Riddick: The New Adventure

By Lev Grossman Sunday, June 13, 2004
    • Conventional wisdom has it that video games based on movies are supposed to be lousy, but The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (Xbox; $50) might just be better than the movies (Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick) it was spun off from. In Butcher Bay, the bald, bass-voiced badass Riddick has just been locked up in a high-security sci-fi slammer, and he's hell-bent on shivving and shooting his way out of it. Game play is a tasty mix of hand-to-hand fighting and gunplay, relieved by some smartly scripted role playing and problem solving, but the real pleasure is the stunning graphics: everything looks old and rusty and grungy, as if each frame had been individually hand-distressed and then moodily lit by David Fincher. Vin Diesel plays Riddick with such inimitable heavy-lidded sangfroid, he ought to be in movies. Oh, that's right, he is.