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Wow!! This game is a gem!! I just happened to be looking through Amazon.com, and I came across Escape From Butcher Bay. Thank God I did. This game is a real gem...one of the best action titles I've played all year. It holds its own with Far Cry, HL2 and Doom 3 or anything else for that matter. I've never been much of a Vin Diesel fan and didn't know much about the "Riddick" character, but this game changes everything. It's a perfect combination FPS, action game and RPG which comes off very, very well (I didn't even know this could be done). The graphics are amazing -- an incredible depiction of stark metal, rock, concrete and dirt in a "max-max" security prison of the future. Some of the scenes look like the sci-fi portion of 3Dmark03 benchmark. To add to the game's cinematic quality, Escape is the first title I've seen which has absolutely no HUD on screen. You can bring up information like missions, inventory, ammo, weapons, etc., but it disappears after a few seconds. There is no on-screen reticle (just use the weapon's red laser sight -- and a weapon like a minigun doesn't really need a sight). Health just shows up as white squares which quickly disappear. Escape has great replay value too. Do you go for stealth (with a few snapped necks from behind or drop them with a non-lethal tranq/TAZER gun and stomp their heads after they go down) or do you try shooting it out (like an RPG your strategy requires some thought/choices)? Do you fight your way "up the ladder" (ever harder "cockfights" to the death against other inmates) to acquire the head guard's key card or do you buy some drugs and get busted on purpose? And there's usually more than one way to get from point A to point B. The AI is pretty good - both for the guards and the other inmates. The fighting -- especially melee or with fists --is really good. (There's one sequence where you struggle with a guard, and if you press the "fire" and "use" keys just right, you'll turn his rifle around and shoot him in the head. Really well done). Above all, the gameplay seems to change just when you're starting to get bored with what you're doing. I have a fairly strong machine which is about a year old, and the game ran perfectly on highest settings. However, I've heard (on forums) that some people are having issues with it (like it won't launch, crashes a lot, etc.). Just something to consider along with the fact that this game is definitely NOT FOR KIDS. There's no sex, but the language is rough and it's very violent (no way to turn this off if you can't handle it). Finally, my only really serious criticism of Escape is that it's kind of short (about 10-12 hours). But once you beat it, you unlock and get to play a "developers' level" (hence "developers' cut") which is like having the game developers and/or programmers sitting next to you and explaining how different game sequences were done. Very interesting if you're really into gaming. I'd like to see this feature on more games (like how did they DO that?).