- Nov 16, 2006
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I've always stayed away from Ubisoft games in general for two reasons: Uplay, I just don't need another launcher in my life, and the "Ubisoft Look", large expansive maps with an almost Skinner Box level of Loot/Grind/Climb a Tower/Repeat. I put off Blood Dragon on the first point for a long time: I once created a Uplay account and attached my Blood Dragon save to it, then quickly lost interest in the game for something else. Years went by and when I went to fire up the game again... lo and behold I had forgotten my UPlay password, the throwaway @msn e-mail I had used for years as my junkbox e-mail was now defunct and it looked like I had forever lost access to playing a handful of Ubisoft games on my account. Not a huge loss, I figured on account of the second point above, but irritating none the less.
More years passed, and one night in a drunken angry stupor I pulled up my old @msn account on outlook.com and started mashing in passwords until... one suddenly worked. It needed me to pass two factor. No problem. Oh. My. God. Years of random junk mail spilled out in front of me. I fired up my Uplay account and reset my password. I could finally play all those Uplay games I never actually wanted to play in the first place. Jackpot.
Naturally my first choice was Blood Dragon.
A couple things about Blood Dragon: As a shooter the game is actually pretty dull (as are so many older shooters after playing the new Doom and Wolfenstein games) and past a certain point the Sniper Rifle can be upgraded to a nearly godlike killing machine, eliminating the need for anything other than a short range weapon for when you're forced into a cramped underground bunker. But you're not here for the shooting elements which are, while dull, perfectly functional. You're here for the absurd and comedic stylings of the game, which is basically a love letter written in blood to all the 80's ultra violent campy big guns, bigger explosions, dangerous femme fatale leading lady action movies Gen X and Elder Millenials grew up on.
**** Puppy Dog Pals and Paw Patrol. I was raised on GI Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I had watched Aliens, Predator, both Terminator Movies, and Robocop before I turned 10. My wife says the Marvel movies might be too violent for my 8 year old. I just laugh on the inside. I also laugh on the outside.
Anyway, where was I.
Blood Dragon was on the leading edge of that weird collective cultural phenomena where so much media tried to just resurrect the 80's (I know, its cause all the 80's kids are starting to run crap and feel nostalgic), and I was surprised to learn it actually preceeded Kung Fury by a couple years.
As a stand alone expansion of Far Cry 3, the game's map is basically comprised of a small island lifted from the much larger map of the full game. Everything is drenched in garish neon colors, all the wildlife from the original game get "techno" upgraded looks (Sharks with frickin lazers on their heads), and the island in inhabited by the titular "Blood Dragons": massive reptiles that love to eat cyborgs and blast things with their lazer vision. You play Rex "Power" Colt, voiced by legendary Michael Biehn, a Mark IV Cyborg who finds himself way over his head. Like everything else about the game, the story is utterly ridiculous, over the top, and my favorite part... its really short.
The game has something like 4-5 "main missions", each of which last maybe about an hour at best and do not overstay their welcome (although quite annoyingly you cannot actually save in the middle of a mission, you only hit checkpoints at certain points, and will typically have to start at the beginning of the mission in the event that you have to quit the game). The time between missions is spent liberating enemy strongholds, each of which will give you a new place to resupply and evade enemies, as well as providing a handful of side missions (either Predator "hunt the enemy/Animal" type or Prey "Rescue the hostage" style missions. Each mission provides an upgrade for one of your primary weapons.
Outside of that, there are VHS tapes and Television sets to collect... and that's it. That's the game. There is a small amount of emergent gameplay where you can intervene between random battles of good guys and bad guys, and occasionally a Blood Dragon wanders in. I got about 10 hours out of it, which was just right. Anymore and the game's style would have eventually have driven me insane.
Personally, I'd love to see a sequel to the game.
For the pittence this thing is going for nowadays, its a bizzare and stylistic 10 hours of entertainment that I fully recommend, and if you're in the older millenial or Gen X age bracket the game will be literally overflowing with references. There is just enough game there to get you in, let you have fun, and get you out without stringing out the experience way past its expiry date.
More years passed, and one night in a drunken angry stupor I pulled up my old @msn account on outlook.com and started mashing in passwords until... one suddenly worked. It needed me to pass two factor. No problem. Oh. My. God. Years of random junk mail spilled out in front of me. I fired up my Uplay account and reset my password. I could finally play all those Uplay games I never actually wanted to play in the first place. Jackpot.
Naturally my first choice was Blood Dragon.
A couple things about Blood Dragon: As a shooter the game is actually pretty dull (as are so many older shooters after playing the new Doom and Wolfenstein games) and past a certain point the Sniper Rifle can be upgraded to a nearly godlike killing machine, eliminating the need for anything other than a short range weapon for when you're forced into a cramped underground bunker. But you're not here for the shooting elements which are, while dull, perfectly functional. You're here for the absurd and comedic stylings of the game, which is basically a love letter written in blood to all the 80's ultra violent campy big guns, bigger explosions, dangerous femme fatale leading lady action movies Gen X and Elder Millenials grew up on.
**** Puppy Dog Pals and Paw Patrol. I was raised on GI Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I had watched Aliens, Predator, both Terminator Movies, and Robocop before I turned 10. My wife says the Marvel movies might be too violent for my 8 year old. I just laugh on the inside. I also laugh on the outside.
Anyway, where was I.
Blood Dragon was on the leading edge of that weird collective cultural phenomena where so much media tried to just resurrect the 80's (I know, its cause all the 80's kids are starting to run crap and feel nostalgic), and I was surprised to learn it actually preceeded Kung Fury by a couple years.
As a stand alone expansion of Far Cry 3, the game's map is basically comprised of a small island lifted from the much larger map of the full game. Everything is drenched in garish neon colors, all the wildlife from the original game get "techno" upgraded looks (Sharks with frickin lazers on their heads), and the island in inhabited by the titular "Blood Dragons": massive reptiles that love to eat cyborgs and blast things with their lazer vision. You play Rex "Power" Colt, voiced by legendary Michael Biehn, a Mark IV Cyborg who finds himself way over his head. Like everything else about the game, the story is utterly ridiculous, over the top, and my favorite part... its really short.
The game has something like 4-5 "main missions", each of which last maybe about an hour at best and do not overstay their welcome (although quite annoyingly you cannot actually save in the middle of a mission, you only hit checkpoints at certain points, and will typically have to start at the beginning of the mission in the event that you have to quit the game). The time between missions is spent liberating enemy strongholds, each of which will give you a new place to resupply and evade enemies, as well as providing a handful of side missions (either Predator "hunt the enemy/Animal" type or Prey "Rescue the hostage" style missions. Each mission provides an upgrade for one of your primary weapons.
Outside of that, there are VHS tapes and Television sets to collect... and that's it. That's the game. There is a small amount of emergent gameplay where you can intervene between random battles of good guys and bad guys, and occasionally a Blood Dragon wanders in. I got about 10 hours out of it, which was just right. Anymore and the game's style would have eventually have driven me insane.
Personally, I'd love to see a sequel to the game.
For the pittence this thing is going for nowadays, its a bizzare and stylistic 10 hours of entertainment that I fully recommend, and if you're in the older millenial or Gen X age bracket the game will be literally overflowing with references. There is just enough game there to get you in, let you have fun, and get you out without stringing out the experience way past its expiry date.
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