Play relevant month: Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon

There's not many games or releases or concepts I get hyped for. We live in something of a two pronged gamer assault world now - God, what does that sentence even mean - somewhere between the shitpipe that is early access and the other, shittier pipe that is triple A hype machines. We are constantly being blasted on the two sides of our faces. Yet games are largely all about the same level of quality, with a few stand out gems, but most are "fine" or even "fun but flawed". Yeah there's a couple really obvious stinkers, but usually if you don't like a game in this day and age it has more to do with genre and intent. So why get excited? There's going to be 2-3 more entries in that genre, that very year, in case you don't like a given individual game.

But Blood Dragon ... Well, for one, I had zero excitement for Far Cry 3 itself. The only excitement I get from Far Cry games is when I forget they're not Crysis sequels or whatever, but then, I wouldn't even get that now that Crysis 3 was the joke it was. However you take a brand new engine like Far Cry 3 and you commit to giving a DLC pack with some far out 80s action, I'm going to take notice. That first trailer really sells the idea. Then you announce it's going to be a cheap standalone attempt at a more experimental style of game? I won't lie, my ears perked up. Admittedly, the experimental side of Blood Dragon lies in the less than mainstream or at least less than modern mainstream because that really is quite the hammy 80s production. Or a 2013 production through the eyes of being an 80s production? Layers and layers of obscured tropes here son. It's cyber-boots on a human skull all the way down to the turtles here.

The actual resultant game almost has a sense of meta awareness to it, a box inside a box feeling of both playing and the game itself. It's petulant and juvenile on both levels, with weird quirkness that extends beyond the Play button on Steam. There is also this odd rub of being almost a truly indie production, with odd little problems and screw ups in design that surprise you given the pedigree of both the studio and the core title this one is based off. I mean I've read Far Cry 3 has terrible, terrible writing but I never heard anything about it being a bad game from a design stand point.

It's also sort of weird in that Blood Dragon almost feels intentionally mediocre at the start, luring you in with a rather bleh starting point then - When you stop expecting anything awesome to come out of the lumpy beginning and the oddities of uplay - actually gets really, really good. At everything. All of the things. And the voice actor is a wizard.

Of bad ass.


I kinda want to roll right off the bat with some complaining here, so I'm going to: I started this game no less than three times to actually get through the start. The game does not allow you to save during missions, which the introduction to the game and its FORCED tutorial, is comprised within. As it turns out, the first real checkpoint is more than twenty minutes of play away, which is just absolutely baffling. I'm sorry I only had thirty minutes to play and didn't want to leave the game running, and you told me you were saving and that I had reached a check point. If you're going to pour in an overwrought introduction and a gag tutorial section, you may want to consider immediately saving afterwards. I shouldn't have to google issues with a game saving right off the bat.

Anyway, so I picked this game up, installed it and then immediately stopped playing it for a couple days after this, since man the tutorial is funny the first time and then sandpaper on your genitals the second time. Knowing I'd have to do it a third time because the developers couldn't finish skateboarding off each others ... I do not think I need to begin violently spewing profanity here, but it's a pretty miserable first impression and comes off as amateur hour down at the indie games factory. I wouldn't mind so much if it just told me nothing at all was saved, but I guess that's impossible to state given every checkpoint system forever has slapped out "oh no your progress .17 seconds from the checkpoint won't be saved!!!" and you just won't read it. I don't even know if I can blame them. I just exhaled, put the game down and mentally noted I'd play it a week later, once I wasn't furious at the tutorial.

Also uPlay, bless their little butts for trying, is so unbelievably tacked on to Steam it just comes off as sad. The fact you buy a game with a DRM wrapper and it adds on an additional DRM wrapper that interferes with normal operation feels like a level of branding failure that is going to haunt ubisoft for a long, long time. It doesn't bother me overmuch at the moment, but it just comes off as rather trite coupled with being a bunch of tryhards and just doesn't say good things about ubisoft. I imagine the truth is the guys doing uplay are underfunded and underappreciated, but either way it's just not very good to add on. You've already got the DRM manacles on. Do you really need to collar me as well?

Blood Dragon reeks of clunky decisions and inane issues though. The game is charming and then just horrible. I have no idea why you need to 'hold E to pilfer' the stupidest things - money on the ground? Why would I ever want to make a choice here, one that involves not just tapping a keystroke but holding it down? There's problems with highlighting things on the ground as well, leading to such brilliant moments as jumping up and down on a crate to get the game to bring up the prompt. Also, the game constantly decides I want to be in windowed mode - Alt-Tabbing immediately goes to windowed mode, which is awful since you have to change the video settings back through 3 layers of menus and sometimes just goes into windows mode because it just feels like it on start up. The bug in this case is the game alt-tabs on start up because of uPlay, which again, just geez guys...

Like I said before, there's just this weird juvenile feeling to the game. As much as the protagonist flips off his adversaries and sets them on fire it almost strikes me that the game wants to do the same to me. Maybe it's just the sentiment I'm getting after that inability to save early on or how the pandering in the game makes my ears burn, but Blood Dragon is like that weird friend you like having around 90% of the time and then the other 10% of the time he's making really course sexual jokes in a crowded restaurant. Like geez Blood Dragon, we're in a chinese market, stop making jokes about asian people! It's like that. It doesn't do that.

The tooltips are really good for this too, they're good sarcasm, but you start to get a feeling of contempt as well. Maybe not contempt for you, maybe more focus groups? Maybe it's balled up hate after having to sit and listen to people critique Far Cry 3 in really stupid ways?

Blood Dragon's story is absolutely bizarre and 80s to the mega-max. The ending especially, which doesn't make any sense at all, is just every trope with half of them forgotten by almost everyone, just drowning everything sensible right out. There's pseudo-philosophical leanings but I'm entirely certain they're just doing that to mock that element of 80s action films. Also the setting, which barely has much to do with the rest of the game, is wonderful. There's just something really on the nose to some of the ruins you find, with static spewing television sets sitting atop Buddha like statues and the like. Water reflections are used really well and the game world looks very slick. There's lots of little in-jokes, which the protagonist often doesn't get at all and goes "what the hell?" or "oooook" when you're assigned a particularly offbeat mission. The liberated garrisons, which don't really do much of anything, are really lovingly crafted and don't feel copy-pasted at all. I mean parts of them are clearly used to build multiple variants of the thirteen, but they all have really different layouts and styles. I do wish they were a little bigger, since liberating them tends to take about 45 seconds.

The art style and direction is almost saddening in how different and awesome it looks. Like sure, it's not all that realistic and nothing looks like modern day 'tacticool' but the game's perpetual wannabe cyberpunk neon with a rolling grey as the backdrop is really radical. It doesn't really resemble anything from the 80s but rather feels like someone's dreams of their childhood in the 80s build on modern systems - which is to say the game looks like nostalgia for the 80s, not stuff actually from the 80s. The engine is quite solid as well, animations are good and solid. The dragons look especially great.

There is something of a limited number of enemies in the game and it kinda hurts the open world element. Enemies basically come down to up close fighters, general soldiers and heavies. There's a couple different varieties but you can often forget what you're shooting at since they all die in the same way. I think one thing that would have really fit the 80s theme and improved variety would be like, say glowing weak spots 80s style on various human enemies, giving them a slight visual difference and changing up gameplay a little bit. They also could have goofed around a bit more with some of them, the game is so wacky I feel like the weapons could have been sillier.

Well and Dragons. Fighting the Dragons is pretty um, tubular? Which 80s slang goes here? The dragons are actually pretty scary and effective, with just that right feeling of 'god did he take the bait' to jack up the tension.

On that note gunplay is mostly rock solid. There's something odd about some of the weapons where they don't quite feel right, but maybe that's just me. Weapons feel good, are all different and eventually powerful but do need to be upgraded, which is probably the right way to tie in the game's side missions. I do find the knife takedowns are a little bit overpowered compared to gunplay, but that might be a result of playing it on medium or something. I also found the bow really weird to use and maybe I'm just not good with bows. I'd shoot things in the face and they'd just get arrows stuck in them. Neon arrows. They didn't seem to mind.

A highlight to this game is the audio ... Well, kinda. Doctor Darling's voice actress is excellent (though she sounds kinda awkward and goofy at parts, I feel like this is intentional given the campy tone), Sloan is well played and Rex "Power" Colt is played by Michael Biehn who absolutely kills the role. I don't even mean he comes off as an action hero, because while he does, it's the odd moments of confusion, solidarity in the face of camp and bemusement that truly sell the role. The music is really excellent too, much like the art it's retro-chic or some other confused assemblage of words not meant to go in sentences together. The only real complaint I have about the game is the relative lack of other voices. The commandos all sound the same, which is fine but monotonous and the scientists also all have the same voice which is goofy given they're just nerds. What, you don't have nerds around the office? Just line them up and pick three good ones. Also I would have appreciated some female nerds, just to add variety.

All in all, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon has a mixed opening but rapidly becomes a fantastic game with amazing music, great art direction and story elements essentially cyber-welded together from the soggy meat bits of the 80s. I mean the story elements. The art is something new and bright, as I said before, it feels like playing a childhood memory, not like going back and playing a commodore game. It's hard to articulate this one to people who don't have memories of playing 80s video games or films, but when we old timers think back to them they look a shit ton better than they do when you play them. Like my memories of Super Castlevania are amazing - The actual game, urgh, not good.

I know that's not an 80s game. I just needed an example.

Anyway, this game is mostly great and I hope maybe the art assets get used elsewhere since I miss them already. This game actually reminds me of Doom 3 in how fleshed out and neat the levels look - Hasbro, get on this, just make an 80s camp GI Joe game with ubisoft. You need to add like 5 models and you're done.

Oh and the Cyber-Eye is awesome. Every game should have a cyber-eye and neon buildings.