Welcome to Pitcher Blacker, a fansite intended as a resource for anyone interested in anything to do with the Pitch Black universe, which includes its sequels and spinoffs: The Chronicles of Riddick, Dark Fury, Escape from Butcher Bay, and Assault on Dark Athena. All feedback is welcome: Email.
April 29th, 2009
Upcoming giveaway
Just a quick note that PitcherBlacker will soon be giving away five copies of the Playstation3 version of Dark Athena. Yeah!
April 20th, 2009
Multiplayer patch
Sorry for the quiet... not only have I been playing Dark Athena, but I've also been dealing with computer problems and ftp password issues and etc. But since I helpfully hit what appears to be a plotstopper a tough spot (it turned out not to be a plotstopper - Ed.), heh, I can take a quick moment to post up Starbreeze's small patch for multiplayer. See if that helps.
Also, don't forget that if you're having technical issues then you can hit up the thread for bugs. Ok, back to fruitlessly trying to climb up out of this below-floor vent...
April 8th, 2009
Dark Athena copy protection brouhaha
Wow. I guess I haven't been really paying much attention to the release of bleeding edge games, because I had no idea that the copy protection (a.k.a. DRM, or Digital Rights Management) topic was such a hotbutton topic. But it is, apparently, and right now Dark Athena is at the center of the storm.
Apparently the general problem in anti-copy protection circles is that the game only allows you to install it three times, before you need to get with Atari and convince them that any additional installs are legit. Atari's official comment that they've been passing around is as follows:
The protection on the PC version of The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is an activation system with online authentication required the first time you install the game on a machine. The activation code lets you install the game on up to 3 machines, with an unlimited number of installs on each assuming that you don’t change any major hardware in your PC or re-install your operating system.
If you reach the maximum number of installations you can contact the Atari hotline and if it’s a legitimate request you can get a new activation code.
We implement this protection in an effort to avoid early piracy.
There is what appears to be a movement to spread an anti-DRM message to all the the boards and comment threads (some examples are here and here). The topic has immediately gone up on some of the bigger game news sites too (VE and BluesNews). One user has summarized the anti-DRM view as follows:
1) The EULA as constructed today is complete and utter nonsense. A binding contract that you can't read until you've purchased the product controlled by the contract, and which assumes explicit agreement with the contract upon breaking the shrinkwrap (which you have to do before you can read the contract - and making the product unreturnable @ retail if you disagree with the EULA) is absolute indefensible hogwash. If any other company tried to get its customers to sign a contract without letting them read it, and tried to make it binding, they'd be laughed out of any courtroom in America. Unfortunately, there is disagreement in the lower courts as to whether shrinkwrapped EULAs can be binding or not, so until we get some resolution from a higher court, publishers will continue to act as if their EULAs are binding. See here for details.
2) As a matter of fact, under a court-recognized doctrine called First-Sale I DO own the physical media that comes in the box, as well as that one single copy of the digital content contained therein, regardless of any contradictory language that may reside in the EULA. While I may not engage in illegal duplication, distribution, or reverse-engineering, I absolutely MAY use it in keeping with the Fair-Use Doctrine - much like I can legally rip music from a single physical CD and play it on any number of digital devices I own, or make a physical backup copy of the media as insurance against damage to the original.
My view? I am very sympathetic to publishers: they spend a lot of money and incur a huge amount of risk with each game they publish, and they want to be paid for each user of their product since that's the model. In addition, I believe that there really are a huge number of people that easily and thoughtlessly pirate the media that they would otherwise pay for. The problem is that current DRM protection methods can frequently screw the legitimate customers. Take a look at this post on DRM Awareness News, where the user claims to have set up several different computers and gotten wildly divergent results with the DRM on Dark Athena, and you can read lots of different game boards to see people who can't get the game to authenticate because of Atari's servers. As someone who has been struggling with repeated computer hardware failures over the last half-year, I'm hoping my software works when I finally get up an running!
I've always bitched about splash screens and marketing movies (and advertisements!) that devs and publishers force on a player every time they start up the game they bought, and really these DRM problems are a lot worse. You risk not being able to play your game! In the end though, it is up to you, the player, to decide if the risk and restrictions and the potential legal issues are worth it when you buy a game.
April 7th, 2009
PitcherBlacker interview with Jerk Gustafsson at Starbreeze Studios
So what's up, readers? Anything new going on today? Yeah, I know, not much for me eiHOLY SHIT THAT'S RIGHT A BRAND NEW RIDDICK GAME IS IN STORES AS OF RIGHT NOW. Assault on Dark Athena... perhaps you've heard of it? A new game, plus a heavily revamped Butcher Bay, plus six different multiplayer modes? Man, I probably should have mentioned it on this site at some point; I'm such a slacker.
Dark Athena is out today, and to celebrate I got the chance to fire off a handful of questions over to Jerk Gustafsson, the Lead Designer for the game at Starbreeze. I asked about face-stabbing and linearity and executing combos and all that kind of stuff, so Click Here to read the answers.
In the end the bigger question is how well you execute and that is what we focus on. In terms of when we decide to do one thing instead of the other, it depends on what we want the player to feel. Assault on Dark Athena is very similar to Escape from Butcher Bay in that we do both of these things from time to time, but it is also telling a different story so it won’t play out in the same way that the original game did
As an added bonus, Ian Stevens from Tigon appended a personal note to the fans, and also included this tasty bit:
See you online! Don’t be surprised if Vin himself is knifing you in the back during a game of Pitch Black. No bullshit… some of you are totally going to get killed by the REAL Riddick.
Nice!
April 6th, 2009
AoDA released tomorrow: SBZ bug thread
I'm still totally swamped in Real Life (tm), but whatever... Assault on Dark Athena is out tomorrow! As with most game releases I'm sure there will be technical issues (somehow people are already starting to post them to the forums), so the QA folks at Starbreeze have put up this forum thread to start collecting bugs and other issues that they can then address. Here's the post from SBZ's QA Manager:
Unfortunately, some people have been having performance, sound and crash issues, which makes me a sad panda
Hopefully the team here will be able to put something together so that we can get all these issues ironed out, but in order to do that we will need your help. To fix any bugs you have, we will need you to be as descriptive as possible, so that we can reproduce them here, and then find out whats going wrong, then beat the programmers with a large stick. Maybe a small one.
If you could please post your bugs in this thread in this manner, it would be super duper greatly appreciated, as we really want everyone to have a good experience playing this game.
Description: (Example) Game crashes when I do xxxxx. Also if you could include a frequency (happens 7 times out of 10 etc) that would be very appreciated.
System Specs: (Example) If you could post your DxDiag here, it would be very much appreciated. To do this, go to the start menu, click "Run" then type "DxDiag" and hit Enter. Select "Save All Information" and then copy and paste out the text from the file into the thread. If you are running 64 bit windows, dont forget to hit the "Run 64bit DxDiag" button before saving all the information.
Thanks very much guys! Hopefully we can sort something out as soon as possible.
April 2nd, 2009
Riddick Blu-ray has a Vin Diesel commentary!
I don't get it, man... I just don't get it. Universal had Vin Diesel and David Twohy record a commentary for TCOR, and didn't use that in their marketing. W the F.
Site visitor Bilal Chohan is back with more amazing news, and I'll let him fill you all in himself:
Hi Bruce,
I went and dished out the hundreds of dollars necessary for a new Blu Ray player yesterday, not knowing if Riddick was really worth this!
I thought maybe Universal had forgotten about that new Vin Diesel / David Twohy Commentary but it actually IS there!
The reason why no previews or reviews of the blu ray mention it is because it is a BD LIVE feature. It can only be accessed when the player is hooked up to the internet.
Everyone who reviewed the film before March 31 said that while BD LIVE was an option, it was inactive.
Well it's active now - and that commentary talks soo much about the sequels! They talk more about the sequels there than they did in the last 5 years!!
Holy crap! Bilal also gave me some information on just exactly what the extras are like, but that will have to wait until tomorrow because I'm rushing this morning.
April 1st, 2009
Starbreeze forums are hopping
One of the nice things about the upcoming release of a new Riddick game by Starbreeze is that their forums have come alive. There have been regular visits by members of the development team, and they've been actively participating in the threads. If you are a gamer and haven't been stopping by, now is your chance. Here's a handful of interesting threads.
BruceL's wishlist items: SBZ comments on some of my feature requests (the answers all end up being "NO," bah :P).
Visiting those boards is worth it for comments like the following from Starbreeze's QA Manager Hugo Hirsh:
Call me crazy (and people often do) but I quite like the Riddick IP. I have had to work on some really bad stuff in the last ten years, but Riddick has been pretty much a joy to work with everyday. Maybe its because of the neck snapping, maybe its the way you can watch someone's head slide off your Ulaks after killing them. Who knows.
Awesome Riddick fanart
An artist named Vandad Farhady posted up a Riddick image on the Starbreeze forums that he did in honor of the Dark Athena cover. It's got a cartoon style to it that I think is really unique and quite cool. Make sure you hit the thread to see the whole thing, and then leave him a note.
Assault on Dark Athena reviews
I noticed that Starbreeze has started listing out reviews of the game up on their site, so take a browse if you're curious. And even though I like the SBZ guys and am sure the game is great, I would guess that maybe not all reviews of the game will make that list, so remember that Google is your friend if you're on the fence.
Assault on Dark Athena PC system requirements
In case those of you on laptops (hi Kat!) are wondering if you can run this bleeding-edge game, here are the system specs:
Minimal specifications
Operating system: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista
CPU: Intel Pentium D 805 or AMD Athlon X2 3800+
RAM: 1 GiByte (2 GiByte for Vista)
Graphics card: Ati Radeon HD 2600 XT or Nvidia Geforce 6800 Ultra
Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible soundcard
Hard Drive: 11 GByte free space
DVD: 6x speed or better
Multiplayer: Broadband connection
Input: Keyboard, mouse or dual analog controller
Recommended specifications
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 5200+
RAM 2 GiByte
Graphics card: Ati Radeon HD 3850 or Nvidia Geforce 8800 GT or better
BruceL's specifications
I still haven't gotten my main PC working and am stuck on a laptop *sob*
April Fools Day
No.
Just, no.
March 31st, 2009
Riddick and Pitch Black Blu-rays are out
Well, the day has finally arrived, and I'm proud to say I didn't go spend a couple hundred bucks on a blu-ray player just because these two movies have finally hit the format.
Yet.
But anyway, the disks are out. I've been looking, and I can't for the life of me find any reviews that really get into the kind of depth I would like to see. I really need to know about the additional material they've added for this format's release! Guess we'll have to wait for me to give in and buy a BD player.
In the meantime, I suppose that the writeups on Blu-Ray.com are pretty good, and the screen captures they have done are decent. Click for PITCH BLACK and for THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK.
IGN reviews Dark Athena; might not have played whole thing
Full disclosure; I used to work for GameSpy, who is in some sort of business partnership with IGN. Also full disclosure; I've been known to review games without playing the entire thing. But it seems to me that as a reviewer, if you're going to criticize something and say it's not "worth finishing even once", then shouldn't you have at least finished the game to be able to say that?
IGN's reviewer Hilary Goldstein makes an interesting comment in page 2 of her review:
He needs to find a way to escape using all of the same methods as Escape from Butcher Bay. Instead of piloting a mech, you eventually get to command a drone warrior. Instead of a maniacal prison warden, you're facing a maniacal ship commander in Revas. Been there, done that (and done better).
Considering that the promotional videos and even the game's official site show that you do in fact pilot a mech at one point during Dark Athena, I'd say this is a mighty suspicious comment.
Assault on Dark Athena is to be released for USians on April 7th and on April 24th for the rest of the planet.
New The Fast and the Furious movie out April 3
New Vin on-screen in just a few days! Unfortunately not as Riddick and unforunately not as an amazing character like his "Jackie" DiNorscio from FIND ME GUILTY, but still... I'm sure he'll be wearing a lot of tank tops, and hey wait is Jordana Brewster in this one? Maybe I need to catch up on this series!
March 21st, 2009
Dark Athena Goes Gold!
Well, it's done. The latest entry in the Riddick franchise, this one of the game variety, has been officially declared finished and is heading off for mass reproduction. Great news for all of us looking to simu-stab people in the face! Heavy congrats to the crew at Starbreeze, who've finally crossed the finish line (assuming no patches are required, heh) after a long time and a ton of work.
If you're interested in marketingese, then here's the press release. No new information here except for the reminder that the release is April 7 in the US and April 24 internationally.
Vin talks the next Riddick movie
Everyone knows that right now this is just talk, right? Nothing has been funded, nor has anything been officially announced. But it's still really important that Vin wants to make another Riddick movie, because he's more likely to keep pushing than some biz dev guy at Universal who occasionally checks in on the DVD sales to decide whether it's worth making yet. So with Vin running around promoting his ass off for Dark Athena, Wheelman, TFATF, and presumably the Riddick and Pitch Black Blu-ray disks, of course people are asking him about more movies. Here's some stuff from SciFi:
"We're going to find Riddick alone for the first part of the movie, barely alive, surrounded by carnivorous monsters who are trying to eat him," Diesel said in response to a question from SCI FI Wire. "So you'll see a futuristic Rambo-esque Riddick trying to survive."
Diesel added: "David Twohy is scripting the next installment of Riddick as we speak, and it's underway. The story will return to a Pitch Black [sensibility] while servicing the mythology that's been enhanced in Chronicles of Riddick."
It's a bit of surprise to hear that a third installment is in the works, given the critical and box-office drubbing the second film received. But Diesel remains enthusiastic. "It's so cool, this movie, I feel like I'm going to do it a disservice by trying to touch on it, but the answer is yes, we are working very hard on getting this next Riddick installment," he said. "You know how much I love this franchise and how dear it is to me, and you know how committed David Twohy has been to this franchise."
Carnivorous monsters trying to eat him? Is that the movie or the pitch meeting?
Playstation 3 Riddick demo released
Just in case anyone with a PS3 didn't already know this, the Dark Athena demo was released last week for your platform. It features the Athena Main Decks level, where you get to control a drone at one point. Get it wherever it is that people with PS3s get demos.
Other Vin Diesel stuff: Wheelman and TFATF
I've griped on and off about how out-of-date a lot of Vin's company sites (Tigon, One Race Films, etc) got, but it seems like someone is back on the job. Tons of misc updates have been added to both sites. The most relevant info is that Vin's game Wheelman has a demo out now and is set for release on March 24th. Seems like the word has been steadily getting more positive, too. And Vin has a new movie out, the fourth FAST AND THE FURIOUS, due April 3. Check out Tigon's site for Wheelman stuff and One Race Films for TFATF info. Nice work, Vin Diesel's Webmaster guy.
New updates
I'm pretty halfassed for a fanboy, aren't I? God I used to be so hardcore back in the day, so hardcore that I would get freelancing work, paychecks, E3 trips, and other junkets. I should be ashamed, I guess, but I just can't seem to work up the motivation for that :) Anyway, going to try to push out some updates tonight and tomorrow and then hopefully stay on top of things until the game is out, the Blu-Ray is released in the US, and then things go back to being quiet for another three years...
March 5th, 2009
Assault on Dark Athena demo out now on Xbox LIVE Marketplace
Ok, Xbox360 owners, your day is full of win. The Riddick demo is out, so hit it up and let me know what you think.
March 2nd, 2009
Lots of new AoDA videos: BruceL still lazy
Not lazy so much as swamped with RL right now, so I don't have much time for posting. Argh. But there are tons of new videos out there so I'll see what time I can grab over this week and next. Just hit Google until then...
February 24th, 2009
Assault on Dark Athena release dates, demo info.
Thanks to Cash Eye for sending along this link that points out Dark Athena will be released in the US April 7 and internationally April 24.
There is also news that a playable demo will be coming sometime in March. The article linked above only mentions the demo coming "to both Xbox Live® and PLAYSTATION® Network" but I'm assuming a PC demo will be coming too. Update: Yep, spotted on Bluesnews (via Voodoo Extreme) -
A PC demo for Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is also in the works, even though the announcement below only touts plans for console demos for the updated Chronicles of Riddick game. Our request for information on a possible Windows demo was met with a confirmation that a PC demo is in the works, but does not currently have a set release date, which is perhaps why it is not mentioned in that announcement.
Sweet.
Riddick collectors photo pool on Flickr
Got an email from Matt that he recently started a photo pool on Flickr
to aggregate all of the pictures of "The Chronicles of Riddick" props, costumes, armor and related memorabilia (my wife and I are keen collectors of such items) - this gives fans a means to easily browse through images of props and armor that is, in particular, in private collections. Those who are interested are welcome to join, contribute, and subscribe to get notification of updates.
Check it out.
February 23rd, 2009
150 new high-res Dark Athena screencaps
Spent some time this weekend capping videos, so this effectively is as if we had 150 new screenshots of Dark Athena. Take a look.
Insane Blu-Ray Chronicles of Riddick screen captures
These are from that AVS forum thread I mention down the page. I just grabbed them because they are totally, totally huge and awesome.
New Dark Athena video showing outdoors stuff
I don't know what's going on with this Dark Athena video that Fernando found on YouTube. The menus and tips and stuff seems to show the beginning of the game, but I thought Dark Athena started with Riddick and Johns drifting in space. This video has Riddick waking up on a beach, and infiltrating some sort of industrial facility full of Revas' drones and guards.
The only thing this makes me wish, though, is that there were more outdoor areas as part of the game. The improvements to the Starbreeze engine are staggering. But I know that Riddick traipsing through a sunny, grassy field and gently dodging bunny rabbits really doesn't fit in with the aesthetic, so no more whining from me there (yeah, right!).
February 21st, 2009
The Riddick Store
When I originally decided on Amazon as the place to use for ads on this site, it was because I could hand-pick stuff that would be directly applicable to Riddick fans and might even help them out to get access to stuff they might not have known was available. As I've been working through this, I've come to realize that there really is a ton of good stuff on the site related to the franchise: ten million different versions of the videos, the games, books, shivs and knives, and action figures. So I've pulled all of it together into a single store, a one-stop place to shop if you're hoping to fill out your collection.
And I suppose it's worth mentioning that buying stuff through there help supports PitcherBlacker, which clearly is a good cause, right? Right?
Official Assault on Dark Athena website goes live
I feel bad about all my whining about no official website now, as the real deal has gone live and it's pretty sweet.
As the shots above show, the site is like a first-person game itself... you start off in a room, presumably on the Dark Athena, watch a video with Revas, then pass through a couple doors into an expansive engine core-type room. There are all kinds of videos integrated into the site, much of them of the footage that's already been included in previously released trailers. But there are a lot of new screenshots, some videos showing some new short sequences, and character information.
There are also several parts of the website that are "blocked off" and will presumably be opened up as time passes. Oh, and Atari also finally put up official game forums.
Let the Riddick Blu-ray double dip rumors begin
One of PitcherBlacker's readers, Bilal, emailed me about an interesting conversation he had... a conversation centered around David Twohy and Vin Diesel having done a commentary track three weeks ago. This conversation was with David Twohy himself. So I guess we need to look at the timing... the Chronicles of Riddick Blu-ray and its features have already been announced, and there was no mention of a new commentary track. The disk is scheduled for release March 31, which is way too late to be adding features. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Sweet looking Riddick bust
Fernando Dominguez sent me this sweet looking image of a Riddick bust. He wasn't sure where it came from, and I could almost swear I have posted it up sometime in the past, but who cares... it's pretty awesome and worth a repost. I still think that SOTA did a really great job with the official Riddick bust, though. Wish I was man enough to be able to display one of those despite the mockery I would have to endure from wife and coworkers.
Comic con Riddick cosplay picture
Once again it's Fernando, this time with a picture of Andrew, a guy who attend the Atari´s booth during the 2009 NY Comic Con with a Chronicles of Riddick costume comprised of screen-used props. Fernando pointed out that he´s wearing goggles from Pitch Black, which are markably different from the TCOR goggles.
Dark Athena preview
The previews are coming in an endless stream, and most of them say the same things. This one is pretty much no different, except for this one quote:
Many of the puzzles in Dark Athena seem environmental from what I could gather. There was a locked door that could not be opened using anything I had. The solution was to trigger an alarm, which sends a guard towards my location. I had to kill him and use his fingerprints to open the sealed passageway, making his death both fun and useful!
So, y'know, there's a new tidbit.
February 20th, 2009
HD vs SD Movie comparison image
Not really sure how old this is, but it's pretty interesting to see a comparison in resolution between HD and SD (standard definition) images. Below is a shot from i.i.com.com, whatever the hell that is, showing the difference.
New Dark Athena actual trailer
We've been seeing a lot of great game footage recently, but here's the latest actual trailer, with a score and pacing and excitement and everything. I've intrigued by the sequence of the escape pod and the missile...
Gametrailers, again with the videos (multiplayer)
Gametrailers once again rubs salt in the wounds of all other game sites, this time by posting up three new videos from Assault on Dark Athena. These are of the multiplayer that the game will have (once again, for the record: A new campaign. A totally revamped Escape from Butcher Bay. Six multiplayer modes).
This is a shot of the Pitch Black map M5 113 Crashsite map scoreboard, as the player just killed Riddick and is getting ready to take his place. This video is cool to watch, as it shows Riddick much much more nimble and fast than the other players and able to easily see, whereas they have a really limited field of view and are pretty slow. This looks like a damn cool gameplay mode!
Gameplay videos in french
Here's a couple vids of some French guys playing and talking about their experience. And by "playing" I really mean making Riddick stand around for a while, then move jerkily around for a few minutes before being killed. On the plus side, I can't get enough of that finishing move where you slice open the side of someone's ribcage.
Weekend updates
Ahhh... the weekend. The week's stress theoretically lifts off me as soon as I walk through the door on Friday, and with not too much planned I should be able to power through some updates. I've got a really massive load of stuff, and I'm going to do my best to get it all online. Keep coming back as I will be pushing out updates continually over this weekend.
Most of it is Dark Athena related, something I'm very excited about, but it's slightly disheartening to look at the website statistics and realize that most visitors are still only coming here for stuff related to the movies. People reading all the Dark Athena pages I've been building only constitute a very small fraction of my total readership.
This probably means I haven't been promoting the site all that well to the gaming community, so I may work a little too on just getting my link out there. My SEO has traditionally been ridiculously bad, as I never really cared much about promotion. Might work on that a little also, along with more advertisement stuff (thanks so much to everyone supporting the site through the Amazon links!!) now that the game and Blu-ray cover art is available. But content is still king and therefore will come first.
Update: Amazon.co.uk has this image. I hope North America gets something similarly cool.
Riddick HDDVD vs Blu-ray image comparison
Now I'm no AV expert, so the real finely tuned specifics for the upcoming Riddick Blu-ray release don't mean much to me. But of course this is a big deal for lots of people. Check out this thread where some dude did GIANT screencaps from Riddick's two HD releases (he's got one of the internation versions of the Blu-ray, which has already been released. Only us USers are waiting still). Frankly, on a computer screen these look grainy as hell but of course on a TV they'll look sweet.
February 10th, 2009
U.S. Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick Blu-ray announced
Well, here's the press release officially announing the BD versions, to be released on March 31. Note that Universal is releasing each movie individually, but also doing a two-pack.
The PR confirms the combinations of extras that several sites so far have only managed to get partially correct. While the disk is by no means packed with all the extra content I had proposed a few months ago, some of this has potential.
Pitch Black, in addition to having all the material from the HD-DVD version along with some slightly generic sounding BD live features ("Pick your favorite scenes from the film to create your own video montage"), will have a new extra called PITCH BLACK RAW. This will "Explore the making of a special-effects fueled action epic through side-by-side comparisons of raw CGI to finished sequences, and raw dailies to final scenes." Depending on how thorough this is, it could be quite cool... I would love to see some of these scenes without the original skip-bleach processing, without the big digital mattes, etc.
TCOR will have the same generic BD stuff (except this time you can "Pick your favorite scenes from the film and share with your BD-Live(TM) buddies", heh). It's worth mentioning that all it would take from Universal for this BD-Live feature to be something actually cool would be support beyond the movie's release... occasionally put trailers, stills, marketing materials like posters and commercials, and some of the lower-calorie stuff online. Maybe even hi-def versions of the wealth of material that's up on the movie's official site. Who knows. The HD-DVD content is also there, featuring a handful of documentaries that SDVD owners haven't seen unless they got the Best Buy exclusive disks back in the day. These are pretty cool, and while it's disappointing they aren't in hi-def it will still be a nice prize for anyone that hasn't already gobbled up the many different SKU's for this film over the years.
The hi-def stuff Riddick will have is the following:
COMPLETE CHRONICLES: Explore the history and mythology of Riddick.
CHRONICLES COMPENDIUM: Multi-tiered, dossier on characters, races, planets, religions, weapons and spacecrafts.
ANATOMY OF A FIGHT: Investigate select fight scenes to demonstrate the real-life science of Riddick's hand-to-hand combat skills.
While of course the execution of these features will ultimately decide their worth, there is a lot of potential here. I'm pleased at the content exploring the "universe" of the film, as I always expect material more along the lines of pretty actors talking. I'm really surprised, however, at no mention of Assault on Dark Athena... you would think the chance to co-market the game and Blu-ray would be too good to pass up.
All in all the Blu-rays of these two movies are a relief, in that it's not just the same batch of stuff that has already seen so many different formats. We have seen that execution of a good idea can end up being a little iffy, such as the Riddick "Virtual Guide", but until we have the BDs in hand I will have hope that the new extras really bring something new and cool to the table.
February 9th, 2009
New Dark Athena videos
GameTrailers is destroying every other site who is attempting to cover Assault on Dark Athena, with all these insanely beautiful videos. I thought I was going to be able to do screencaps but there is now so much footage that I would have to take the day off from work to get it all done. Zero chance. So instead, why don't you just click the links below and save me all that trouble!
CHUD comments on playing Dark Athena
Alex Riviello from movie supersite CHUD had the following to say in the forums after playing Dark Athena:
Yeah, you're going to love this one. Played what might end up being the demo, and it's looking absolutely fucking beautiful. It picks up immediately after Butcher Bay and the weapons and hand to hand combat is just as great as you'd expect.
New Dark Athena trailer
Haven't watched it yet: thoughts?
February 6th, 2009
Pitch Black and TCORiddick Blu-Ray tidbits
Here's a link to a site talking about the two blu-rays and a supposed release date of March 31st. Not even sure what country they're talking about, as these Blu-rays have started coming out internationally, but it looks like they mean the U.S. Strangely, their feature list doesn't mention the HD content on the Riddick disk that we've seen other places, but they do list "Pitch Black: Raw" as one of the HD extras for PB. I dunno.
Worth a passing mention is that I got an email from someone I don't know who says that Vin and Twohy recorded a commentary for this BD. For now, just a rumor, but that certainly would be cool.
Dark Athena to be at Comic Con
Spotted this press release revealing that AoDA will be at Comic Con which apparently starts today. Here's hoping they release some new goodies, screenshots and videos, and maybe even do something crazy like put up a real website for the game. At the very least we can hope for more interview man-crack.
Status
Been sick, busy, and several other different types of lame lately which is why updates have been sparse. On the other hand, I deleted my blogs, my Twitter acccount, and a couple other online distractions that no one read anyway so that should hopefully free up some cycles. I should be back in action soon, although I'll be in the mountains for the next two weekends so who knows. Got a ton of good stuff to post if I can get to it, though.
February 4th, 2009
Starbreeze lands the Bourne franchise
Wow, SBZ is officially a big frickin' deal now. At a time when quite a few accomplished developers are closing their doors, Starbreeze has *three* games going on. One is the new Riddick, one is the still-mystery "Project Redlime" which some have guessed might be a new Syndicate game, and now they have announced a new Bourne game to be published by EA. GG, Starbreeze.
January 27th, 2009
Lord Marshal 1:1 replica bust
I loved the Lord Marshal face motif that TCOR
used, on the weapons and ships and Conquest Icons and on the man himself. So I'm seriously tempted to cough up four hundred bucks* for this find on ebay. It's a "1:1 scale Movie prop Replica/ reproduction of the Lord Marshal mask used in Chronicals of Riddick. This is a Raw unpainted plastic cast from one of the concept design masks created for the actual movie."
* I don't actually have four hundred bucks; it's just a figure of speech.
New Dark Athena videos
I can't for the life of me get these things to work, maybe because of the crippling headcold I have right now, I dunno. But if you're relatively mucus-free, maybe this CVG article will do you some good. The videos show melee combat, stealth, the vents cutscene with Lynn, and some hot drone control action.
Oh, wait, never mind... I got them to work. If you're having trouble too, then after you click the play arrow and it shows the little CVG title card and then stops, hit the STOP button and then the PLAY button. Don't say I never did nothing for you...
January 23rd, 2009
Four new huge developer walkthrough videos
Spotted over on RockPaperShotgun (with some help from one of their readers, Dracko) that Gametrailers has posted up four videos from Dark Athena showing the game along with developer commentary. I haven't gotten the plugin to work yet to actually be able to view them, but I'm pretty sure they are laced with spoilers, so beware.
In terms of gameplay, Dark Athena resembles the fast-paced arena-style combat of the Quake and Unreal Tournament series. The likeness doesn't seem to be accidental, either, as there's an overexcited announcer on hand to shout out phrases like "murder spree" in the same ironic vein as the Unreal guy. The game has a retro feel to it, and it's actually a pretty welcome antidote to the many serious shooters on the market.
January 22nd, 2009
Two new multiplayer screenshots
There's a ton of fresh updates below from yesterday, but I just wanted to toss up this quick link to Worthplaying who has two new screens. One of them shows a Prisoners vs. Guards team multiplayer image which looks to be taking place on the ramparts of Butcher Bay. Duelling miniguns!
January 21st, 2009
Dark Athena: first four minutes
Damn! G4 posted up the first four minutes of the opening cinematic for Dark Athena, showing Riddick coming to on the shuttle, the shuttle getting captured by the Dark Athena, and Revas inspecting her new 'prize'...
Lots of different size options available, so make sure you're clicking the right buttons. Thanks to Shane for letting me know about this.
Dark Athena: hot mech video action
G4 is feeling the Starbreeze love today, as they also have a video interview with Ian from Tigon who talks them through the "Spacewalk" level while one of their guys actually plays. The interview is mixed in with plenty of new gameplay footage, showing Riddick in a mech fighting other mechs on the exterior of the Dark Athena. I love how they float away once you finish them off.
New Dark Athena trailer
Well, I can't do caps for this sumbich yet because I can only find it on VE, who has it in a weird format. Man, I miss the days when developers and publishers had game sites for their games stocked with media. Anyway, click here for the Desperation trailer on VoodooExtreme, in small and large sizes. Interspersed between shots from the first trailer are some new and very tantalizing images, such as some sort of industrial facility on an island in the sea. I mean, WtheF. Looks cool. And I like the shots of the spidery arms coming out of the Dark Athena to pull in the shuttle.
Dark Athena: April 7th. Like, seriously though, man.
First there was Amazon's page with March 3, 2009. Then one of the Starbreeze guys posted to their forum that the new date on the Amazon page, March 24th, was the one. But now Atari has posted up an official game page, which is showing April 7th. And Ian from Tigon mentions "early April" in a recently released video, so that looks like the official date.
Dark Athena: Scans from The Edge mag
Riddick fan Azanode strikes again, noticing that Personal Gaming (a game blog) has some scans of a Dark Athena article from the Edge magazine.
Four new Dark Athena screenshots
I've updated my Dark Athena media page with four new screenshots from the game, showing some nice stuff including tasty outdoor footage.
Tasty! Outdoor! Footage!
And heck, Matt pointed out even more screenshots over on TeamXbox. One shows a shot from the revamped Butcher Bay, and while Hoxie looks as.... Hoxie-ish as always, that new guard helmet is damn sweet.
Official sites finally ramping up
So the fine folks involved with Dark Athena finally have gotten around to starting to put up official pages for the game. Here are the main culprits:
Furyanthony pointed out to me that Tigon got their website back, but no link for them since it doesn't even mention Dark Athena. Sheesh!
Vin's other game; Wheelman
VoodooExtreme has some new goods up for Vin's other game coming out soon, Wheelman. The link goes to screenshots and videos. Man, those guys really improved their Vin Diesel modelingmanship since the first media for this game appeared.
News archived
I had like a hundred news items all up on this page which I'm sure slowed it down for some people, so it's all been stuffed into the news archive. Take a look for recent updates, and also posts that go all the way back to 2002.
Ten tons of new Dark Athena stuff
Holy crap, did a metric f#@$ton of Assault on Dark Athena stuff happen over the last few days, while I was busy going ga-ga over the Presidential inauguration and all the stimulus stuff that's happening. Stay tuned, because I'm going to try to slam update after update out over the next day or so. Keep on comin' back.
January 15th, 2009
Dark Athena date on Amazon changed to March 24, 2009
One of the Starbreeze guys made a post over on their forums pointing to Amazon's page for Dark Athena (that's the PC version, but they've got pages for Xbox360 and PS3 also) which shows a date of March 24th. Amazon originally was saying March 3rd, but with Starbreeze pointing this out it would seem a little more reliable. Not that far away!
New Dark Athena screenshots
Worthplaying has six sweet new shots up, showing various stuff like the Pitch Black multiplayer mode and also a very detailed face getting all punched up. I loved the damage enemies took in the original game from melee combat, so this new shot warms my cold dead heart like few other things would.
Possible new content for Riddick Blu-ray
Still no date that I can find for a Riddick Blu-ray disk in the US, but various other countries are getting it in February or March. And while the disk appears to largely reflect the HD-DVD release (which was the regular DVD release plus the 3 or 4 documentaries that had been exclusive to Best Buy stores), there are a few things new on the Blu-ray. Right now I only know the names of these things, and there's been no info that I've seen recently that explains what they actually are. These are "Complete Chronicles", "Chronicles Compendium", and "Anatomy of a Fight." All I know is that they are listed as being in HD. But I'm sure we'll know more pretty soon. Maybe they are super, super great...
Very good Vin Diesel interview
This right here is good interviewage. A lot of times these things end up being kind of promotional and fluffy, but these two get down to business and end up answering at least one thing I've wondered about as far as Vin's career.
I’ve done enough movies now. You reach a place where you realize dreams which is surreal. It’s a surreal experience. I want my work to be significant.
Kotaku recommends Riddick
Strange timing, as I've been trying to resuscitate my OG Xbox... Kotaku put together a pretty damn great feature article about looking to the still-very-viable last generation game consoles in these times of economic distress, and one of their six recommended games for the original Xbox is Escape from Butcher Bay.
The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay: The best-looking game of the last generation. No contest. Put this on and you’ll think you’re playing a 360 game.
I bought the damn Xbox for this game and played it several times, and then starting buying a lot of other great games for that system, so I can definitely agree with their recommendations. But still, as a mostly-PC gamer I should warn all console gamers that soon you will fall under our sword. Just wanted to make sure you knew.
Vin's next movie
Clearly the Fast 'n Furious movies are for a certain segment of the population, those with very specific tastes, and I fall way way outside of that demographic. But lots of people like these things, and as apparently "viable" is the word for today I should point out that this series is a big help in keeping Vin Diesel a viable movie star who someday someone will hopefully fund to appear as Riddick again onscreen. If this is your bag, then head to CHUD for a shot of the poster and a link to the new trailer.
Updates
I admit it, I've been a little lazy. Tons of stuff has been popping up, but the brutal crush of the last two months which included multiple "vacations" really made me want a vacation, so I haven't been doing much. And thankfully, that made a bunch of good material appear so I can continue avoid doing anything other than copying and pasting news items someone else wrote. Feature content? Whaddya think this is; a real website?
January 2nd, 2009
Happy New Year
Well, I hope everyone had a safe Holiday season and a fun New Year's celebration. 2009 is finally here; the year we get new Riddick in the form of Assault on Dark Athena (and also some form of Blu-ray disk). Hope that's not all, but it probably will be and that still makes it more active then the last couple of years.
Still planning on keeping PitcherBlacker updated, although things may be quiet for a little while as I figure out just what to update with; I've kind of been busting ass on updates the last few months and need to come up with some new material.
PitcherBlacker.com Copyright 2008,2009 BruceL
Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick Copyright Universal Pictures
Escape from Butcher Bay, Assault on Dark Athena Copyright Atari/Infogrames
