{"id":2316,"date":"2013-02-12T15:22:55","date_gmt":"2013-02-12T15:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=2316"},"modified":"2013-02-12T16:09:50","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T16:09:50","slug":"my-top-100-20-the-chronicles-of-riddick-escape-from-butcher-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=2316","title":{"rendered":"My Top 100: #20 – The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"2004<\/a>

2004 – Vivendi Games (Xbox, PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3)<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

During the Summer of 2000, there were lots of\u00a0movies I\u00a0wanted to see in theatres, but just never got around to it.\u00a0 Mission Impossible 2<\/em>, Mission to Mars<\/em> and\u00a0Final Destination <\/em>all seemed like movies I’d enjoy, so when I\u00a0eventually got a PlayStation 2, one of the first things I did was rent those DVD’s.\u00a0\u00a0I didn’t own any games or memory cards yet,\u00a0so what else was I going to do in the meantime?<\/p>\n

Among the other movies I\u00a0had wanted to see in theatres\u00a0was Pitch Black<\/em>.\u00a0 My\u00a0good friend\u00a0Mel was always\u00a0fun to go\u00a0see movies\u00a0with,\u00a0but she wasn’t big into sci-fi, and wasn’t too keen on that\u00a0suggestion.\u00a0 I can’t recall what we ended up seeing that night I called her up wanting to see it, but it sure as hell wasn’t Pitch Black<\/em>!<\/p>\n

In any case, that was the first\u00a0movie I ever watched on DVD, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.\u00a0 The jump in quality from VHS to DVD was amazing!<\/p>\n

The Riddick<\/em> game looked cool, but it wasn’t really a must-buy for me.\u00a0 It was only when Josh\u00a0bought the game\u00a0that I got to see just how awesome\u00a0it really was.\u00a0 The graphics looked better than anything I had seen in that generation of consoles, and the gameplay was somewhere between Half-Life<\/em> and Splinter Cell<\/em>.\u00a0 Not only that, but you also had Vin Diesel’s\u00a0gruff\u00a0voice narrating the whole thing.\u00a0 It was as immersive as a\u00a0game\u00a0based on a movie could get, really.<\/p>\n

Escape from Butcher Bay<\/em> is a prequel to Pitch Black<\/em>,\u00a0and it sets up two major elements of\u00a0David Twohy’s space saga.\u00a0\u00a0Our good bounty hunter\u00a0friend William Johns (a role reprised\u00a0by Cole Hauser) plays a prominent part in the game’s story, and his connection to Riddick is explained.\u00a0 You also learn how Riddick got his trademark “eyeshine” and night vision, which was one of the things from the movie I thought would be cool to see.<\/p>\n

Though you start in a modest cell with nothing but your wits and a toilet at your disposal, you need to fight, pay off,\u00a0and\u00a0con your way through the game.\u00a0 You encounter a ton of crazy inmates and crooked prison guards along the way (including one voiced by Xzibit, dawg),\u00a0from\u00a0the bowels of the prison complex, all the way to the very top, where you pay a “visit” to the warden himself.\u00a0 All of this leads into the events of the first movie rather well.<\/p>\n

That sense that you get from starting with so little at the bottom of the food chain,\u00a0then\u00a0proving yourself as the king of all badasses by finally escaping, is really quite satisfying.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n