Not a believer? As soon as you boot up the game and see the menu screen, a menu screen that someone actually put time into, you'll believe. And it only gets better from there.

I'm not sure it's entirely fair to call Riddick an FPS and leave it at that, though. Yes, it's first-person, and yes, you shoot people, but there's more to it than that. There's also punching people. As a matter of fact, you'll probably spend as much time punching people and stabbing them with shivs or screwdrivers as you will shooting them. To anyone who's familiar with the hand-to-hand combat systems of previous games in the genre, that sounds like a really horrible idea, but it's all quite satisfying. Instead of just a single hand flying outward and striking at something with one or two simple animations, Riddick fights like a man. By moving the directional stick, you control what sort of punches he throws and when you land one you know it. The victim won't simply stand there in one position hitting back until his invisible life meter runs out - he'll reel and stumble with every punch you land. The reverse is also true, as when you catch one in the jaw, the entire screen bobs back and forth, which means that the block button will be held very near and dear to your heart. It's tough to properly explain the combat, simply because in the heart of every sentence, the only adjective I can think of is "satisfying," and that's the only word that explains it well.

It's hard to explain what makes for a good FPS combat experience, but there are those games that feel like just a game. You're an imaginary guy shooting imaginary guys. They don't feel those bullets, they're just programmed to fall over once you hit them with enough of them. Then there are those games that make you feel bad for that guy's wife and kids. Whether you're sneaking up on a guard and then snapping his neck (there are two ways to break someone's neck in Riddick, a loud way for making a show of it and a silent way for times when you're being stealthy) or laying them out with the mini gun you stole off of the big robot you just laid to waste, you feel as if you're interacting. Those bullets are really hitting someone. If it's the sound, the animations, or the atmosphere, give me more of it and give it to me in every game from now on.

Whether or not any one of those things is responsible for making me fall in love with breaking necks again, they all go towards making this game as good as it is. Futuristic settings are a tricky thing. Usually they stray so far from our reality that they become impossible to relate to. Developers pay so much attention to having flying cars and spaceships that they forget that even in the future, prison probably really sucks, people have inner conflict, and sometimes toilets get really dirty. Starbreeze didn't forget the toilets, and they even let you flush them. They didn't leave out any of that other stuff either. Not only did they litter their game with great prison imagery like walls covered with profane graffiti and filthy cells, they built a great story to go along with it. For anyone's who's seen Pitch Black, there are some parts of the game that fill in parts of that movie, and for those who haven't, you get the story of a hardened killer who's just human enough to not be a cliché, trying to escape from the worst prison in the galaxy. That doesn't sound all that great on paper, but the play mechanics mixed with the gritty, tense prison setting bring it all together.

The fact that the setting seems so alive and real isn't only due to the toilets or the profanity, it's also because there's a solid cast of characters holding up the setting and the story. The voice acting is better than the acting in most action movies, and every single character, even the most insignificant, has his own voice and his own dialogue - which usually involves telling you to fuck off. And of course, it has Vin Diesel giving his voice to the title character and making all the women swoon.

When you're trying to please the ladies like Vin does, it helps when you have a character model that's more photorealistic than any ever seen on a console game. Riddick uses "normal mapping," the same technique used in Far Cry and soon to be used in Halo 2 that allows developers to make low polygon count models look about a million times better than they have any right to. The fact that every single character looks like a real person makes Riddick the best looking Xbox game yet and proves that the system that everyone said would peak early graphically still has a lot of legs left.

Since I mentioned graphics, the law of game reviewers says that I have to mention the sound. It's really good, too. I mentioned the voice acting, but the ambience and sound effects add to the game just as much. The sounds of fist on face and of the different weaponry are crisp and accurate, but the ambience is really what pulls you in. From the heavy slam as the doors close behind you to the screams and rants of unseen prisoners within the prison walls, there was a lot of effort put forth here. When it came to the music, I actually had to think for a second, since I didn't really remember any. What music there is serves only as a part of the backdrop, so it's neither good nor bad, just there. That in itself is a compliment though, since even the least memorable parts of the game do their part to make the whole even better.

Just to put everything in perspective, and to remind you that nothing in life is perfect, I do feel compelled to mention that the loading times kill the mood sometimes, partially due to some bad level design. The loading isn't that much worse than in most other Xbox games, but it does happen too frequently at times, and some of the early missions in the game force you to travel back and forth between sections of the prison. That's not bad except for the fact that every time you enter specific areas, the game has to load, so you run into situations like I did, where you might have to sit through loading screens a few times in the course of just a minute or so. Besides that, the only other knocks on the game are that it can be too easy at times and it is short, only because it doesn't reach the magical forty hour mark that games seem to have to meet nowadays. The only replay value lies in wanting to play a very good game through again and maybe the desire to collect any hidden packs of cigarettes you missed the first time through, to unlock things like concept art and very cool early videos of the game.

The point to all of this review nonsense is that if you have an Xbox, you really need to buy The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. It's a beautiful game that plays better than you'd expect, and it's one of the best games on the Xbox. You don't have to be an action movie fan, you don't have to be a Vin Diesel fan, and you don't have to be a fan of first-person games to love this game. You just have to be able to appreciate a great game when you play one. If you're an Xbox owner and you pass up Riddick, then do us all a favor and give your system to someone who'd appreciate it.

· · · Derek Durham