After the awesome release of Far Cry 3, a lot of people wanted more Far Cry 3 content but I don’t think anyone would have expected what we got instead. Blood Dragon is the complete opposite of what Far Cry 3 was, while Far Cry 3 was a (Kind of) serious game, Blood Dragon isn’t serious at all, features many jokes and jabs at certain things and is also set in a world of neon lights. After how good Far Cry 3 was, lets see if Blood Dragon can be the same.
The game starts of very good with you being thrown straight into the action as your player is in a helicopter shooting from a mounted turret which equals tons of blowing stuff up and mayhem. Straight after getting off the helicopter you will get the first taste of Blood Dragon’s jokes and jabs that I talked about earlier, you are forced to do the in game tutorial which is basically one big joke and probably the only fun tutorial in a game ever made. The tutorial has silly messages that pop up like “Press A/X to confirm you can read” or “To look around… Look around” it’s so silly and stupid that it ends up being awesome.
After that hilariously bad tutorial is over, you go back to the action of the game which is pretty much all the game is. During combat you will actually notice some similarities to Far Cry 3 but in Blood Dragon style, a perfect example of this would be when you have to heal yourself as it’s exactly the same to do so (Holding Y/Triangle) but instead of wrapping bandages around the arm, the main character known as Rex who is like a half human and half cyborg will re-wire his robotic arm for example. It was little details like these that I really liked and appreciated.
Blood Dragon also has its very own leveling up system, to level up you have to earn CP (Cyber Points) from certain actions like head shots or stealth kills. Once you have a certain amount of CP you will level up. There are 30 levels in the game, and when you reach certain levels you will earn additional health or new skills. Skills can range from being able to walk in the crouch position faster or health regenerating faster. I was actually pretty surprised how serious the skills were, non of the skills you earn in the game can be considered silly or stupid all of them have a decent affect on gameplay.
Previously I mentioned how I liked the detail of bring back things from Fr Cry 3 with a twist I also like how Blood Dragon stayed very true to its 80’s style, cutscenes? Don’t expect no stunning HD video playing on your screen instead you will have comic book style/cartoon kind of cutscenes which were seen in many video games during the 80’s. The detail goes even further by having 4:3 black bars on your screen when the game is “tracking” instead of loading, all these moments and details will have any kid of the 80’s have nostalgia smash them right in the face. It doesn’t really matter if you’re not a kid from them times because the game is still really fun for what is, and I am sure it can still be enjoyed by anyone(Although a lot of the dialogue might go over your head)
The Final Verdict
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was a solid XBL/PSN downloadable title, you get around 6 hours of content which seems to be pretty rare for downloadable games at that price these days. For any person who was a kid in the 80’s you will have to buy this game just for nostalgia purposes and how much fun you will have with this. Younger gamers shouldn’t feel left out though because you still have a fun game underneath all them jokes and references. I did have a few problems with the game although there wern’t many, I thought after an hour-ish the game started to lose its original charm that it had in that first hour, and also I found the colors of the game a little bit annoying at times but again nothing too major to make the score go low. If you have some cash lying round then I think you should definitely buy this game.
+Get your moneys worth in content
+Funniest/greatest tutorial of all time
+The fun tone
-After a solid 60-90 minutes the game started to lose its original charm
Final Score
8.5/10
