The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is the sequel to Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay from Starbreeze Studios in association with Vin Diesel's Tigon Studios. The game includes the original Butcher Bay game with enhanced visuals to match the sequel. Gameplay focuses on first-person stealth, melee combat and shooting, along with a strong focus on story, dialogue and cinematic moments. One of the most overlooked shooters in recent years, Dark Athena deserves a purchase from all FPS fans.

Note: This report uses screenshots from the Butcher Bay campaign, but Dark Athena was tested and works exactly the same way.

Support summary

	Support	Method	HUD
Widescreen:	Static Aspect	Native	Proper
Ultra/Super-Wide:	Hor+	Native	Optimized
Multi-Monitor:	Hor+	Native	Hindrance
4k UltraHD:

Rendered Cut-Scene:	Static Aspect
FMV Cut-Scene:	N/A

Game information

Game status:

Released

Release Date:

Tuesday, 7 April, 2009

Tested Version:

US Retail

Play styles:

Single player, Competitive

Setting:

Sci-Fi

Genre:

Stealth, Action-Adventure, FPS

Developer:

Starbreeze Studios, Atari

Links:

⋅ Wikipedia ⋅ PCGamingWiki

Store Links:

Steam,

GOG,

Comparison Screenshots

4:3 Screenshot
16:10 Screenshot
16:9 Screenshot
Ultra-Wide (21:9) Screenshot
Super-Wide (32:9) Screenshot
Eyefinity / Surround Screenshot

Solutions & Issues

Baseline (Widescreen) Solution & Issues

Widescreen resolutions supported natively through menu system.
16:10 users wishing to remove the letterboxing, download jackfuste's loader (see attachments)

Fix available from the PC Gaming Wiki Community Files (search there)

There is a resolution line in the game's config file, located in AppData>Local>Atari>Chronicles of Riddick - Assault on Dark Athena>Enviornment, but altering the line to an unsupported resolution results in the game loading the closest officially supported resolution.

Riddick has an interesting "Pixel Aspect" option in the video menu that has the ability to alter the image to display in other aspect ratios, but it uses stretching to accomplish this. This can be used to remove the black bars in the image, but only by distoring the image slightly. The option is mostly used for display devices with abstract aspect ratios.

Refer to additional images for screenshots of the game on "normal" and "auto" Pixel Ratio settings using 16:9 anamorphic gameplay. Note that NO extra parts of the scene are visible, it is just stretching the image.

The game menu is a large 3D cube which renders properly in widescreen resolutions (and is independent of the anamorphic gameplay, as can be seen in the 4:3 shot, which means it supports all aspect ratios).

Ultra/Super-Wide (21:9/32:9) Specific Solution & Issues

Native support. A few 2D elements stretch.

Eyefinity / Surround Specific Solution & Issues

Riddick has native support for triplehead resolutions and is Hor+ in these resolutions.

When in one of the game's many mech vehicle levels however there is a lack of visual on the left and right screens, but this is the result of being in the mech itself and works for the scene, and is not a blemish.

4k UHD Specific Solution & Issues