Comedy in games is a really hard line to walk. It becomes even more difficult in a video game where the pacing is near impossible to control, as the agency of that is left to the player, and the range of gamers at this point is so wide that expectations of what any one of them has experienced is simply a guessing game. With that in mind Blood Dragon marches bravely forward throwing out every single 80’s action movie reference that it can manage, and strangely most of them work. Oddly enough the best description is the sum of the parts of the game, Far Cry 3 set in what the 80’s thought would be the future.
Far Cry 3 was already a game of the year contender for many people, myself included. Its odd mix of open world exploration and crafting with one of the stranger stories in recent memory made a lasting impression. Blood Dragon feels like a mod team just sat down with that and said, “Let’s not take any of this seriously at all” and proceeded to make jokes about long tutorials and Robocop. Perhaps the myGamer Editor In Chief explained it best by calling Blood Dragon the game Duke Nukem should have been, but that still isn’t kind enough. Blood Dragon actively goes out of its way to make comedy an integral part of the game—cyber sharks and all.
Blood Dragons, which could have equally called “Robo-T-Rexes”, are present throughout the island. At the start of the game they are dangerous, annoying, and feel like they are in every location that the player would ever have any reason to go to. This makes them amazingly fun. In Far Cry the worst that an enemy could do to the player is set the ground on fire, maybe throw a grenade. In Blood Dragon there are giant, stalking creatures of death that vomit laser explosions that can actively be set against bad guys. There is little more satisfying then setting a T-Rex on an outpost, having it cyber murder everyone there, then slowly raising the shields when it wanders away. Clearly Far Cry 3 wasn’t random enough.
The game also does a good job with filters. There is some kind of red/neon glaze over everything in the environment that makes it look and feel like it is an old 80’s VHS tape that has been handed down through generations of high schoolers. It might also because I haven’t played the core game in a couple of months, but I am pretty sure that the game also runs slightly better this time around. It could be because it has a smaller footprint, 3 gigs instead of the massive 15, or possibly some of the updates released in the last half year—the game just seems to load substantially faster.
Blood Dragon is 15 dollars. It is out now on several systems. I would recommend buying it on the PC if that is an option. If not you should probably get it on whatever system it is that you do have. There is no beating around the bush, no talking about other games that you might like, buy this game. Blood Dragon is one of those experiences that should be had, regardless. It is good enough, cheap enough, and does not require the original Far Cry 3 to play.
Also check out our live stream of this game HERE.
