Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon Review

[Halcyon.]

Cover is akin to condoms for shooters, it keeps you safe from STDs like bullets and lasers. Grenades explode. Lots of credits were spent on colored fonts. Tigers eat scientists. Omega forces kill scientists. You partner looks like a Mortal Kombat character and the cinematics come in 16-bit, resembling the visuals of the 80s.

I’m not that far gone, at least no more than the Ubisoft guys behind Blood Dragon. The link with Far Cry 3 is only in name and (some) gameplay mechanics, the rest is marketed as a standalone production, aiming to capitalize on the nostalgia for the century past. The 20th century, which seems weird for those of us who were born then and are now smiling all knowingly from the corner of our mouths. Blood Dragon mixes dinosaurs, genetic mani[CENSORED]tions and the pretext of a story to bring forward various ideas, from the D20 dice to the Ninja Turtles, Die Hard, rock’n’roll and Sylvester Stallone.
Meet Rex Colt, cybercommando. That would be part man, part machine, result of some changes spawning from a devastating war that irradiated the planet and made once loyal soldiers go haywire. Or not, if you follow the antagonist Sloan, which leaves Rex with nationalist lines and a 7 missions fight. Actually, the whole story is just a pretext to kill everybody, especially the dragons in the title and Blood Dragon doesn’t make a secret about it. Probably just another way to pay homage to the movies with tons of bullets and blood and the ever conquering hero, arm in arm with the girl of his dreams.

Although Blood Dragon is marketed as a standalone title, it doesn’t have too many gaming hours in it, though for their price, it’s pretty interesting. It comes with elements from the original, but all is shrunk and, consequently, gets repetitive quite rapidly. You get 10 outposts to liberate from the enemy cybercommandos, secondary missions to save scientists (actually Save a Nerd) or to hunt rare animals.
You can still kill the local fauna, but no more plant or hives collection to enlarge the wallet. No more plants either, so in this post-apocalyptic world you find health packs in some corners. That is, if you trust a syringe found on the street. And aside from the secondary missions, wild animals only give money and some bonuses if you kill a minimum number.

Freeing scientists, hunting and other actions unlock gun attachments and, if you want them for free, you’d better go find those TVs and VHS tapes. Yeah, that’s right, you gotta interact with TVs (non-LCD, most probably lamps) and “rent” parody-movie tapes. There are also some files from a scientist and lots of containers with money and ammo just waiting to be pilfered.
Rex also levels up, but there’s no skill tree to play with. It’s just a maximum of 30 levels and various bonuses and abilities. The most experience comes from missions, but also from killing dragons, which is one intense activity; on the other hand, the huge creatures can be used to clean the outposts – they can’t pass the protective shields, but their lasers will kill your enemy just fine. Or go in slowly and stealthy, deactivate the shield and let the “poor” soldiers get roasted.

Like any respectable supersoldier, Rex carries with him an impressive arsenal, made more powerful with the mentioned attachments. A handgun with a silencer and laser, a machine gun, a sniper rifle and, of course, the bow for stealthy kills. There’s also a heavy machine gun, Rambo style, but I didn’t really use it; I went mostly for stealth and chaining kills with my friend the knife.
The options are pretty much the same, you can kill from above, from below, from water and jumps, fast and clean, without any chance for the victims to raise the alarm. Some secondary missions force you to use a certain gun and I can tell you it’s pretty sadistic to kill sharks with explosives and tigers with the bow. Even if they are mutant or cyber sharks or tigers. You can then loot the bodies for ammo, money and cyberhearts.
Vehicles can still be used to cover distances or just for fun, on land or water; the control however is just as weird without a gamepad, but running is good for your health. Even a cybersoldier can grow a belly due to the numerous health injections.

Visually, things are pretty much the same if you look beyond the [CENSORED]uristic red and the machineries filled outposts or the dragon eggs. The cinematics stand out by far, but not being skippable might make them annoying. Others might find them pretty “dumb”, 16-bit in a DirectX11 era and all, but you’ve had to have lived in the floppy disk age to really grasp the importance of the simple existence of a cinematic back then.
The music is also very 80s inspired, when rock’n’roll ruled the streets together with the electronic tunes which probably caused the weird hairstyles and the mental issues due to the extra-large pants and blings which were worn in the middle of the day. Just like nowadays :-)
Unfortunately, the fun is over fast, even with all the secondary missions and perhaps the stubbornness to kill all the Sloan “engraved” pigs. It’s pretty much a DLC and despite all the allusive dialogues and the ride to the past, you get to see the Game Over screen (that means you’re dead).

I didn’t ran into any technical issues, but you’ll find plenty of players on forums who had troubles with the saved games; apparently, Ubisoft is in a “broken released” period (yeah, I’m looking at you, Heroes VI add-on); the only nasty thing is that the in-mission checkpoints aren’t really checkpoints, since you have to finish all objectives to really get a save game.
Aside from the nostalgic feelings, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon doesn’t bring anything new and doesn’t really have a story. The length is consistent for a DLC, but the presentation as a standalone game might have been a little too much. Or maybe it’s just the beginning of a special branch of the Far Cry franchise, with Roy playing the role of a new Duke Nukem with sex jokes and the American flag imprinted on his chest. Mark IV style!