"Part man, part machine, all cyborg warrior". This sentence is among the opening lines of the game and it truly sets the tone for the rest of the DLC.
Farcry 3 Blood Dragon started out with the same kind of humor that's prevalent throughout the game, by releasing a teaser on April 1st. Almost everyone thought it was just a April fools, no doubt Ubisoft's intent all along, so in the end, the joke was the joke itself, well played ubisoft, well played.
In Blood Dragon you step into the shoes and cyborg eye implant of a Sargeant Rex Power Colt, a commando sent with his partner the 'blacksploitation' gag of the game, Spider, to an island to investigate their former commander-gone-rogue.
The world is recovering from a nuclear war in the year 2007 as seen from a 1980's point of view, and when looking at the horizon near the edge of the map you can see distant nuclear explosions, but the island itself remains relatively unharmed.
The level of comical detail put into the game is what really made it stand out during our playthrough, with everything from dialogues to tutorial text it's like the game stops and winks at you between each one-liner.
One-liners on par with classic Duke Nukem and prevalent throughout the entire game, even the tutorial has one liners, asking you to 'prove your ability to read' by pressing a button.
If you are of the sort who never read descriptions or journals, you might want to make an effort in this one, most of the best jokes in the entire game can be found in weapon and animal descriptions.
The gameplay can be compared to Farcry 3, and though highly enjoyable it definatly takes a back seat to the theme of the game. Cutscenes in the game come in the form of low res 8 bit graphics from the late 80's era of video games, but with voice acting.
The weapons in the game easily fill every purpose and you're never left wanting, they have a nice weighty feeling and a sense of 'oomph' when hitting an enemy, the upgrades are inventive and closes whatever gap there might be in your armory.
For instance, you might feel you're missing some sort of rocket launcher, but the exploding rounds upgrade for the sniper does the job just fine.
Here we stumble on the one and single issue we had with the game; the game wants you to handle situations either with a balls out, guns blazing approach or a stealthy, pick your targets and time every move approach.
The problem lies with the upgrades, the gun gets a silencer, however, one headshot is never enough to take out a sentry, the only guns that do that are the fully upgraded assault rifle and sniper without exploding bullets.
In other words, you can only do the stealthy approach by using melee takedowns if you have to be medium to close range, so we found ourselves more than once just standing far away and pelting the area with explosive sniper fire, wich gives stealth kills bonus if you are standing far enough away.
With the neon lights, vector graphics, fun gameplay, hilarious story and great writing, Farcry 3 Blood Dragon is a fantastic package at its price. And although you can fly through its few, but meaty missions in a fairly quick time, exploring the island and unlocking upgrades really rewards you and when you near the games end you feel like a total b-movie badass, nigh immortal and a killing machine.
This is a game featuring such classic 80's clichè gems as a completely off center love story, a tai chi during sunrise scene and a training montage... In one cutscene.
Overall
Fantastic game, for those who grew up in the 80's-90's it can bring some nostalgia, but mostly its a game that's overly self aware, so far past the point where its not funny until it becomes funny again. More than once we got the feeling the creators were playing the game and laughing alongside us.
Game score: 5/5
Gameviews recommendation score: 80%
If you either dont like shooters or dont like parodies (of old movies and themes) this is not for you, everyone else, buy this, seriously.
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