[Slothboy]

Never underestimate the power of the rental. If in doubt, throw five bucks at it to use it for a week and then decide. I've rented both Ninja Gaiden and Riddick. I enjoyed both, did not complete either in the rental period, and bought neither.

Riddick is probably the best "movie franchise" game I've played, probably because it is based on a character, not an actual movie plot. Vin Diesel did all the original voicework for the game and that was cool. The story was pretty good and the graphics were outstanding. The major criticism I hear about Riddick is that it is way too short. I probably pumped 6 hours into it when I rented it and based on what I read on the internet about it later, I was about 3/4 of the way through.

Ninja Gaiden was also very cool, the major fault I saw with it was the fact that it kept becoming a "button masher." You have lots of special moves and combos, but when you are in the middle of six enemies you pretty much go apeshit with the contoller. Jump/attack jump/attack jump/attack. The game is also difficult, but to me that just increases the playtime and presents a nice challenge.

If I was going to buy one of the two games it would be Ninja Gaiden, mainly because the difficulty presents greater replay potential and the game seemd to be a lot longer. I'm not really sure how far I was into it, but it felt like approximately halfway, but that was the "normal" difficulty and I had played it a lot more than I did Riddick. I also read that they are going to be offering an expansion to NG on XBOX live as a free download. It looked fairly significant. I believe the article was in Game Informer a month or two ago.

If you are looking for a sneaking game and you aren't sure about Riddick, I would choose Thief: Deadly Shadows. That game is awesome and at one point takes a turn for the "scare the shit out of you." Very nice.