Vin Diesel’s signature character is a brutal killing machine; a predator pouncing from the shadows to take down his terrified prey. Riddick is not a guy standing patiently in the shadows for extended periods of time, waiting for patrolling guards to pass. Or is he?
I suppose there is a lot of prep work that comes with being a ninja-like space spectre. Surely Richard B. Riddick does spend a great deal of time making sure he’s in just the right position to strike in a way that weakens his foes’ knees with fear. We just never get to see it, because its boring.
And that’s pretty much what Gaming Corps’ Riddick: The Merc Files is at this point — a stealth strategy game. There are a number of levels Riddick must take on in three different modes. In Escape, he has to reach the level exit, either sneaky by or killing the level’s guards. In Fetch, he must retrieve an item while killing or avoiding the level’s guards. In Takedown, he must kill a specific level guard while killing or avoiding the level’s guards.
It’s a tap to move affair, with pinching and zooming to pinch and zoom, and another finger to rotate the camera. It’s simple, if a bit sloppy.
Speaking of sloppy, the game does let players record and upload their play-through’s via EverPlay. This allows me to show you this strange thing that keeps happening without having to hook up all the capture wires in my office.
I appreciate the convenience.
Being Riddick should be an exciting experience. That’s what The Chronicles of Riddick video game and Assault on Dark Athena delivered.They were brutal and beautiful, and in those moments when stealth were called for, being right there in the thick of the action made my pulse slow down sympathetically. There were personal and intimate, in a way that Riddick: Merc Files decidedly is not.
Looking down from overhead is no way to become Riddick. It’s like making a Fast & Furious puzzle game. It might be the best puzzle game ever created, but fans were probably expecting some driving.
I was expecting to feel like the galaxy’s greatest badass, a man so powerful his very presence generates a intelligence-dampening that makes him the smartest person in the room by making everyone else stupid.
Instead, I’m just a guy tapping on a screen. Hooray.
Riddick: The Merc Files
Genre: Stealth Action, I Guess
Developer: Gaming Corps
Platform: iOS
Price: $2.99
Get Riddick: The Merc Files on iTunes
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