A word of advice to Starbreeze Studios for your next Riddick game: go ahead, set it out of doors. Yes, I know it seems like a science fiction game should be set in a metallic spaceship or a metallic fortress (indistinguishable from a spaceship). But your work on Aguerra is breathtaking. Scenes like that simply beg to be experienced for more than ten minutes. And it is altogether a shame that Assault on Dark Athena takes place in so many architecturally unsound, metallic buildings. Then again, maybe that's unavoidable, since your protagonist speaks about “the darkness” as if it were his firstborn son.

Dark Athena plays so similarly to Butcher Bay that, but for a credits sequence and a menu selection, you might have been excused for failing to notice the games had changed. On the other hand, it is a testament to the quality here (and to Butcher Bay moreso) that a 5-year old game plays like a new one. Yet, like Butcher Bay, Dark Athena is still not a great shooter and unlike Butcher Bay, very little time indeed is devoted to interacting with characters.

But what characters! Dark Athena introduces Revas, a sultry ship captain with a head of Borg-hair, Dacher, an older colonist, and several others, all of whom more than make up for the sparse cast. Dacher, voiced by Lance Henriksen (better known as the android from Aliens), is of particular note. He is animated and acted with enough nuance to put the best of Pixar to shame. But Dark Athena suffers from Riddick-syndrome, a disease any fan of his movies will be acquainted with, namely that every character that is not Riddick is all but guarunteed to die shortly after being introduced. Perhaps there is a message here about nihilistic despair and the senseless, dispassionate method by which God (or Fate, or Starbreeze Studios) takes the lives of promising individuals before their time.

Let's not get too dark here. This isn't an English class on the modern novel, after all.

Dark Athena is, like Butcher Bay, a strange mix. A lot of the game is about making your way through guard-filled rooms using little more than shadows and your knives. Most of the time, the game even has enough sense to deprive you of guns entirely, as tempting as it might be for a first-person game. The result is satisfying stealth-action. It is then mixed with some character interaction, with dabblings in fetch quests that, though tried, are worth it simply for the characters. Like Butcher Bay, though, it lacks confidence in this, and no sooner are you are given a breather then the plot hurries you along. At that point, the game becomes very much like a shooter, and though it tuts about from stealth to action, it never goes back to the characters.

On the other hand, although Dark Athena all but completely eschews the adventure-game bits of its prequel, it does have enough sense to improve upon the gunplay, making it a lot more tolerable if not amazing. It does this by improving upon the three main elements of a good shooter, which you might remember from my last review. (If not, they are: weapon design, enemy design, level design – and Butcher Bay failed at all three handily.)

The gunplay sequences aboard the ship benefit from a vastly improved level design, which invites stealth gameplay, Riddick-style, in a more natural way than its predecessor. Your enemies this time, the Borg-like Drones (hence Revas' hairstyle?), are actually creepy. The slimey click-clack of their footsteps are unnerving and getting up close and personal with them is always an uncomfortable business. Once it is done, though, you can take up their gun (still clutched in their hand) and use it on your enemies. It sounds pat, actually, but it can play a thrilling role in a gunfight. It makes you a badass, which is rather the goal of any Riddick game. And though Dark Athena's second act is ever more of a shooter, but the introduction of a new weapon (now we have all three elements) does much to alleviate boredom. Infinite ammo is certainly a help, but the gun also benefits from providing adequate reward for adequate skill, arguably a key to satisfying action.

Lest I forgot, however, may I take a moment to whine about the lack of a quicksave? It's a mechanic Half-Life popularized over a decade ago and, in 2009, no developer has any business leaving it out of their game.

On its own, Dark Athena is a fairly exceptional work of character-driven/stealth/shooting action. The trick here is that the game comes with an “HD” version of Butcher Bay. Together, they make the package absolutely worth buying. And while Dark Athena's greatest moments do not compare to Butcher Bay's greatest, it is still a more consistently entertaining experience. Its worse moments are never as bad as the prequel's. So, as my friend Tony earlier reminisced, perhaps what we are really looking for here is the best of both. Set such a sequel on a planet, outdoors, and I'll be set.