone.
This game was amazing when I was a kid, didn’t have an Xbox 360 but I didn’t need it with this game and so many others on the OG Xbox
I was amazed at how well it handled first person animations. Something even Cyberpunk 2077 couldn't do right.
Was just thinking about this game the other day , and wow what a frickn experience this was. "Welcome to butcher bay"
Blew my mind when it came out , the lighting was awesome.
I've been asking for a bacmward compatible version of this for YEARS! A remaster is probably out of the question, sadly.
It's not backwards compatible with the Xbox One?
the game has been removed from history sadly
@@NaterBalls you can download the PC version on Amazon for $20.
Its not listed on the Xbox store, which usually means its not BC. I've often considered picking up an OG Xbox just for this game. Oh, and for PsiOps: The Mindgate Conspiracy too.
The original xbox version still holds up great.
7:45 Pack of Smokes... Do not “feed” to children. 😂
This was probably one of the best looking games on Xbox.
One of the most underrated game of all times : it should have had more success!
Such an underrated gem that was way ahead of its time. Its still in my top 5 favorite games. I'm still hoping for a remaster
You can't even buy the game. Licencing issues?
I would love to play this again, but a proper remake and with RTX.
There is another game I would also love a remake of, that being FREELANCER by Microsoft. :)
Play it as is rtx overrated.
@@HondaAccordPerformance no
@@DeterminedFC yes. Last of Us Part 2 no rtx required.
The only game(s) I want remastered is Need For Speed Underground 1&2 with original soundtracks and customization. Unfortunately, never happening...
@@ЭльмарИдрисов-г5э
Those too, fantastic games, truly fantastic.
I was stunned by this game when I first loaded it up on my OG Xbox. The textures and lighting were ahead of its time and the gameplay itself was very satisfying.
This 2005 game has better first person animations and full body awareness than Cyberpunk 2077.
I loved Riddick but what you say is simply false the animations in Cyberpunk are some of the best seen in a AAA game.
@@jaigray5422 you mean how your character disconnects from the guy you're choking, or the absolute jank that's your character's shadow... yeah, real top of the line stuff right there.
I remember playing the demo of this game on my OG Xbox, fighting that mech at the end. Me and my cousin gave up because it was so hard lol. Really hope that they add this game to the Xbox's backwards compatibility list eventually.
Imagine if StarBreeze was working on a next gen prequel of seque, that would be crazy good news!!
would be nice... cept pretty sure everyone who worked on this is at machine games now... which I'm ok with given the wolfenstein games.
Everyone at Starbreeze left after we released Syndicate, most including me went to Machinegames while some moved to Hazelight. Starbreeze is still exist as a company but none of the staff have worked there for many many years.
@@andersbackman3977 God bless you sir by the way I'm not going to lie y'all have created some really foundling experiences for me, I know a lot of people didn't give a shit but when I got dark Athena and I could I could I could run it yeah, I think it was a 7800 GT I made it work... the combination of of the gameplay loops that the detail and just the character control and my OCD had me just sinking into that game doing things over and over again to be perfect and just feeling like a total badass the entire time I don't really care what people say I even thought the shooting was really good actually, it was what people would call clunky but it felt like you were actually holding a weapon it felt like you were shooting a weapon and and maybe it's just cuz I come from the tactical shooter world that the idea of guns that spread and have ballistics didn't really bug me... and to be honest any game back then especially back then but the first and the second that let me just riddle bullets with with fuck you little corpses with bullets LOL I needed that shit in my life... and by the way Wolfenstein kind of working for me in a similar way it's a little different because you're not ridic ul... but I'm getting the same level of therapy.
not going to lie I haven't been able to really sit down and play a video game in probably 2 years now, but when I have I've been loading up Wolfenstein and just killing nazis, I don't get far I don't sit for long but it's just enough... and again that level of control that you guys put into it, I really just I wish more games would fucking have it like I get that you don't have to lean corners but it's nice to be able to I may not do it all the time I may just do it because when I go up to a box with a gun my first thought is I should kind of get behind this box and maybe lean over it it feels natural... I don't care if I have two assault rifles I don't know what carrying to assault rifles is like I've never really gotten past one, I don't even know if I could... but I can lean around boxes and I can shoot and when I come into a game and and my movement is restricted to this simple form and I can't move around the environment or or contort my body in a way that really isn't that complicated anymore, and and should be the standard for any first person game regardless of what you're doing I don't know just thank you guys like I had a feeling the moment I put it up in the water there was something familiar about it LOL and yeah I feel like just the idea that the riddick games would live on in BJ blaskowitz for one I don't know how well riddick and flaskowitz would get along oddly enough riddick seems to get along with everybody he doesn't kill and BJ's a nice guy he's not a pussy and riddick likes killing people so I don't see why he wouldn't like killing Nazis you know if there's like money or pussy in it for him, but if they had to do a body swap I think he'd be okay with it probably have to fix his eyes but you know I don't know fucking night... and you still and you still let me shank the fuck out of people, even though I didn't have to it's just nice that I can that philosophy is so underutilized in video gaming and and it bugs the living shit out of me every time I hear the term streamline I want to punch somebody in the fucking face... cuz cuz streamlined is me trying to make sure I'm in the right clip zone so I can use the auto lean around a box or you know have to fucking dip in and out like I'm trying to show my dick off or something like that at a fucking college frat party, I don't know I could go on and on I never figured I would be in the same text space as all y'all but anybody who worked on any of those games y'all really did something I don't really there's no ifs ands or buts on that one and I hope you all keep doing it hopefully the switch over with Microsoft doesn't fuck you in the fact that you've managed to make complex gameplay actually work on consoles and prove that it can be done, or which more people would do that cuz I'm kind of tired of the excuse you know it's been 20 years of that excuse and I thought I was never going to have to put up with more than 10 or so before consoles would eventually get modern control schemes I never occurred to me that it was the The gamers themselves that didn't want it so yeah I'm going to stop before I go into another rant LOL but thank you guys I really appreciate it I really do it's kind of weird cuz some of the highlights of my my youth were trying to trick animations in the second one to make sure that every time I stabbed a guy with a knife it would do that double stab where it would shank him in the gut and then shove it down his throat which is kind of complicated cuz it kept trying to rip his gun over and shoot him in the head but again thank you for letting me do that I like being able to do things that I want to do in games it's a rare treat...
@@andersbackman3977 also sorry for the lack of paragraphing and formatting on that one, I used speech to text and I'm standing out here trying to smoke a cigarette in the rain LOL hopefully some of that gets through but if you can't read it just thanks dude I really really really appreciate all y'all and thanks for not dissolving into obscurity either and and keep i
@@jakedill1304 No problems about the formatting, and thanks for the praise :)
Okay now im going to replay it, again. What a classic
I like to put this game in the "years of impressive shadowing". Right along with Deus Ex Invisible War and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.
Yea that's pretty accurate. I'd add F.E.A.R to that list of good shadowing too ig
2004 was an amazing year for graphics, especially shadowing. Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, The Chronicles of Riddick, Thief Deadly Shadows and more
@@bosyogurtlight +Far Cry
@@TheScure yup
Thief Deadly Shadows as well
This would be a phenomenal remaster/remake.
"Technaulagie." -Alex, 2021
Loved this game...thank you for the memories.
First to digital foundry yall!!
I remember being blown away by the graphics when i played this on Xbox. I replayed this game tons of times.
I loved this game on xbox
Darkness and this was one of my favorite games on Xbox 360!!
It's a good game, but Starbreeze's best game (especially in this semi-open world / semi-immersive sim style) is The Darkness.
One of the first games to use normal mapping.
I feel like the original version of this game aged better than the remake, I love this crisp and dark look compared to the remake that had too many post-fx for my taste. Both games are an interesting representation of graphical trends in their time. The remake also lacks the ability to quick save/quick load.
It was also quite the sleeper title, everyone was concerned about the trio of Doom 3 vs Half Life 2 vs FarCry but then you have this little game based on a movie that manages to match them in visual aspects. I recall a lot of people thinking this ran on the idtech4 engine due to the shadow and models looking similar.
Weird hearing about the mouse issue, I replayed this on a XP rig two years ago and it was all very smooth. I used a MX518 I think. Not sure what would be causing this.
The chronicles of Riddick games and the darkness are fantastic
They REALLY need to bring this back with compatibility, I still have my original disc copy, but it won't work 😭. Anybody know why they haven't? Licensing issues maybe?
Xbox or PC version? nothing to do with licence on PC if it doesn't work, it's just broken if that's the case and you would need to install an older OS to play, if it's Xbox you can buy the 360 version of Dark Athena which has Butchers Bay included on Live for £12.
@@wing0zero xbox, but I dont see that bundle either, I've searched but only the movies come up
@@jeremyriddle1884 Riddick, either version isn't backwards compatible so no dice on anything past Xbox 360
@@jeremyriddle1884 , I googled, Dark Athena xbox, and the first page had multiple places to purchase it. It is an Xbox 360 game. It may not be available for Xbox One via backwards compatibility (you'd have to research that yourself), depends if Microsoft put in the time to make it compatible (each game requires some effort).
@@JimBob1937 yea I can see it for purchase on 360, but found a thread on the support page from 2019 where they said they were putting BC on hold to bring it to Series consoles, but that also the rights are somewhere put in the Esther now and that they wouldn't be able to touch it. Hopefully that changes cause this really was a great game, it got me into stealth more than splinter cell did.
16:16 Alex: "Oh gosh, it's like Doom 3 technology.... wait, I'm gonna shiv this guy."