Have you ever heard of the idiom so bad, it’s good before? It’s okay if you haven’t, but that is Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon in a nutshell. Instead of relying on quality writing, interesting gameplay or amazing features, it instead pulls out all of the stops for one nostalgia filled adventure. While this would normally seem idiotic to even consider, Ubisoft scored huge points with the VHS recording reveal trailer and even more with the poor B movie trailer. With so many things going for Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, will it be remembered kindly like the things it’s mocking or is it a shoddy piece of junk that should have died with the VHS?
Lets look at what’s HOT and what’s NOT in our review of Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon.
HOT
It’s a Movie Game Done Right
Despite not being based off a movie or even Far Cry 3, Blood Dragon plays like you’re getting the full 1980s action movie experience. The game starts by explaining a preposterous situation that leads to you becoming a cyborg/cyber soldier. From here you’re sent to take down a military madman who coincidentally happens to be someone from your past. At this point, the game moves away from the cutscenes (which are done in an awesome pixelated retro style) and gives you the chance to make the cheesy adventure you always wanted.
How you ask? Well, pretty much everything about Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is to make the adventure seem more action packed/awesome than it actually is. Like if you crouch after running, you will do a badass slide, which is perfect if you’re trying to avoid some heavy fire (take a page from any action movie from the 80’s, it always works out well!). For those of you that don’t like getting into a firefight, simply take down enemies and then kill their friends with a shuriken (ninja death star). If that’s not badass enough for you, simply spam the melee button away from anyone and you’ll be giving those suckers the bird (repeated pressing causes you to switch hands). Also don’t forget to pilfer everyone, since that adds the ever-important cheesy one-liners to the game. While it’s good to have ninja skills to take down enemies, it’s just as important to be a marksman.
Once you’ve done the “mandatory” number of needlessly flashy kills with your knife, it’s time to kick it up a notch with your laser guns. At first you will start with a fairly basic pistol, but over time you’ll start to find some more interesting weapons. While most of these guns work exactly as you would expect them to, some of them do have some interesting features. Perhaps my favorite being the shotgun reload, since you throw the shells into the chamber, though almost every gun has something over the top about it. In addition to the shotgun being amusing, the final weapon you get is so awesome that you need to do a training montage just to use it. That’s right, there is a training montage complete with a soft rock song and one-handed push-ups. By the time you get to the end on your armored covered dragon that fires *****ing lasers from his eyes; you’ll know your adventure is complete.
