What possessed the Far Cry team and Ubisoft to greenlight a stand alone DLC game that is based on 1980’s action flicks and videogames is beyond me but I’ll be DAMNED if I am not happy they did it. Because if they hadn’t, we would not be graced by…
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
In Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, you play as Rex Power Cult, a Mark IV Cyber Commando, who is sent to investigate the rogue Colonel Sloan. After finding out Sloan had gone mad with power and was out to destroy the world, Rex suits up to take the fight to Sloan’s front door because:
NO ONE FUCKS WITH FREEDOM!
Channeling my inner Snake Plissken, I set forth on my valiant venture to take down Sloan and his missiles. Sadly, I immediately got bogged down by a rather annoying tutorial telling me how to look around in a first person shooter… Really now? It tries to play it off by breaking the fourth wall and making references in the tutorial about how annoying tutorials can be but at a certain point, I just wanted to play the game.
But let me tell you, once the game opened up, I was like a kid in a candy store. The open world is not anything close to Far Cry 3’s standards but gives you enough room to roam and explore to find all the hidden VHS Tapes, TVs, and Notes. There are only two types of side missions that become available when you liberate a garrison. All these things are optional but I would recommend you do some of them because it will make the end game a bit easier.
All the leveling, side missions and collectibles do really is get you better weapon upgrades and trust me, they are worth it. I don’t even recommend this for the reason of making your guns better as much as it is to show you how ridiculous the weapons get! By the end of the game you will have a four barreled shotgun that shoots exploding shells and a sniper rifle that pretty much shoots the equivalent of a C4 explosion at enemies from a mile away.
Blood Dragon takes all the things about Far Cry 3 that made it good, condenses it down and makes them better while also getting rid of the things that made you weak or slow the gameplay. Now you can infinitely run and drop from any height to get to any location you may want. Using vehicles is not even a thought at that point. You are almost as fast as one now (Note: Cyber Commando) and you are more mobile than a rickety jeep.
One of the best part of the game is chaining silent kills.
What happens is that if you stealth kill an enemy and another enemy is nearby, you can actually launch at him and instant kill him as well. If he is a little ways away though, you can take a shuriken and throw it right into his skull. Being able to chain together four stealth kills then ending it with a shuriken takedown is freaking incredible and never gets old.
It’s also got a little bit of everything in it that made you love/hate 80’s movies and games. Explosions, awkward sex scene, a training montage, egregiously bad one liners and more. Much of the humor though can be pretty hit or miss but on average they did a good job of hitting a high note.
Having collected everything the game had to offer as well meant I spend close to 10 hours on the game. This is with me more or less collecting and doing everything provided by the game. Now, that was plenty of time and I felt any more time in that game world would have overstayed its welcome. Anyone could easily power through this game in a few hours and still get a good feeling for it but I feel the insane weapons are the tasty chocolate filling to a donut.
Minor issues were present in the game, but nothing game breaking.
I would actually love to see them return to this universe in Far Cry 4, but make it a post-apocalyptic New York and go all out for it. Maybe pretend to be unknowing of the fact that it is a satire on 80’s and just treat itself in a totally serious manner. That is what makes campy movies and games so good.
All together though I give it 4 out of 5 middle fingers.
