Game review: Far Cry 3 - Blood Dragon

What do you get when you mix 80es nostalgia and a bunch of humour with Far Cry 3 in an unholy union surely conceived by drunk madmen on a dark and stormy night? Why, Blood Dragon, of course. What is Blood Dragon? It's a standalone "expansion" to Far Cry 3, but in reality, it's a different beast entirely. While most of FC3's mechanics make it to BD, some are changed to better fit this particular iteration's style and some are changed with the criticism FC3 received in mind. So let's break it down, shall we?

Blood Dragon remains an open-world shooter set on an island peppered with outposts, with XP-reliant levelling of your character (Rex Power Colt; don't ask), a 4 weapon at a time system, customizable weapons, an ecosystem, vehicles and story missions. What it does change? Pretty much everything else. 

The year? Somewhere in an 80es version of the future, after Vietnam War II, where every other word is "cyber" and "the apocalypse has had an apocalypse". The island is where General Sloan, a true 80es iconic chainshirt-sporting ex-military villain has set up base. Your goal? To kick his ass and drop one-liners, obviously. You drop in the island with your token black roboninja sidekick, complete with Commando-style muscle-pumping handshake and minigun action, and of course the purposefully terrible yet hilarious tutorial that helpfully instructs you that "to look around, look around" and "jumping is moving vertically on the z-axis without touching the ground inbetween". If that wasn't enough, the gloriously 8-bit "cutscenes" ripped from some Sega Mega Drive game never made, including an all-important training montage and a sex scene, will flip all the right switches in your memory.

From then on, the story explodes in bona fide 80es straight to video film style, with countless, countless references to films and shows such as Terminator, Aliens, Krull, Tron, He-man, Transformers, Predator, Robocop and a gazillion others, sometimes even making the jump into spoofing more recent, yet camp material such as Sharktopus, or "inside" jokes, such as references to the show Community and other Ubisoft titles such as Assassin's Creed and Far Cry 3 itself. Such references can be names, weapon design, lines, audio effects (such as the Predator-esque humming when you activate your cyber-eye/binoculars) or even specific moments ripped from the source material, twisted and shoved in there. The game plays as a love letter to the 80es, and this is exactly what it is, from the intentionally over the top silly story, to the colour palette, to the music. 

I'm not going to go at length about the gameplay, mainly because it's almost identical to the one of Far Cry 3, apart from minor tweaks, such as the linear skill levelling and the absence of crafting. The kick comes in the style (which, unlike FC3, doesn't favour stealth and, let's face it, why should it?) and the weapons. While in FC3 customizing your weapons was meant to suit them to your style, in BL adding attachments to them is basically to make those weapons deadlier, period. And trust me, these things need to be deadly.

Not because of the enemies, no. Not because of the mutated/cyber/robo animals. Oh no. Because roaming the island are friggin' Blood Dragons, the titular main attractions of the game. Think of a cross between a dinosaur and a komodo dragon that shoots lasers out of its friggin' eyes? Got it? Yeah, that's a Blood Dragon. They come in four colours:

Green means oblivious, 
or in roaming mode.

Yellow means alerted.

Red means hostile.

Purplish/blue means dead. >_<





Note that while the transitions from green to red (also mirrored in your left arm's LEDs in general) can happen very quickly, going from red to blue is a genuine ballache. Especially seeing as they only have the one weak spot (chest) and they're crouching all the time.

Luckily, you can not only distract them by throwing cyber hearts (looted from regular enemies), you can also sic em on enemy patrols and even outposts and sit back, light a cyber-cigar and enjoy the carnage. Sooner or later, however, you're going to have to deal with them.


That's really all I have to say about the game. It's fairly short (a full run, clearing all the outposts, doing all the side missions but not finding all the collectibles took about 11 hours as Steam counts, and at least an hour of it was arsing around on uplay and the menus), and I hesitate to call it a standalone expansion, because it reminds me of the long-forgotten term Total Conversion (TC), and that's what it is. Would it be worth full-price? At its length, much as I liked it, absolutely not. Is it worth the 14,99 it's being sold for? Fuck yes.

Addendum: Yes, I forgot to mention Michael Biehn (Kyle Reese from Terminator) voicing Rex, and doing a splendid job of it, too.